April 20, 2025 • 48 mins
Check out Amanda's conversation with Yetvart S. Majian!
Yetvart S. Majian, a first-generation Armenian-American native of Hudson County and Saint Peter’s University alum, is a local poetry facilitator, active performer and literary organizer in the tristate area.
Yetvart's Links:
@emajian
CHECK OUT AMANDA'S NEW TV SHOW: The Poet Speaks with Amanda Eke! Now airing on the Archaeology Channel and Roku!
STREAM HERE:
https://heritagetac.org/programs/the-poet-speaks-with-amanda-eke-i28z2vn9bsc?category_id=65263
Be sure to check out The Poet Speaks Podcast on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/thepoetspeakspodcast/
And listen to,The Poet Speaks Podcast, on the go on ALL STREAMING PLATFORMS WORLDWIDE!
Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/1cM1rdF...
Did you know The Poet Speaks is also Amanda's touring global workshop? She teaches people all about how to make, create and the history of Spoken Word and Indigenous oral traditions! To make a booking for The Poet Speaks Workshop with your organization, apply for mentorships with Amanda, book interviews, as well as writing consultations, please use this link: https://www.amandaeke.com/services
Music by: Buzu Buzu
https://www.instagram.com/bbuzu/
Yetvart S. Majian, a first-generation Armenian-American native of Hudson County and Saint Peter’s University alum, is a local poetry facilitator, active performer and literary organizer in the tristate area.
Yetvart's Links:
@emajian
CHECK OUT AMANDA'S NEW TV SHOW: The Poet Speaks with Amanda Eke! Now airing on the Archaeology Channel and Roku!
STREAM HERE:
https://heritagetac.org/programs/the-poet-speaks-with-amanda-eke-i28z2vn9bsc?category_id=65263
Be sure to check out The Poet Speaks Podcast on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/thepoetspeakspodcast/
And listen to,The Poet Speaks Podcast, on the go on ALL STREAMING PLATFORMS WORLDWIDE!
Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/1cM1rdF...
Did you know The Poet Speaks is also Amanda's touring global workshop? She teaches people all about how to make, create and the history of Spoken Word and Indigenous oral traditions! To make a booking for The Poet Speaks Workshop with your organization, apply for mentorships with Amanda, book interviews, as well as writing consultations, please use this link: https://www.amandaeke.com/services
Music by: Buzu Buzu
https://www.instagram.com/bbuzu/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Join us on the Poetic Odyssey, a celebration of voices, cultures,
and the power of words. I'm Amanda Ecking. Welcome to
the poet Speaks, where every syllable ignites inspiration for get
you involved with what stories are on these tracks.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
This idea of the bronx, Now, boogie down Bronx. That's
what people say, right, Don't become someone's subway story. Medicate
me with a lick of the like.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I am not afraid to love you.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
All of us have a story.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Microphone magnifying, notick. No one want to listen.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
So I think that's what made me write. In writing
the writing Disco.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
You ready, amazing poetry O.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
It's hello everyone, and welcome back to the poet Speaks podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Our next guest is a first generation Armenian American poet.
He's the current pold in Residence for Washington Park Association
in Hudson County and the founder of a weekly open
mic in Safe Space open Forum, the Poetry Unfold, and
Union City, where he facilitates poetry sessions designed to empower
fellow local poets. His writing and poetry have appeared in
(01:32):
soup Can Magazine, Persian Cat Poetry, The Jersey Journal, The
Cairo's Peace Journal, and Way Small Press's completed two collections
of poetry, Survival Witness, and dedicated that to the Armenians
of Arts, Sky Art Talk and Palestinians of Gaza. Everyone
welcome to the Poet Speaks podcast. Yet Vart, majjat, yet vart.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
How are you? I'm very well happy to be here
with you. How are you.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I'm doing good, doing pretty good, doing as good as
we can, and times like this, but poetry is always
here to lift us up. So that's always a good
thing to talk it and talk that cash money poetry.
All right, tell us where are you at in the
world right now? Tell us a little bit of where's
your location?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Where are we talking to you from tonight? I am
in Union City in New Jersey for those who don't know,
it's across the river from Manhattan, across the Hudson River,
about fifteen twenty minutes from Manhattan on a good trip.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Okay, nice? So is it like? So New Jersey prices
with the New York City.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Experience sort of, although that's starting to change. Gentrification is
a thing, and so New Jersey prices are changing quickly
and rapidly. Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Wow, tell us.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
In my childhood that was the case. In my childhood
for sure, like New York was always the place you
went to and then came back.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Oh my goodness. Wow. Well tell us a bit did
you grow Were you born and raised, born and bred
Jersey boy or did you grow up elsewhere?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yeah? The former. I was born in Seacaucus, New Jersey.
I still have no idea why I've never lived a
day of my life in Sea Caucus. I guess my
mom was just there when it was time. And then
I grew up in Weahawken. That's where I went to
high school and Union City. But for anybody who knows
this area, these cities are all very close to each other.
And so yeah, this Hudson County basically is where I
(03:20):
grew up. That's home for me, and I've traveled fair
a bit, but I always come back because I was
raised by grandparents who've needed my attention as I get older.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Wow. Wow, Wow, that's amazing, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Tell us a bit.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I mean, tell us about the poetry community there. I think,
of course, like you said, you know, you're so close
to New York City. New York City, many people know
about it. It's sortied but amazing history of poetry, jazz,
I mean, all the arts is.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
What is Jersey.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Does Jersey have that same type of history and footprint.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, Jersey has some pretty renowned poets that come from Jersey.
And I think I'll just sort of take that in
the direction of saying that in the last few years,
there's been a very, very happening, burgeoning art scene on
this side of the river. There always has been, like
there have been certain luminaries who have been fostering community
(04:15):
and poetry on this side of the river for as
long as I've known, so for the last two decades,
I've been aware of people who've been doing that work.
But particularly since COVID, our Jersey side has been flourishing
a lot, and there have been organizers. You know, I'm
lucky to be one of the organizers on this side
of the river who have been sort of organizing and
bringing people together. But there's a lot of movement back
(04:36):
and forth into the city. There's a lot of movement,
like with Philly, with Staten Island. I mean, there are
a lot of different poetry communities that are so close
to us, that are finally sort of interacting more and more.
So I do know the New York New York City
poetry scene. I'm a part of it, and on this
side of the river, we definitely have hubs. Like when
you were reading my bio, for example, you said and
published in a Way small press. I just want to
(04:57):
give a quick shout out to Way because By the
Way magazine drops tomorrow actually and they published two of
my pieces, So John Marinel Way, thank you. So there
are a lot of communities like Way, like the Poetry
Unfold on our side of the river, that are consistent
and have their own pub and we interract regularly with
New York City and the surrounding communities as well.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Wow. No, that's amazing. That's amazing. You know, I think
a lot of people. As I said, it's the idea
of the city, New York City. It's such a big character,
so it's kind of its tentacles just flow within the
state of New York, but also the surrounding areas. So
great to see those kind of indie roots that you mentioned,
(05:40):
like the Way Out magazine. Now tell us let's kind
of get into it, you know, your work. Like I
had read in your bio, you know your work focuses
on the subtleties of human intersubjectivity is what you say,
and drawing from your Armenian legacy of genocide and diaspora,
tell us a bit about growing up in Jersey, tell
us a bit about how that has led you to
(06:03):
Now what is that life's path with your poetry and
your writing.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Well, there was a lot in there. I think intersubjectivity
is just like a fancy philosophy way of saying inter
being being together and how we interact and how we
become together and how we unfold into being together. So
I'm really fascinated by those kinds of things. A lot
of poems of mine that are not necessarily resistance or
political pieces, they're a little bit more subtle. They tend
(06:31):
to be about very subtle, overlooked interactions, like a person
saying or doing something on a bus and that having
a seeming impact on someone else, And it would have
all been invisible if there weren't a poet there to
record it, or to think about it, to take a
literary photograph of it. So that's kind of what I'm
talking about there. As far as the Armenian there's a
lot more to the Armenian legacy than genocide, diaspora is
(06:54):
a huge, huge part of it. Armenians were subject to
genocide in the twentieth century. It was the first modern genocide,
modernity being in terms of the tools that were used,
because the first genocide of the twentieth century was a
Herrero genocide in nineteen five modern day Namibia. And so
since that period of time, the Armenians have been dispersed
throughout the globe all over the world. We've had communities
(07:16):
in every country that you can name, and that's a
very very important part of what has become our mean
identity today. And we're seeing now the diasporification of Palestinians,
for example, and people from other parts of the world
as well. It's not just genocide. That's something that has
been really prominent because I was raised by grandparents that
rooted me and steeped me in community and in cultural heritage.
(07:39):
But Armias also have a very long tradition of writing
and poetry that goes to like the fifth century AD,
So all those things figure prominently in my life those elements.
But I also grew up in a Latino neighborhood, so
that also figures very prominently for me, I grew up
as an inner city, inner city kid in a Latino neighborhood,
So that really is also just as important a part
(08:01):
of it my identity as everything else we've mentioned.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It's a very interesting kind of polarities that you had
so growing up in Jersey but also in the same breath,
growing up in Latino neighborhood. Now, correct me if I'm wrong.
You are you are an Armenian American, like I said before,
your first generation kind of having that whole impact of immigration.
You know, as someone that's also first generation with immigrant parents,
(08:26):
how did that kind of what viewpoint do you have
as a first generation Armenian boy growing up in Jersey
Latino neighborhood in the United States? What impact did that
have you know, having your parents with this type of
legacy now impacting you as a young boy living in
a place where, like you said, many people aren't even
(08:48):
aware of it.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
I think it just makes me inherently intersectional. I think
that comes really easily and naturally to me. If I'm
in a very insular Armenian community, I tend to have
viewpoints that are shaped by growing up in an inner
city Latino community and going to a public school. So
I went to Armenia and school until second grade or
(09:11):
something like that, and then I went to public school.
