Day: April 19, 2024
Literary Lights 2024 flyerThe International Armenian Literary Alliance, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, and the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center announced their 2024 “Literary Lights” event, featuring Armen Davoudian, author of a Publishers Weekly and The Rumpus “Most Anticipated Poetry Book of 2024,” “The Palace of Forty Pillars.”
Davoudian will be joined by celebrated author and UCLA professor, Anahid Nersessian. The event, co-sponsored by the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI) and The Offing literary magazine, will take place virtually on May 4 at 10 a.m. PST, 1 p.m. EST, and 9 p.m. Armenia time. Register here.
Wry, tender, and formally innovative, Armen Davoudian’s debut poetry collection, “The Palace of Forty Pillars,” tells the story of a self estranged from the world around him as a gay adolescent, an Armenian in Iran, and an immigrant in America. It is a story darkened by the long shadow of global tragedies—the Armenian genocide, war in the Middle East, the specter of homophobia. With masterful attention to rhyme and meter, these poems also carefully witness the most intimate encounters: the awkward distance between mother and son getting ready in the morning, the delicate balance of power between lovers, a tense exchange with the morality police in Iran.
In Isfahan, Iran, the eponymous palace has only twenty pillars—but, reflected in its courtyard pool, they become forty. This is the gamble of Davoudian’s magical, ruminative poems: to recreate, in art’s reflection, a home for the speaker, who is unable to return to it in life. Learn more about “The Palace of Forty Pillars” online.
“Brilliant and deft and heartfelt,” said Richie Hofmann, author of “A Hundred Lovers.”
“In this formally radical debut, Armen Davoudian shows how rhyme enacts longing for a homeland left behind; how meter sings to a lost beloved; and how a combination of the two can map a self—or idea of the self—relinquished so that a new life, and all the happiness it deserves, can take shape,” said Paul Tran, author of “All the Flowers Kneeling.”
Armen Davoudian
Anahid Nersessian
Armen Davoudian is the author of the poetry collection “The Palace of Forty Pillars” (Tin House) and the translator, from Persian, of “Hopscotch” by Fatemeh Shams (Ugly Duckling Presse). His chapbook, “Swan Song,” won the 2020 Frost Place Competition. He grew up in Isfahan, Iran, and is a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University.
Anahid Nersessian was born and raised in New York City. She is the author of three books—”Keats’s Odes: A Lover’s Discourse” (Verso, 2022; U of Chicago P, 2021), “The Calamity Form: On Poetry and Social Life” (Chicago, 2020), and “Utopia, Limited: Romanticism and Adjustment” (Harvard UP, 2015)—and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Her work has also appeared in The London Review of Books, New Left Review, n+1, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review, Bidoun, Poetry Magazine and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is a professor in the Department of English at UCLA.
Literary Lights is a monthly reading series organized, for the second year in a row, by IALA, NAASR, and the Zohrab Information Center. Each event—held online—features a writer reading from their work, followed by a discussion with an interviewer and audience members. Keep an eye on IALA’s website and socials for the exact dates of each event. Read along with the series by purchasing titles from the IALA Bookstore or the NAASR Bookstore.
Several factions represented in Artsakh’s parliament issued a statement on Friday calling the withdrawal of Russian peacekeeping forces from Artsakh that began earlier this week is “unacceptable.”
“The process of the withdrawal of the Russian peacekeeping contingent from the territory of the Republic of Artsakh occupied by Azerbaijan, which started a few days ago, is very worrying for the 150,000 Artsakh citizens who were displaced from their homeland months ago under the real threat of genocide,” said the statement signed by the Justice, Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Democratic Party of Artsakh factions represented in the Artsakh parliament.
Below is the text of the statement.
For the legitimate authorities elected by the people of the Republic of Artsakh and factions of the National Assembly, the issue of dignified and collective return has been and continues to be a priority in the previous months, in which the assurance of our fundamental rights and safety is of cornerstone importance.
After September 27, 2020, our region has ended up in the realm of serious transformations, and the situation created after the 44-day war [in that year] does not in any way guarantee the expected and promised lasting peace and stability.
The people of Artsakh, regardless of their will, found themselves enslaved by the provisions of the Trilateral Declaration of November 9, 2020 and believed in the assurances of the high leadership of the Russian Federation to ensure their safety. We are forced to painfully and regretfully stress that the fate of the people of Artsakh became a matter of secondary importance for all the parties that signed the Trilateral Declaration, due to which the Artsakh was completely emptied of its Armenian population in September 2023.
At the same time, it is obvious that the absence of an international presence in Artsakh will give additional freedom to the military and political leadership of Azerbaijan, which is implementing a policy of destroying ‘everything Armenian’ and erasing the Armenian trace in general. In such a situation, the centuries-old Armenian spiritual, cultural monuments, Armenian property, and national property will be under threat.
It is an inalienable right of the people of Artsakh to live safely and securely in their millennium-old homeland with international guarantees, the preservation of all rights and freedoms, and the three factions of the National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh are concerned that the withdrawal of international organizations from Artsakh in general, and the withdrawal of Russian peacekeeping contingent in particular, puts that right at risk.
At the same time, we consider it important to emphasize that making such decisions without discussions with the representatives of the native people of the region, the Artsakh Armenians, is unacceptable and cannot in any way contribute to the establishment of stable, long-term peace, and the resolution of the problem.
Based on the above, the [three] factions of the National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh urge the relevant structures of the Russian Federation and their persons in charge to immediately start consultations and discussions with the legally elected representatives of the people of Artsakh about the real reasons for the withdrawal of the Russian peacekeeping troops from the territory of the Republic of Artsakh, the catastrophic situation created as a result, the many challenges caused, and on making the necessary efforts to overcome them.