So I tend to have a very different worldview. My
grandparents lived in Brazil for five years and then South
Africa and Pretoria for five years while Mendela was in jail,
and so as I got older and he heard stories
of their time there, and just some of the stories, like,
for example, my grandparents would tell me stories of life
(09:33):
in South Africa that they didn't recognize necessarily as tied
to apartheid. But in telling me the stories, because I
studied social justice and politics and philosophy and I'm really
interested in these human rights issues, and hearing their stories,
it became evident to me that the reason why they
saw what they saw in the way that they saw
(09:55):
and that they were exposed to certain people in certain contexts,
was tied very much to a part South Africa, And
in talking to them about that, there have been a
lot of realizations intergenerationally between us. I watched a movie
about Mendela with them, and it was very moving to
see them react to that because they saw South Africa
in a different way than what they had lived and
(10:16):
things started to become clearer to them, and my grandfather's
told me some incredible stories about actual everyday acts of
resistance to a part that he was a pretty incredible person.
He passed away, but I was raised by them, So
that also is a really big part of my poetry.
It's a really big part of my consciousness. Conscious sorry, consciousness,
(10:36):
but also conscience. I was thinking of both of those words,
and they're both. My conscience is very much tied to
this kind of worldly, intersectional approach. In my family, there
are multiple language and my grandmother's very good with language
and absorbed the languages of all the countries that she
traveled to. And I got a little bit of that
gift too. I speak four languages. So all of that
makes me inherently to people and to stories, to identities
(11:01):
and intrinsic humanness.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
That multi dimension of self is very, very fascinating, and
I'm sure is now kind of establish you as a
writer and what you write about. Tell us about your
journey to become a writer. You know, when did poetry?
When did that find you?
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Was it in childhood?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Was it in later adult years? Tell us a bit
about your journey to becoming this poet that you are today.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
It's interesting I answered that question once. I remember by
talking about my earliest experiences of writing, which weren't super
pleasant because I had studied Armenian language as a child,
and so in my single digit years, I was very
proficient in Armenian and I would write in Armenian. And
I remember I had a very turbulent childhood. I was
(11:45):
subject to child abuse, and I remember using Armenian to
write little notes to my grandmother. So that's like my
first actual experience or memory of writing. It was me
writing to create a sort of space for myself to
tell what I thought was important to somebody that I
knew cared about me and loved me, and it made
me feel safer. And then the second thing I was
(12:06):
thinking about this for one year of my life, I
lived in Houston, Texas. It's a long story and it's
not really an important one, but I lived in Houston,
Texas for a year. And I also was diagnosed with
dyslexia at a young age. So I remember vividly an
assignment that I was to write one or two pages
about some imaginary story, and so I wrote about three
(12:30):
or four pages front and back, and as far as
I can remember, it was some adaptation of Peter Pan.
It was like my own spin on that kind of
a story. And I wrote this thing and I was
so proud of it, and I handed it in and
then the teacher called my mom to this school because
that was the one year of my life that I
lived with my mom, so she was the parent and
(12:51):
guardian who came. And I thought, like, this is dope, Like,
you know, I wrote this cool thing, and all the
teacher really had to say is this kid can't write.
And you know, this kid, he can't spell. He's got issues,
you know. And then I actually, I remember I was
punished for that and it was missus. Oh gosh, missus
pickup is her name, because I still have the report
(13:12):
card from her. And that was a kind of like
as an adult, when I look back and I think about,
you know, how teachers can impact us at a very
very early age. I think if a child gave me
three or four pages front and back of writing, I
would say that that child's a writer. How do I
help this child grow into themselves? But unfortunately that's just
(13:36):
not what happened then. But when I look back, I
think like, that's the kid, Like that kid always was
going to be a writer at some point, somehow, that
kid wanted to communicate with the world. Unfortunately, it took
a little longer to figure out how letters fit together
to make words for me in English.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah, absolutely, It's one of those things. I feel like
childhood is just so full of feelings that are very
in articulate that you just don't have the articulation for
tell us. Then how did that transgress for you professionally
to where you are now? Obviously so you kind of
discovered this as a you said, single digits, How did
(14:14):
that progress as you grew up into you know, teenage
years to young adult into writing career?
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Always wrote, I think for me it was always early.
It was just like reflection. It was me thinking through things,
thinking about I remember thinking a lot about God in
my early teen years. There were a lot of poems
and me sort of questioning like, what is this this
thing and trying to make sense of it. Probably just philosophizing,
you know, I think every human being is a natural philosopher,
(14:41):
and when they start thinking about why they're here, they
start doing philosophy. And if you start writing about it
in little fragments do you start to become a poet,
I think, and that was the early thought was about
just inquiry and thought, and again because I had experienced abuse,
I think a lot of my thinking was about why
things are the way they are, why people. I remember
always wondering why people behaved the way and then coming
(15:03):
to conclusions about why people behave the way that they behave.
As I got older and went to university, my writing
became more academic. I studied more intellectual academic disciplines, so
I wrote poetry on my own, but it wasn't part
of like most of my writing was academic writing. I studied,
you know, political theory, genocide, nonviolence, social movements, so that's
(15:26):
the sort of thing that I was writing. Identity I
started writing about. Toward the end of my years in
undergrad I was writing more poetry again, and I think
I had come to the conclusion that artistic expression was
really really important. Having gone through the intellectual academic expression,
I came to the conclusion that communicating with one another
in society artistically is a super super important way of
(15:49):
imparting ideas that I think that's it. I read a
lot of poetry, and I continue to read a lot
of poetry. I think that poets pry open spaces and
carve out spaces, and I think that's why it's always
attracted me.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Absolutely, tell me a bit about kind of going off
of what you said there, what is what do you
think is the role of a poet? Then? In our
world today, you know, we're in an ever changing landscape
every day, every moment, right, we're in a different we're
in a different, different time right. Almost it feels like,
(16:25):
how important do you think the role of the poet
is in the year twenty twenty five in our society?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Unbelievably important. There's a reason why poets are often the
first ones to be arrested, killed, shut down if they
become prominent. Poets speak, they try their best, I think,
to speak truth. But I think that there are as
many roles and reasons for poetry as there are poets,
and I think there are different kinds of poets for
different reasons. But if you ask me what I think
(16:53):
the role of a poet is, I think the poet.
Nina Simone said, the poet's job is to speak to
the times. Noel Figueroa, who interviewed me once for poets
of Purpose reminded me of that while we were talking
in an interview, and I thought that was a really
wonderful thing to point out, and what an incredible figure
to point out. But to speak to the times, That's
always been true for Armenians as far back as you
(17:15):
go in poetry, for Armenians, they have been documenting things
about what's happened to them. Like if you look at
the Armenian poet Siamanto, he wrote a poem called the
Dancers and it was a very very it's a very
difficult poem to read. It's about genocide, but he was
documenting it. And so the poets document things that oftentimes
(17:36):
other people don't, whether the first to document or the
first ones to stand up and address something. So I
think that poets are vital. I don't think there's ever
been a resistance movement without poetry as a really big
part of it. During the Soviet years, there was Paru
Sevak in Armenia Soviet Soviet Armenia. My grandmother's brother, harutun
(17:58):
Zakarian in Romania was was a poet and anti communist poet.
So even in my own family there is this like
when I think about what's the role of the poet,
and I think at Armenian the trajectory of Armenian poets
from like the fifth century to present, the way they've
used language to communicate and document. And then I look
at my own family, and I look at poets that
I'm inspired by, like you know, Nina Simone and so
(18:21):
many others. I think that's the role of the poet.
And we see now in Gaza how important poetry has been.
Poets were literally being assassinated by occupying forces, So that,
I think tells us how important poets are because they
speak the truth and two oppressors and two perpetrators, all
of truth is the enemy.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, tell me a bit about then, how do you
find yourself balancing between the two? You know, as someone
as yourself, it is so based not only just with writing,
but also it seems spiritually and emotionally grounded in you know,
the culture of your people, and that's where your art
(19:02):
really it has the purtal ground to grow from. How
do you then balance that with the occupation of capitalism?
You know, to keep something running, you know, to keep
our poetry collection surviving, you have to sign deals to
get your self published. How do you balance the two?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
That's a really important that's such an important question. Just
ahead of our interview, I was thinking, like, are there
people who've really touched me in a way that I
really want to mention in this interview And there are
a few, and one in particular, I want to say,
we have kind of an Instagram friendship. Emily Stoddard started
something called the Poetry Bulletin. And I'm saying this because
every person who listens to this interview should get a
(19:41):
hold of Emily Stoddard's Poetry Bulletin should say thank you
to Emily, because Emily started this labor of love some
years ago. It's a bulletin and she basically documents all
of the different submission periods and magazines and journals and
deadlines and con tests. Not only does she make it
(20:01):
all accessible for poets to facilitate poets, she also helps
poets understand exactly she speaks exactly to what you're saying, Amanda.
She does basically analyzes of how much submission fees go
up a year, what's the average submission fee right now?
What is it costing for poets to try to get
their work out? There are these publishers offering any kind
(20:23):
of waivers or help to people who are in need,
or is everything gate kept financially. So she'll break down
the list and show you which publishers are actually offering waivers,
which publishers are reasonable in their pricing, how much she
even recently I read a piece that she wrote about
how she tracked what one publisher was getting in terms
(20:44):
of grants and how little they were giving out, and
so then did analysis and realize that actually this particular
publisher was making more money with submission fees than they
were in book sales.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
So these I think these things speak to what you're saying, Amanda,
and also the awareness of which publishers are censoring poetry
and which publishers safe, for example, for our Armenians to
talk about atrocities being committed against them, for Palestinians to
talk about atrocities being committed against them, Which publishers are
uplifting voices and giving space. So as a poet, now
(21:19):
I'm actively trying to navigate this, and I find people.
I find Emily's work really helpful and really inspiring, and
it's just it feels so good to know that there
are people who are thinking about their fellow poets in
this way and wanting to do things that uplift poetry.
So I'm trying to figure that out. I'm trying to
figure out what the best home would be for my collection.
(21:39):
And also I think you bring up the point of
how much time do we spend serving late stage capitalism
and how much time do we spend serving our vision
of what this life should do. We have one precious life,
as Mary Oliver points out, what do we do with
what do we do with it? Is it all in
service of capitalism or trying to do other things?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, absolutely make such great points. It is this idea
of I like to say about as an artist that's
a professional artist, I would say fifteen percent of what
we do is the creativity side. The other eighty five percent, unfortunately,
is the business dotting, i's crossing, t's keeping up with
those small tasks to be able to just produce creatively
(22:26):
without those limits and barriers being put on you. So
it does always become a question of the mind of well,
where's where's the boundary? Where do you draw the line?
Where do we get the break? Is there a break?
You know, because eventually you'll come to the point where
you realize, you know, these things they don't make themselves
out of thin blue air. Or maybe they can, you know,
(22:47):
maybe there's just a space we haven't created yet and
we're still finding the words to finding the ways to
put that into words. Tell us a bit about your
work professionally, the poetry un tell us a little bit
about how that began. Like you said, I guess I
said in your bio safe Space weekly open mic forum
(23:11):
that's in Union City. Tell us a bit about that.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Yeah, So I think most of your viewers will be
aware of the genocide taking place in cause what Palcinians
are facing that began in October of twenty twenty three.
Armenians have faced a very similar horrific kind of encounter
with contemporary times. There was an ethnic cleansing between twenty
(23:37):
twenty to twenty twenty three in which thousands of Armenians
were murdered by Azerbaijan in Turkey. Seventy percent of the
weapons were Israeli actually, and so you can see some
deep connections. But I don't want to get hung up
in that. I just want to point out that this
was a very difficult time for me as an Armenian
in the world, somebody who had studied genocide academically, not
(23:58):
just the Armenian genocide but all genoside. I hadn't seen
anything like this carnage in my time. I'd been advocating
for Sudan in the early two thousands and darfora I've
been witnessed to that, but to see our Armenians being
I'm sorry, trigger warning, folks decapitated, raped, skeward alive. There
(24:19):
are videos of this that were surfaced on telegram that
I was literally documenting and trying to get to media
to get coverage for it. This all took place within
a blind spot of contemporary consciousness. And again the ethnic
cleansing culminated. In twenty twenty three, Azerbaijan in Turkey ethnically
cleansed one hundred and twenty thousand ethnic Armenians off of
their ethnic sort of sovereign indigenous land Nagorno Karabaf what
(24:41):
we call atzaf. Actually you said it earlier, so thank
you for naming it atzav. And during this period of time,
there's a psychotherapist named Arman Volkas who founded created Healing
Wounds of History, which is a modality that's drama therapy modality,
and it works specifically with intergenerational trauma and what people
will carry, the stories that we carry in our bodies.
(25:02):
Armand has worked with identities all around the world. During
this time for Armenians, Armand started to offer workshops for
Armenians to offer, like healing groups, and I, through a
mutual friend, joined Armand and we became close friends in
that way, and he became a mentor to me and
I continued to study with him. This was at this
(25:22):
point years ago that was all very fresh in what
was becoming of me as as a person, like exploring
healing spaces and the importance of drama therapy and just
healing work in general. How do you support community? So
at around the same time, it was also post COVID
and people were not super social anymore. There weren't too
(25:44):
many places where people could meet and discourse. So I
thought start an open mic. But also, having been so
influenced profoundly by healing wounds of history, could I add
a component to it that I called the open form component.
And that's how this model came about. And it's a
very unique sort of signature model. And we've been kind
(26:05):
of growing it for three years now and developing it
into its own thing. It's called the Poetry Unfold. And
basically every poet would come, like Amanda, you would come,
you would do your piece, and then afterwards the open
forum would be open for you and the audience would
talk back to you about your piece, and they're very
gently coached, like please make eye statements. This brings this
(26:25):
up for me. It reminds me of this. But don't
speak on behalf of other people, don't generalize, say anything
you need to say, but do it mindfully. And this
allows the poet to be in conversation with the audience
and it's a really, really wonderful experience. So rather than
getting up doing your poem and sitting down, there's a
period where the poem breathes in the in the room.
(26:47):
And that's the model for the Poetry Unfold. And that's
also a kind of a bridged version or maybe not
so a bridge version of how it came to be.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
No, that's beautiful and amazing that. I'm sure that type
of forum. I'm sure this has so many possibilities to
what could unfold in that what's been what's been one
of the best moments that you've seen Unfold between the
poet and the audience.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
There are a few different kinds of best moments. One
that comes to mind is when I'll just say, you know. Also,
when I was going through the most difficult times with
what Azerbaijan and Turkey were doing to Armenians and doing
advocacy work, the Unfold community and the poets that I
was in community with were the first people who started
to hear my early writing at that point. So that
(27:31):
was so when when the siege and Raza started, I
remember being very aware that the Poetry Unfold was going
to be, at least in short term, one of the
very few places where Palestinian voices would be allowed to
speak without being suppressed and shut down, because I had
experienced censorship through academia for two decades and I knew
(27:53):
how hard it was to talk about pass on Israel,
never mind the fact that when there's an active bombing
campaign in two thousand gosh, it was the two thousand
and eight when Israel bombed Gaza. Last time. I remember
being on a project called the Journey for Humanity and
being in a congressional meeting lobbying for attention on darfour
(28:14):
and mentioning the bombing of Gaza and being told I
couldn't talk about that in the context of genocide. So anyway,
I remember all of this from my own development academically,
and so when this began, I was very deliberate about
making sure Palastinian voices could would be heard and that
space would be we pride open. So we had a
Palestinian poet come in. I remember this very vividly. He
(28:37):
came in and I immediately recognized how he must have
felt because of how I had felt for the last
four years trying to talk about our Armenians. And he said, look,
I don't really usually do poetry, but I just wanted
to be able to do a poem, and he did
a rough Alarier's poem if if I must die, then
(29:01):
you must be a tale. Let me be a tale.
And that meant a lot to the entire room, But
for that poet, for that person, I realize that's what
the importance of this is. There needs to be spaces
where that can be spoken out loud. So that stands out.
Another thing that stands out for me is times when
(29:22):
poems touch on something like maybe domestic violence or growing
up in the inner City, and then all of a sudden,
you can see that the group sort of blossoms its
little affinity group, and there are multiple people in that
audience who are really feeling that poem and they can
speak about it now and now. Sometimes we'll do exercises
(29:43):
that come from healing Wounds of History, where they're designed
to basically so if this is something I didn't say
that I should. Sometimes these topics can be really charged
and hot, and if something comes up and you can
feel the energy of the room really become tense. There
are certain exercises that come from healing Wounds of History
that I would use to bring the conversation back safely
(30:04):
to shore, so that no one is isolated in their trauma.
In one particular instance, there was a conversation about domestic violence,
and you could see the connections of the empowerment of
people discussing this openly and for men in the room
who have never heard this discourse to be exposed to
it and to play a listening role, a support role.
That's what I think is the most powerful part of
(30:26):
this is that it really creates a space for perspectives
that are often not heard and metabolized to be heard,
and you build relationships and people start to basically it
fosters empathy. That's what I'm trying to say is we
get to a place where empathy is fostered. And I
think it's also very magical when poets here responses back
(30:47):
that they didn't realize. You know, like a poet here's
an audience member say this is what I heard, and
that poet suddenly realizes. There's one instance, I don't want
to name it right now, but one poet was soon
touched by the fact that their poet, their poem communicated
the messages that it did. And if they hadn't had
(31:08):
that kind of an unfold experience with these exercises, they
may have never heard tell them that these particular things
came out for me. Yes, and that's powerful too.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
No, it's it seems like you've really fostered a space
of a lot of a lot of people harnessing their power,
but also people not even realizing the power that they
that they actually had, the resilience, resistance, and like you said,
empathy being able to create that in a space. So
tell us, moving on a bit, tell us about your
poetry collection Survival Witness.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, before I do that. I just want to say
it's a work in progress. I don't want to make
it sound like it's this beautiful. It's it's we're working it,
we're figuring it out, we're fostering it, and it takes
an entire community to hold those kinds of containers. Over time,
the regulars become such beautiful models for empathetic listening and
models for discourse. So it's very much a very beautiful
(32:04):
work in progress. So sorry, you're asking about my current collection.
Is that what you said?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Tell us about your poetry collection, Survival Witness.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yeah, thanks, thanks for asking about that. Survival Witness is
my latest collection. This is my copy for performances, and
it is basically a collection of poetry that documents my
witness to what began in twenty twenty when Armenians were
being subject to genocidal attacks and ethnic cleansing, and then
(32:34):
how in twenty twenty three that led to another case
of genocidal ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. And so the book,
it's a collection of witness poetry and solidarity poetry. Subtitle
is Poems of Forced Displacement, Memory and Solidarity. And so
I think what the collection struggles with is what do
we do with these inherited legacies of genocide and displacement
(32:59):
and trauma does it lead to? And in this collection,
for me, it leads to positionality and it leads to solidarity.
I think anyone who's been subject to fascist rhetoric or
fascist ideology or genocide inherently in their bodies understands what
that kind of injustice is, and so it leads to
a sense of solidarity with people. So specifically, I'm talking
(33:22):
to the Palestinian struggle and the Armenian struggle in this volume,
but within it there's illusions and references to Black America
and to migration and immigration and sort of drawing from
how I grew up. So that's the way that I
would describe this collection. It's been evolving for about a year.
(33:42):
It's in its final iteration, and I'm really happy with
where it is. I've been performing this collection for about
two or three years, and it's been my way of
doing advocacy work. I've performed a sort of political in
political spaces. I've performed it in just poetry and art spaces.
So it's really a work that has been very much alive.
(34:03):
It's been evolving, it's been changing and putting it together
with you know, like a What I found is that
creating a collection and even deciding which poems go in
which order, the composition aspect of it is a whole
different example of brushstrokes for a poet. Right. I didn't
(34:24):
really I never realized just how much we are like
painters until I started to put together a collection, because
I realize that every choice is a brushstroke. This highlights this,
This lightens this, this darkens that. My friend John Tregona says,
you need to rest at poems sometimes, and so this
respite poem then gives you the space and so that
in that way, it's a different layer of composition work.
(34:46):
So I don't know. These are the things that I
feel called to say about Survival Witness. It's a poetry
collection I care very much about, and I really hope
to see it find a home. Individual poems have been
finding homes over the last year, and it's out now
with publishers, and I've just gotten my own copy this
(35:06):
year to start performing it.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Absolutely, congratulations on that. Tell us a bit, just kind
of briefly, that title is very very powerful. Survival Witness
kind of went into it. But tell us what was
the kind of finality moment of this should be what
my poetry collection is called that survival witness.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Those two words. Wow, thanks Amanda, I had it. Not
a lot of people know what the title is because
it's only recently this is the last iteration and now
it's become survival witness. And actually I was thinking this
week that I feel really, really super comfortable with that title.
There have been number of titles that I was working
with and this became the one. So to hear you
(35:47):
say that, just that, that's really sweet. Thank you. I
appreciate that. I'd like to know what it communicates to you.
Should should you do? Should you want to talk to
it first? Or should I?
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Sure? I mean when I hear the words serve witness,
I mean, it's it's almost like survival's guilt. And in
some ways that's what triggers my mind a little bit.
It's you know, you, you you're a witness to maybe
things that you didn't want to see, but you're the
only one left standing. So you've been left to survive,
but witness so much, so much horror, so much pain,
(36:20):
so much joy, But you're the last one standing and
you have to survive, but you have to see in
a lot.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Yeah, I really appreciate it. I'm so glad that you
thanks for your generosity and taking a taking a risk
and offering that that meant a lot to me. You're right,
that's that's very much a part of it. But also
survival witness is being witness to the acts of survival,
recognizing that there are resistors. For example, the collection highlights
that there have been resistors throughout all these horrible things,
(36:48):
that there are these pathways back to humanity. So survival
witness witnessing what is the stuff of survival? How do
we survive? And it's also declarative, like we are survivors.
We're not just victims of these crimes, we're survivors of
these crimes. And survival witness, again is my way of
trying to offer up an image, an idea, a concept
(37:12):
for what we do with intergenerational trauma, decontextualized trauma. So,
you know, trauma is so hot and open now, like
people talk about it, but what are we doing with it?
And I think that more than we need to be
showing up for our trans friends, for our black friends,
for our Palacinian friends, for Armenian friends, for Sudan, for Congo,
(37:33):
as many people, and we can't do it on our own,
Like this is something that I find myself saying often
it's overwhelming. We can't all name everything, but together we
can name a whole lot. And so survival witness is
about being somebody who identifies with a legacy of trauma
and who allows that legacy of trauma to inform their
(37:55):
positionality in the world today. And that's for me, a
really big part of it. So it's both saying we
will survive, it's also saying we have survived. There are
poems in there about being an Armenian a century after
the genocide took place and finding yourself in an inner
city Latino neighborhood being like, yo, the only reason I'm
(38:17):
here right now is because there was a genocide. Like
that's messed up and that's weird, but that informs what
I'm looking at right now. And there are poems about
saying to Palestinian siblings, we see you as our Armenians.
I see the writing on the wall. Armenians have been
subject to genocide denial for a century, So now as
(38:40):
an Armenian When I hear Netanyahu say that he's earmarked
one point eight million dollars to discussing the war in Gaza,
what that sounds like to me is he's just allocated
that much money to the deliberate revision of history and
denial that Palestinians are going to have to now endure
after the genocide, cultural genocide that comes after the physical genocide,
(39:03):
the renaming of things, the renaming. Our Turks have renamed
plants from their Latin roots. They've taken the pronoun so
the prefix are men out of plants and animals. They've
tried to change and erase Armenias out of scientific journals.
So this is the extent the madness to which perpetrators
of genocide will will go. And as in Armenian, we
(39:26):
see that. So there's a line in one of my
poems called mud More Merciful, just got published. And by
the way, and the line is I think it is
it's for the children who will one day be told
Zachtar is Israeli the way that we've been told Lavash
is Turkish. And so in that way, survival witness is
saying like, look, this is what's in my bones. And
(39:48):
in my genetics and my epigenetics. And this allows me
to speak very clearly to denial visionism when I see
it today, and it tells me where I need to stand,
who I need to stand with. So I hope that
that answers no degree.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous, Tell me what? Because I think it's
such a pertinent point in a person's life when, like
you said, you know you because of your experience, you
now can just you're so firm, You're so confident in
what you have to say, your words, your prepositions, your verbs,
your vowels, everything is aligned because everything almost has led
(40:28):
up to this moment for you to stand tall in
what you believe in. What is it like? I mean,
do you feel like you're at that point in your life,
not only as a poet, but just as a person,
to where you're very rooted in your beliefs to just hey,
this is now my life's path, this is where I
stand and I'm not falling. Do you feel like you're
at that point in your life?
Speaker 3 (40:51):
I think I'm getting there. That observation touches me deeply, Amanda.
You're I like your questions. That's something that I think
about a lot. I think every poet probably thinks about right,
like when do you remember when a switch went off
and you were like, I deserve to have a voice.
I deserve to be here, like my voice belongs. That's
such an important thing. I think there's so much childhood
(41:13):
trauma that we've all experienced that tells us to you know, hey,
know your place, and you know maybe and sometimes that's
good advice. Know your place is good, know your audience.
But then you get to a point where like, now
it's time to step up and have a straight spine,
and can we do that? I think I'm getting there.
I can see the evolution in myself. I think years
(41:37):
ago I was comfortable when I was in university. I
was comfortable with having an intellectual voice and academic voice.
And then after that came comfort with having a poet's voice,
and then came and I think the poet's voice always
came from wanting to heal something. So the first collection
of poetry that I wrote so cliche, an entire collection
(41:59):
of poets about being heartbroken, you know, gosh, first poet
ever who's done that, you know, But it was the
working out of like how do we put ourselves back
together again. And then that's where I found my poet voice,
because I realized that the poet voice helps me heal.
When the poem makes sense, I feel better. It's a
(42:20):
way of being in the mirror working on it. When
the ethnic cleansing campaigns against Armenians began, I had a
whole lot more pain to work through, and again I
found the poet's voice. And then I started to realize
that I could also be an organizer in this way,
not just politically, but I could also bring people together
(42:41):
and foster spaces and empower and so then that's voice awakened.
I think what I'm stepping into now is the author,
the would be author, and the performer. I think now
I'm going from the poet voice to the performer voice,
which is the one that will show up and thank
you for offering me the mic. I'm here to support
(43:01):
this because I believe in it. Let me show you
what I what I do, what I've been working on,
what I believe in, and that is a whole new
thing that I've been working on getting to. Really super
lucky to be surrounded by poets in our community who
have been doing that. Incredible poets of heritage who have
been who have been doing that work, and their models
(43:22):
and inspirations to me, and I think that's where I'm
at now. I've always been a natural performer, so coming
back as a performer is the new. The new. It
feels good. It's also a little bit scary, but it
feels good.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Absolutely absolutely, Well, thank you so much. I mean, you've
just dropped so many gems for our audience, for us
all to think about tonight. So one last question we
ask every poet on the poet Speaks podcast, why do
you need to get your words out?
Speaker 3 (43:51):
I said a lot of things in this interview. Thanks
for giving the space to be able to say some
of these things and receiving it. I said a lot
of things that point to like evil in the world,
and it's different forms. Like we know what white supremacy
has been in the United States, we know what Zionism
is doing Palestinians, and I've just talked a little bit
about what Panturkism has done to Armenians. I think I'm
(44:12):
getting to a point now where I see the world
and I see like over here there's fascism and there's
like fascist adjacent people. They are the fascists and the
fascist adjacent. Here there are the justice minded and the
justice minded adjacent. But one thing that I've been kind
of struggling with is that adjacency is not active agency.
It's kind of waiting to figure out what to do.
(44:32):
And adjacency often empowers fascism. And so by doing this
work and by being heard, what I'm hoping to do
is that we, together as activists, as poets, as people
of conscience, start to awaken more of the adjacency and
turn it into agency. King said that the moral arc
of the universe is long, but that it bends toward justice.
(44:55):
I think that if you want to find a practical
example of why that's true. A century ago, when there
was a genocide of Armenians and one point five million
people were killed, there was no international law. The word
genocide hadn't been invented yet, and the Armenian genocide was
the very first time that crimes against humanity was named,
and there were these military tribunals and we had Nuremberg
(45:15):
trials during the Holocaust. Now we have the ic J
International Criminal Court, and perpetrators of genocide have warrants out
for their arrest. The moral arc of the universe is long,
sometimes too long and too slow, but by doing this work,
we're helping to bend that arc. And I think that's
what this is about. And it's also about representation, making
(45:37):
sure that. Just the other two days ago, I gave
a reading for the People Stand with Raza and there
was a Greek in the room who's a solidarity activist,
and he came up and he was like, I'm not
even Armenian, but it meant so much to hear you
there because I'm Greek and our genocide is never mentioned.
And those are the moments when you realize as a
(45:59):
poet that you're just if you just do your best
to be truthful, that is so valuable to people and
to others. And I think that's the work. I think
the work is just to be as truthful as possible
and to work as as hard as possible. But again,
it's about bending the arc toward justice.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Morality, absolutely absolutely, all right, Well, tell us a bit
about our final final question. Tell us a bit about
what the rest of twenty twenty five is looking like
for you. Any events folks can look into and tell
us where we can check you out in terms of
your social social media website, all that good stuff.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
Thank you for that opportunity. On Instagram, E Magian, it's
just my name YETVAT is Edward in our Armenian so
E M A J I A N is my personal
and then in bio there you'll find my organizing work
is under Armenian non Violence. You'll find that my poetry
organizing work is under the Poetry Unfold. The Poetry Unfold.
(47:00):
That's where you can find me. What am I looking
for in twenty twenty five. I'm looking for a publisher,
So if you're looking for this kind of material, I'm
looking for a final home for the collection. I'm very
hopeful that I will find one. And also in the meantime,
I'm looking to connect more and more with justice oriented people,
(47:23):
fostering solidarity, talking about what it's meant to be in
Armenian for the last five years, and finding ways that
relevant in the broader conversation against what's happening with ice
in this country, what's happening in terms of just there's
so many brutal things taking place, and so I really
want to step further into being a performer, to perform
(47:44):
more often. That's why I've printed the manuscript so that
I can always perform from it and to basically step
into that more so, anybody who ever wants to put
together a show to showcase something justice oriented. That's what
I'm here for. That's what I'm trying to do twenty
twenty five. And it's and things like this, a man
like meeting you and working with you and getting to
(48:05):
know you and fostering friendships that are aligned for something deeper.
That's what it's about.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Absolutely all right, yet Bart, thank you so much for
being a guest on the pot Speaks podcast. Everyone. All
of yet Bart's information will be down in the details
box below, no matter where you listen to this podcast,
be able to check out all his links and all
that good stuff. All right, mister yet Bart, thank you
so much for being a guest today on the Poet
Speaks podcast.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Absolutely all right, everyone, check out all his amazing stuff
again check the details box down below, no matter where
you listen to the podcast, everyone, this is the Poet
Speaks See soon go
Join us on the Poetic Odyssey, a celebration of voices, cultures,
and the power of words. I'm Amanda Ecking. Welcome to
the poet Speaks, where every syllable ignites inspiration for get
you involved with what stories are on these tracks.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
This idea of the bronx, Now, boogie down Bronx. That's
what people say, right, Don't become someone's subway story. Medicate
me with a lick of the like.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I am not afraid to love you.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
All of us have a story.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Microphone magnifying, notick. No one want to listen.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
So I think that's what made me write. In writing
the writing Disco.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
You ready, amazing poetry O.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
It's hello everyone, and welcome back to the poet Speaks podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Our next guest is a first generation Armenian American poet.
He's the current pold in Residence for Washington Park Association
in Hudson County and the founder of a weekly open
mic in Safe Space open Forum, the Poetry Unfold, and
Union City, where he facilitates poetry sessions designed to empower
fellow local poets. His writing and poetry have appeared in
(01:32):
soup Can Magazine, Persian Cat Poetry, The Jersey Journal, The
Cairo's Peace Journal, and Way Small Press's completed two collections
of poetry, Survival Witness, and dedicated that to the Armenians
of Arts, Sky Art Talk and Palestinians of Gaza. Everyone
welcome to the Poet Speaks podcast. Yet Vart, majjat, yet vart.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
How are you? I'm very well happy to be here
with you. How are you.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I'm doing good, doing pretty good, doing as good as
we can, and times like this, but poetry is always
here to lift us up. So that's always a good
thing to talk it and talk that cash money poetry.
All right, tell us where are you at in the
world right now? Tell us a little bit of where's
your location?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Where are we talking to you from tonight? I am
in Union City in New Jersey for those who don't know,
it's across the river from Manhattan, across the Hudson River,
about fifteen twenty minutes from Manhattan on a good trip.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Okay, nice? So is it like? So New Jersey prices
with the New York City.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Experience sort of, although that's starting to change. Gentrification is
a thing, and so New Jersey prices are changing quickly
and rapidly. Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Wow, tell us.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
In my childhood that was the case. In my childhood
for sure, like New York was always the place you
went to and then came back.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Oh my goodness. Wow. Well tell us a bit did
you grow Were you born and raised, born and bred
Jersey boy or did you grow up elsewhere?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yeah? The former. I was born in Seacaucus, New Jersey.
I still have no idea why I've never lived a
day of my life in Sea Caucus. I guess my
mom was just there when it was time. And then
I grew up in Weahawken. That's where I went to
high school and Union City. But for anybody who knows
this area, these cities are all very close to each other.
And so yeah, this Hudson County basically is where I
(03:20):
grew up. That's home for me, and I've traveled fair
a bit, but I always come back because I was
raised by grandparents who've needed my attention as I get older.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Wow. Wow, Wow, that's amazing, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Tell us a bit.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I mean, tell us about the poetry community there. I think,
of course, like you said, you know, you're so close
to New York City. New York City, many people know
about it. It's sortied but amazing history of poetry, jazz,
I mean, all the arts is.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
What is Jersey.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Does Jersey have that same type of history and footprint.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, Jersey has some pretty renowned poets that come from Jersey.
And I think I'll just sort of take that in
the direction of saying that in the last few years,
there's been a very, very happening, burgeoning art scene on
this side of the river. There always has been, like
there have been certain luminaries who have been fostering community
(04:15):
and poetry on this side of the river for as
long as I've known, so for the last two decades,
I've been aware of people who've been doing that work.
But particularly since COVID, our Jersey side has been flourishing
a lot, and there have been organizers. You know, I'm
lucky to be one of the organizers on this side
of the river who have been sort of organizing and
bringing people together. But there's a lot of movement back
(04:36):
and forth into the city. There's a lot of movement,
like with Philly, with Staten Island. I mean, there are
a lot of different poetry communities that are so close
to us, that are finally sort of interacting more and more.
So I do know the New York New York City
poetry scene. I'm a part of it, and on this
side of the river, we definitely have hubs. Like when
you were reading my bio, for example, you said and
published in a Way small press. I just want to
(04:57):
give a quick shout out to Way because By the
Way magazine drops tomorrow actually and they published two of
my pieces, So John Marinel Way, thank you. So there
are a lot of communities like Way, like the Poetry
Unfold on our side of the river, that are consistent
and have their own pub and we interract regularly with
New York City and the surrounding communities as well.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Wow. No, that's amazing. That's amazing. You know, I think
a lot of people. As I said, it's the idea
of the city, New York City. It's such a big character,
so it's kind of its tentacles just flow within the
state of New York, but also the surrounding areas. So
great to see those kind of indie roots that you mentioned,
(05:40):
like the Way Out magazine. Now tell us let's kind
of get into it, you know, your work. Like I
had read in your bio, you know your work focuses
on the subtleties of human intersubjectivity is what you say,
and drawing from your Armenian legacy of genocide and diaspora,
tell us a bit about growing up in Jersey, tell
us a bit about how that has led you to
(06:03):
Now what is that life's path with your poetry and
your writing.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Well, there was a lot in there. I think intersubjectivity
is just like a fancy philosophy way of saying inter
being being together and how we interact and how we
become together and how we unfold into being together. So
I'm really fascinated by those kinds of things. A lot
of poems of mine that are not necessarily resistance or
political pieces, they're a little bit more subtle. They tend
(06:31):
to be about very subtle, overlooked interactions, like a person
saying or doing something on a bus and that having
a seeming impact on someone else, And it would have
all been invisible if there weren't a poet there to
record it, or to think about it, to take a
literary photograph of it. So that's kind of what I'm
talking about there. As far as the Armenian there's a
lot more to the Armenian legacy than genocide, diaspora is
(06:54):
a huge, huge part of it. Armenians were subject to
genocide in the twentieth century. It was the first modern genocide,
modernity being in terms of the tools that were used,
because the first genocide of the twentieth century was a
Herrero genocide in nineteen five modern day Namibia. And so
since that period of time, the Armenians have been dispersed
throughout the globe all over the world. We've had communities
(07:16):
in every country that you can name, and that's a
very very important part of what has become our mean
identity today. And we're seeing now the diasporification of Palestinians,
for example, and people from other parts of the world
as well. It's not just genocide. That's something that has
been really prominent because I was raised by grandparents that
rooted me and steeped me in community and in cultural heritage.
(07:39):
But Armias also have a very long tradition of writing
and poetry that goes to like the fifth century AD,
So all those things figure prominently in my life those elements.
But I also grew up in a Latino neighborhood, so
that also figures very prominently for me, I grew up
as an inner city, inner city kid in a Latino neighborhood,
So that really is also just as important a part
(08:01):
of it my identity as everything else we've mentioned.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It's a very interesting kind of polarities that you had
so growing up in Jersey but also in the same breath,
growing up in Latino neighborhood. Now, correct me if I'm wrong.
You are you are an Armenian American, like I said before,
your first generation kind of having that whole impact of immigration.
You know, as someone that's also first generation with immigrant parents,
(08:26):
how did that kind of what viewpoint do you have
as a first generation Armenian boy growing up in Jersey
Latino neighborhood in the United States? What impact did that
have you know, having your parents with this type of
legacy now impacting you as a young boy living in
a place where, like you said, many people aren't even
(08:48):
aware of it.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
I think it just makes me inherently intersectional. I think
that comes really easily and naturally to me. If I'm
in a very insular Armenian community, I tend to have
viewpoints that are shaped by growing up in an inner
city Latino community and going to a public school. So
I went to Armenia and school until second grade or
(09:11):
something like that, and then I went to public school.
So I tend to have a very different worldview. My
grandparents lived in Brazil for five years and then South
Africa and Pretoria for five years while Mendela was in jail,
and so as I got older and he heard stories
of their time there, and just some of the stories, like,
for example, my grandparents would tell me stories of life
(09:33):
in South Africa that they didn't recognize necessarily as tied
to apartheid. But in telling me the stories, because I
studied social justice and politics and philosophy and I'm really
interested in these human rights issues, and hearing their stories,
it became evident to me that the reason why they
saw what they saw in the way that they saw
(09:55):
and that they were exposed to certain people in certain contexts,
was tied very much to a part South Africa, And
in talking to them about that, there have been a
lot of realizations intergenerationally between us. I watched a movie
about Mendela with them, and it was very moving to
see them react to that because they saw South Africa
in a different way than what they had lived and
(10:16):
things started to become clearer to them, and my grandfather's
told me some incredible stories about actual everyday acts of
resistance to a part that he was a pretty incredible person.
He passed away, but I was raised by them, So
that also is a really big part of my poetry.
It's a really big part of my consciousness. Conscious sorry, consciousness,
(10:36):
but also conscience. I was thinking of both of those words,
and they're both. My conscience is very much tied to
this kind of worldly, intersectional approach. In my family, there
are multiple language and my grandmother's very good with language
and absorbed the languages of all the countries that she
traveled to. And I got a little bit of that
gift too. I speak four languages. So all of that
makes me inherently to people and to stories, to identities
(11:01):
and intrinsic humanness.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
That multi dimension of self is very, very fascinating, and
I'm sure is now kind of establish you as a
writer and what you write about. Tell us about your
journey to become a writer. You know, when did poetry?
When did that find you?
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Was it in childhood?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Was it in later adult years? Tell us a bit
about your journey to becoming this poet that you are today.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
It's interesting I answered that question once. I remember by
talking about my earliest experiences of writing, which weren't super
pleasant because I had studied Armenian language as a child,
and so in my single digit years, I was very
proficient in Armenian and I would write in Armenian. And
I remember I had a very turbulent childhood. I was
(11:45):
subject to child abuse, and I remember using Armenian to
write little notes to my grandmother. So that's like my
first actual experience or memory of writing. It was me
writing to create a sort of space for myself to
tell what I thought was important to somebody that I
knew cared about me and loved me, and it made
me feel safer. And then the second thing I was
(12:06):
thinking about this for one year of my life, I
lived in Houston, Texas. It's a long story and it's
not really an important one, but I lived in Houston,
Texas for a year. And I also was diagnosed with
dyslexia at a young age. So I remember vividly an
assignment that I was to write one or two pages
about some imaginary story, and so I wrote about three
(12:30):
or four pages front and back, and as far as
I can remember, it was some adaptation of Peter Pan.
It was like my own spin on that kind of
a story. And I wrote this thing and I was
so proud of it, and I handed it in and
then the teacher called my mom to this school because
that was the one year of my life that I
lived with my mom, so she was the parent and
(12:51):
guardian who came. And I thought, like, this is dope, Like,
you know, I wrote this cool thing, and all the
teacher really had to say is this kid can't write.
And you know, this kid, he can't spell. He's got issues,
you know. And then I actually, I remember I was
punished for that and it was missus. Oh gosh, missus
pickup is her name, because I still have the report
(13:12):
card from her. And that was a kind of like
as an adult, when I look back and I think about,
you know, how teachers can impact us at a very
very early age. I think if a child gave me
three or four pages front and back of writing, I
would say that that child's a writer. How do I
help this child grow into themselves? But unfortunately that's just
(13:36):
not what happened then. But when I look back, I
think like, that's the kid, Like that kid always was
going to be a writer at some point, somehow, that
kid wanted to communicate with the world. Unfortunately, it took
a little longer to figure out how letters fit together
to make words for me in English.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah, absolutely, It's one of those things. I feel like
childhood is just so full of feelings that are very
in articulate that you just don't have the articulation for
tell us. Then how did that transgress for you professionally
to where you are now? Obviously so you kind of
discovered this as a you said, single digits, How did
(14:14):
that progress as you grew up into you know, teenage
years to young adult into writing career?
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Always wrote, I think for me it was always early.
It was just like reflection. It was me thinking through things,
thinking about I remember thinking a lot about God in
my early teen years. There were a lot of poems
and me sort of questioning like, what is this this
thing and trying to make sense of it. Probably just philosophizing,
you know, I think every human being is a natural philosopher,
(14:41):
and when they start thinking about why they're here, they
start doing philosophy. And if you start writing about it
in little fragments do you start to become a poet,
I think, and that was the early thought was about
just inquiry and thought, and again because I had experienced abuse,
I think a lot of my thinking was about why
things are the way they are, why people. I remember
always wondering why people behaved the way and then coming
(15:03):
to conclusions about why people behave the way that they behave.
As I got older and went to university, my writing
became more academic. I studied more intellectual academic disciplines, so
I wrote poetry on my own, but it wasn't part
of like most of my writing was academic writing. I studied,
you know, political theory, genocide, nonviolence, social movements, so that's
(15:26):
the sort of thing that I was writing. Identity I
started writing about. Toward the end of my years in
undergrad I was writing more poetry again, and I think
I had come to the conclusion that artistic expression was
really really important. Having gone through the intellectual academic expression,
I came to the conclusion that communicating with one another
in society artistically is a super super important way of
(15:49):
imparting ideas that I think that's it. I read a
lot of poetry, and I continue to read a lot
of poetry. I think that poets pry open spaces and
carve out spaces, and I think that's why it's always
attracted me.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Absolutely, tell me a bit about kind of going off
of what you said there, what is what do you
think is the role of a poet? Then? In our
world today, you know, we're in an ever changing landscape
every day, every moment, right, we're in a different we're
in a different, different time right. Almost it feels like,
(16:25):
how important do you think the role of the poet
is in the year twenty twenty five in our society?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Unbelievably important. There's a reason why poets are often the
first ones to be arrested, killed, shut down if they
become prominent. Poets speak, they try their best, I think,
to speak truth. But I think that there are as
many roles and reasons for poetry as there are poets,
and I think there are different kinds of poets for
different reasons. But if you ask me what I think
(16:53):
the role of a poet is, I think the poet.
Nina Simone said, the poet's job is to speak to
the times. Noel Figueroa, who interviewed me once for poets
of Purpose reminded me of that while we were talking
in an interview, and I thought that was a really
wonderful thing to point out, and what an incredible figure
to point out. But to speak to the times, That's
always been true for Armenians as far back as you
(17:15):
go in poetry, for Armenians, they have been documenting things
about what's happened to them. Like if you look at
the Armenian poet Siamanto, he wrote a poem called the
Dancers and it was a very very it's a very
difficult poem to read. It's about genocide, but he was
documenting it. And so the poets document things that oftentimes
(17:36):
other people don't, whether the first to document or the
first ones to stand up and address something. So I
think that poets are vital. I don't think there's ever
been a resistance movement without poetry as a really big
part of it. During the Soviet years, there was Paru
Sevak in Armenia Soviet Soviet Armenia. My grandmother's brother, harutun
(17:58):
Zakarian in Romania was was a poet and anti communist poet.
So even in my own family there is this like
when I think about what's the role of the poet,
and I think at Armenian the trajectory of Armenian poets
from like the fifth century to present, the way they've
used language to communicate and document. And then I look
at my own family, and I look at poets that
I'm inspired by, like you know, Nina Simone and so
(18:21):
many others. I think that's the role of the poet.
And we see now in Gaza how important poetry has been.
Poets were literally being assassinated by occupying forces, So that,
I think tells us how important poets are because they
speak the truth and two oppressors and two perpetrators, all
of truth is the enemy.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, tell me a bit about then, how do you
find yourself balancing between the two? You know, as someone
as yourself, it is so based not only just with writing,
but also it seems spiritually and emotionally grounded in you know,
the culture of your people, and that's where your art
(19:02):
really it has the purtal ground to grow from. How
do you then balance that with the occupation of capitalism?
You know, to keep something running, you know, to keep
our poetry collection surviving, you have to sign deals to
get your self published. How do you balance the two?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
That's a really important that's such an important question. Just
ahead of our interview, I was thinking, like, are there
people who've really touched me in a way that I
really want to mention in this interview And there are
a few, and one in particular, I want to say,
we have kind of an Instagram friendship. Emily Stoddard started
something called the Poetry Bulletin. And I'm saying this because
every person who listens to this interview should get a
(19:41):
hold of Emily Stoddard's Poetry Bulletin should say thank you
to Emily, because Emily started this labor of love some
years ago. It's a bulletin and she basically documents all
of the different submission periods and magazines and journals and
deadlines and con tests. Not only does she make it
(20:01):
all accessible for poets to facilitate poets, she also helps
poets understand exactly she speaks exactly to what you're saying, Amanda.
She does basically analyzes of how much submission fees go
up a year, what's the average submission fee right now?
What is it costing for poets to try to get
their work out? There are these publishers offering any kind
(20:23):
of waivers or help to people who are in need,
or is everything gate kept financially. So she'll break down
the list and show you which publishers are actually offering waivers,
which publishers are reasonable in their pricing, how much she
even recently I read a piece that she wrote about
how she tracked what one publisher was getting in terms
(20:44):
of grants and how little they were giving out, and
so then did analysis and realize that actually this particular
publisher was making more money with submission fees than they
were in book sales.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
So these I think these things speak to what you're saying, Amanda,
and also the awareness of which publishers are censoring poetry
and which publishers safe, for example, for our Armenians to
talk about atrocities being committed against them, for Palestinians to
talk about atrocities being committed against them, Which publishers are
uplifting voices and giving space. So as a poet, now
(21:19):
I'm actively trying to navigate this, and I find people.
I find Emily's work really helpful and really inspiring, and
it's just it feels so good to know that there
are people who are thinking about their fellow poets in
this way and wanting to do things that uplift poetry.
So I'm trying to figure that out. I'm trying to
figure out what the best home would be for my collection.
(21:39):
And also I think you bring up the point of
how much time do we spend serving late stage capitalism
and how much time do we spend serving our vision
of what this life should do. We have one precious life,
as Mary Oliver points out, what do we do with
what do we do with it? Is it all in
service of capitalism or trying to do other things?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, absolutely make such great points. It is this idea
of I like to say about as an artist that's
a professional artist, I would say fifteen percent of what
we do is the creativity side. The other eighty five percent, unfortunately,
is the business dotting, i's crossing, t's keeping up with
those small tasks to be able to just produce creatively
(22:26):
without those limits and barriers being put on you. So
it does always become a question of the mind of well,
where's where's the boundary? Where do you draw the line?
Where do we get the break? Is there a break?
You know, because eventually you'll come to the point where
you realize, you know, these things they don't make themselves
out of thin blue air. Or maybe they can, you know,
(22:47):
maybe there's just a space we haven't created yet and
we're still finding the words to finding the ways to
put that into words. Tell us a bit about your
work professionally, the poetry un tell us a little bit
about how that began. Like you said, I guess I
said in your bio safe Space weekly open mic forum
(23:11):
that's in Union City. Tell us a bit about that.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Yeah, So I think most of your viewers will be
aware of the genocide taking place in cause what Palcinians
are facing that began in October of twenty twenty three.
Armenians have faced a very similar horrific kind of encounter
with contemporary times. There was an ethnic cleansing between twenty
(23:37):
twenty to twenty twenty three in which thousands of Armenians
were murdered by Azerbaijan in Turkey. Seventy percent of the
weapons were Israeli actually, and so you can see some
deep connections. But I don't want to get hung up
in that. I just want to point out that this
was a very difficult time for me as an Armenian
in the world, somebody who had studied genocide academically, not
(23:58):
just the Armenian genocide but all genoside. I hadn't seen
anything like this carnage in my time. I'd been advocating
for Sudan in the early two thousands and darfora I've
been witnessed to that, but to see our Armenians being
I'm sorry, trigger warning, folks decapitated, raped, skeward alive. There
(24:19):
are videos of this that were surfaced on telegram that
I was literally documenting and trying to get to media
to get coverage for it. This all took place within
a blind spot of contemporary consciousness. And again the ethnic
cleansing culminated. In twenty twenty three, Azerbaijan in Turkey ethnically
cleansed one hundred and twenty thousand ethnic Armenians off of
their ethnic sort of sovereign indigenous land Nagorno Karabaf what
(24:41):
we call atzaf. Actually you said it earlier, so thank
you for naming it atzav. And during this period of time,
there's a psychotherapist named Arman Volkas who founded created Healing
Wounds of History, which is a modality that's drama therapy modality,
and it works specifically with intergenerational trauma and what people
will carry, the stories that we carry in our bodies.
(25:02):
Armand has worked with identities all around the world. During
this time for Armenians, Armand started to offer workshops for
Armenians to offer, like healing groups, and I, through a
mutual friend, joined Armand and we became close friends in
that way, and he became a mentor to me and
I continued to study with him. This was at this
(25:22):
point years ago that was all very fresh in what
was becoming of me as as a person, like exploring
healing spaces and the importance of drama therapy and just
healing work in general. How do you support community? So
at around the same time, it was also post COVID
and people were not super social anymore. There weren't too
(25:44):
many places where people could meet and discourse. So I
thought start an open mic. But also, having been so
influenced profoundly by healing wounds of history, could I add
a component to it that I called the open form component.
And that's how this model came about. And it's a
very unique sort of signature model. And we've been kind
(26:05):
of growing it for three years now and developing it
into its own thing. It's called the Poetry Unfold. And
basically every poet would come, like Amanda, you would come,
you would do your piece, and then afterwards the open
forum would be open for you and the audience would
talk back to you about your piece, and they're very
gently coached, like please make eye statements. This brings this
(26:25):
up for me. It reminds me of this. But don't
speak on behalf of other people, don't generalize, say anything
you need to say, but do it mindfully. And this
allows the poet to be in conversation with the audience
and it's a really, really wonderful experience. So rather than
getting up doing your poem and sitting down, there's a
period where the poem breathes in the in the room.
(26:47):
And that's the model for the Poetry Unfold. And that's
also a kind of a bridged version or maybe not
so a bridge version of how it came to be.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
No, that's beautiful and amazing that. I'm sure that type
of forum. I'm sure this has so many possibilities to
what could unfold in that what's been what's been one
of the best moments that you've seen Unfold between the
poet and the audience.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
There are a few different kinds of best moments. One
that comes to mind is when I'll just say, you know. Also,
when I was going through the most difficult times with
what Azerbaijan and Turkey were doing to Armenians and doing
advocacy work, the Unfold community and the poets that I
was in community with were the first people who started
to hear my early writing at that point. So that
(27:31):
was so when when the siege and Raza started, I
remember being very aware that the Poetry Unfold was going
to be, at least in short term, one of the
very few places where Palestinian voices would be allowed to
speak without being suppressed and shut down, because I had
experienced censorship through academia for two decades and I knew
(27:53):
how hard it was to talk about pass on Israel,
never mind the fact that when there's an active bombing
campaign in two thousand gosh, it was the two thousand
and eight when Israel bombed Gaza. Last time. I remember
being on a project called the Journey for Humanity and
being in a congressional meeting lobbying for attention on darfour
(28:14):
and mentioning the bombing of Gaza and being told I
couldn't talk about that in the context of genocide. So anyway,
I remember all of this from my own development academically,
and so when this began, I was very deliberate about
making sure Palastinian voices could would be heard and that
space would be we pride open. So we had a
Palestinian poet come in. I remember this very vividly. He
(28:37):
came in and I immediately recognized how he must have
felt because of how I had felt for the last
four years trying to talk about our Armenians. And he said, look,
I don't really usually do poetry, but I just wanted
to be able to do a poem, and he did
a rough Alarier's poem if if I must die, then
(29:01):
you must be a tale. Let me be a tale.
And that meant a lot to the entire room, But
for that poet, for that person, I realize that's what
the importance of this is. There needs to be spaces
where that can be spoken out loud. So that stands out.
Another thing that stands out for me is times when
(29:22):
poems touch on something like maybe domestic violence or growing
up in the inner City, and then all of a sudden,
you can see that the group sort of blossoms its
little affinity group, and there are multiple people in that
audience who are really feeling that poem and they can
speak about it now and now. Sometimes we'll do exercises
(29:43):
that come from healing Wounds of History, where they're designed
to basically so if this is something I didn't say
that I should. Sometimes these topics can be really charged
and hot, and if something comes up and you can
feel the energy of the room really become tense. There
are certain exercises that come from healing Wounds of History
that I would use to bring the conversation back safely
(30:04):
to shore, so that no one is isolated in their trauma.
In one particular instance, there was a conversation about domestic violence,
and you could see the connections of the empowerment of
people discussing this openly and for men in the room
who have never heard this discourse to be exposed to
it and to play a listening role, a support role.
That's what I think is the most powerful part of
(30:26):
this is that it really creates a space for perspectives
that are often not heard and metabolized to be heard,
and you build relationships and people start to basically it
fosters empathy. That's what I'm trying to say is we
get to a place where empathy is fostered. And I
think it's also very magical when poets here responses back
(30:47):
that they didn't realize. You know, like a poet here's
an audience member say this is what I heard, and
that poet suddenly realizes. There's one instance, I don't want
to name it right now, but one poet was soon
touched by the fact that their poet, their poem communicated
the messages that it did. And if they hadn't had
(31:08):
that kind of an unfold experience with these exercises, they
may have never heard tell them that these particular things
came out for me. Yes, and that's powerful too.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
No, it's it seems like you've really fostered a space
of a lot of a lot of people harnessing their power,
but also people not even realizing the power that they
that they actually had, the resilience, resistance, and like you said,
empathy being able to create that in a space. So
tell us, moving on a bit, tell us about your
poetry collection Survival Witness.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, before I do that. I just want to say
it's a work in progress. I don't want to make
it sound like it's this beautiful. It's it's we're working it,
we're figuring it out, we're fostering it, and it takes
an entire community to hold those kinds of containers. Over time,
the regulars become such beautiful models for empathetic listening and
models for discourse. So it's very much a very beautiful
(32:04):
work in progress. So sorry, you're asking about my current collection.
Is that what you said?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Tell us about your poetry collection, Survival Witness.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yeah, thanks, thanks for asking about that. Survival Witness is
my latest collection. This is my copy for performances, and
it is basically a collection of poetry that documents my
witness to what began in twenty twenty when Armenians were
being subject to genocidal attacks and ethnic cleansing, and then
(32:34):
how in twenty twenty three that led to another case
of genocidal ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. And so the book,
it's a collection of witness poetry and solidarity poetry. Subtitle
is Poems of Forced Displacement, Memory and Solidarity. And so
I think what the collection struggles with is what do
we do with these inherited legacies of genocide and displacement
(32:59):
and trauma does it lead to? And in this collection,
for me, it leads to positionality and it leads to solidarity.
I think anyone who's been subject to fascist rhetoric or
fascist ideology or genocide inherently in their bodies understands what
that kind of injustice is, and so it leads to
a sense of solidarity with people. So specifically, I'm talking
(33:22):
to the Palestinian struggle and the Armenian struggle in this volume,
but within it there's illusions and references to Black America
and to migration and immigration and sort of drawing from
how I grew up. So that's the way that I
would describe this collection. It's been evolving for about a year.
(33:42):
It's in its final iteration, and I'm really happy with
where it is. I've been performing this collection for about
two or three years, and it's been my way of
doing advocacy work. I've performed a sort of political in
political spaces. I've performed it in just poetry and art spaces.
So it's really a work that has been very much alive.
(34:03):
It's been evolving, it's been changing and putting it together
with you know, like a What I found is that
creating a collection and even deciding which poems go in
which order, the composition aspect of it is a whole
different example of brushstrokes for a poet. Right. I didn't
(34:24):
really I never realized just how much we are like
painters until I started to put together a collection, because
I realize that every choice is a brushstroke. This highlights this,
This lightens this, this darkens that. My friend John Tregona says,
you need to rest at poems sometimes, and so this
respite poem then gives you the space and so that
in that way, it's a different layer of composition work.
(34:46):
So I don't know. These are the things that I
feel called to say about Survival Witness. It's a poetry
collection I care very much about, and I really hope
to see it find a home. Individual poems have been
finding homes over the last year, and it's out now
with publishers, and I've just gotten my own copy this
(35:06):
year to start performing it.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Absolutely, congratulations on that. Tell us a bit, just kind
of briefly, that title is very very powerful. Survival Witness
kind of went into it. But tell us what was
the kind of finality moment of this should be what
my poetry collection is called that survival witness.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Those two words. Wow, thanks Amanda, I had it. Not
a lot of people know what the title is because
it's only recently this is the last iteration and now
it's become survival witness. And actually I was thinking this
week that I feel really, really super comfortable with that title.
There have been number of titles that I was working
with and this became the one. So to hear you
(35:47):
say that, just that, that's really sweet. Thank you. I
appreciate that. I'd like to know what it communicates to you.
Should should you do? Should you want to talk to
it first? Or should I?
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Sure? I mean when I hear the words serve witness,
I mean, it's it's almost like survival's guilt. And in
some ways that's what triggers my mind a little bit.
It's you know, you, you you're a witness to maybe
things that you didn't want to see, but you're the
only one left standing. So you've been left to survive,
but witness so much, so much horror, so much pain,
(36:20):
so much joy, But you're the last one standing and
you have to survive, but you have to see in
a lot.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Yeah, I really appreciate it. I'm so glad that you
thanks for your generosity and taking a taking a risk
and offering that that meant a lot to me. You're right,
that's that's very much a part of it. But also
survival witness is being witness to the acts of survival,
recognizing that there are resistors. For example, the collection highlights
that there have been resistors throughout all these horrible things,
(36:48):
that there are these pathways back to humanity. So survival
witness witnessing what is the stuff of survival? How do
we survive? And it's also declarative, like we are survivors.
We're not just victims of these crimes, we're survivors of
these crimes. And survival witness, again is my way of
trying to offer up an image, an idea, a concept
(37:12):
for what we do with intergenerational trauma, decontextualized trauma. So,
you know, trauma is so hot and open now, like
people talk about it, but what are we doing with it?
And I think that more than we need to be
showing up for our trans friends, for our black friends,
for our Palacinian friends, for Armenian friends, for Sudan, for Congo,
(37:33):
as many people, and we can't do it on our own,
Like this is something that I find myself saying often
it's overwhelming. We can't all name everything, but together we
can name a whole lot. And so survival witness is
about being somebody who identifies with a legacy of trauma
and who allows that legacy of trauma to inform their
(37:55):
positionality in the world today. And that's for me, a
really big part of it. So it's both saying we
will survive, it's also saying we have survived. There are
poems in there about being an Armenian a century after
the genocide took place and finding yourself in an inner
city Latino neighborhood being like, yo, the only reason I'm
(38:17):
here right now is because there was a genocide. Like
that's messed up and that's weird, but that informs what
I'm looking at right now. And there are poems about
saying to Palestinian siblings, we see you as our Armenians.
I see the writing on the wall. Armenians have been
subject to genocide denial for a century, So now as
(38:40):
an Armenian When I hear Netanyahu say that he's earmarked
one point eight million dollars to discussing the war in Gaza,
what that sounds like to me is he's just allocated
that much money to the deliberate revision of history and
denial that Palestinians are going to have to now endure
after the genocide, cultural genocide that comes after the physical genocide,
(39:03):
the renaming of things, the renaming. Our Turks have renamed
plants from their Latin roots. They've taken the pronoun so
the prefix are men out of plants and animals. They've
tried to change and erase Armenias out of scientific journals.
So this is the extent the madness to which perpetrators
of genocide will will go. And as in Armenian, we
(39:26):
see that. So there's a line in one of my
poems called mud More Merciful, just got published. And by
the way, and the line is I think it is
it's for the children who will one day be told
Zachtar is Israeli the way that we've been told Lavash
is Turkish. And so in that way, survival witness is
saying like, look, this is what's in my bones. And
(39:48):
in my genetics and my epigenetics. And this allows me
to speak very clearly to denial visionism when I see
it today, and it tells me where I need to stand,
who I need to stand with. So I hope that
that answers no degree.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous, Tell me what? Because I think it's
such a pertinent point in a person's life when, like
you said, you know you because of your experience, you
now can just you're so firm, You're so confident in
what you have to say, your words, your prepositions, your verbs,
your vowels, everything is aligned because everything almost has led
(40:28):
up to this moment for you to stand tall in
what you believe in. What is it like? I mean,
do you feel like you're at that point in your life,
not only as a poet, but just as a person,
to where you're very rooted in your beliefs to just hey,
this is now my life's path, this is where I
stand and I'm not falling. Do you feel like you're
at that point in your life?
Speaker 3 (40:51):
I think I'm getting there. That observation touches me deeply, Amanda.
You're I like your questions. That's something that I think
about a lot. I think every poet probably thinks about right,
like when do you remember when a switch went off
and you were like, I deserve to have a voice.
I deserve to be here, like my voice belongs. That's
such an important thing. I think there's so much childhood
(41:13):
trauma that we've all experienced that tells us to you know, hey,
know your place, and you know maybe and sometimes that's
good advice. Know your place is good, know your audience.
But then you get to a point where like, now
it's time to step up and have a straight spine,
and can we do that? I think I'm getting there.
I can see the evolution in myself. I think years
(41:37):
ago I was comfortable when I was in university. I
was comfortable with having an intellectual voice and academic voice.
And then after that came comfort with having a poet's voice,
and then came and I think the poet's voice always
came from wanting to heal something. So the first collection
of poetry that I wrote so cliche, an entire collection
(41:59):
of poets about being heartbroken, you know, gosh, first poet
ever who's done that, you know, But it was the
working out of like how do we put ourselves back
together again. And then that's where I found my poet voice,
because I realized that the poet voice helps me heal.
When the poem makes sense, I feel better. It's a
(42:20):
way of being in the mirror working on it. When
the ethnic cleansing campaigns against Armenians began, I had a
whole lot more pain to work through, and again I
found the poet's voice. And then I started to realize
that I could also be an organizer in this way,
not just politically, but I could also bring people together
(42:41):
and foster spaces and empower and so then that's voice awakened.
I think what I'm stepping into now is the author,
the would be author, and the performer. I think now
I'm going from the poet voice to the performer voice,
which is the one that will show up and thank
you for offering me the mic. I'm here to support
(43:01):
this because I believe in it. Let me show you
what I what I do, what I've been working on,
what I believe in, and that is a whole new
thing that I've been working on getting to. Really super
lucky to be surrounded by poets in our community who
have been doing that. Incredible poets of heritage who have
been who have been doing that work, and their models
(43:22):
and inspirations to me, and I think that's where I'm
at now. I've always been a natural performer, so coming
back as a performer is the new. The new. It
feels good. It's also a little bit scary, but it
feels good.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Absolutely absolutely, Well, thank you so much. I mean, you've
just dropped so many gems for our audience, for us
all to think about tonight. So one last question we
ask every poet on the poet Speaks podcast, why do
you need to get your words out?
Speaker 3 (43:51):
I said a lot of things in this interview. Thanks
for giving the space to be able to say some
of these things and receiving it. I said a lot
of things that point to like evil in the world,
and it's different forms. Like we know what white supremacy
has been in the United States, we know what Zionism
is doing Palestinians, and I've just talked a little bit
about what Panturkism has done to Armenians. I think I'm
(44:12):
getting to a point now where I see the world
and I see like over here there's fascism and there's
like fascist adjacent people. They are the fascists and the
fascist adjacent. Here there are the justice minded and the
justice minded adjacent. But one thing that I've been kind
of struggling with is that adjacency is not active agency.
It's kind of waiting to figure out what to do.
(44:32):
And adjacency often empowers fascism. And so by doing this
work and by being heard, what I'm hoping to do
is that we, together as activists, as poets, as people
of conscience, start to awaken more of the adjacency and
turn it into agency. King said that the moral arc
of the universe is long, but that it bends toward justice.
(44:55):
I think that if you want to find a practical
example of why that's true. A century ago, when there
was a genocide of Armenians and one point five million
people were killed, there was no international law. The word
genocide hadn't been invented yet, and the Armenian genocide was
the very first time that crimes against humanity was named,
and there were these military tribunals and we had Nuremberg
(45:15):
trials during the Holocaust. Now we have the ic J
International Criminal Court, and perpetrators of genocide have warrants out
for their arrest. The moral arc of the universe is long,
sometimes too long and too slow, but by doing this work,
we're helping to bend that arc. And I think that's
what this is about. And it's also about representation, making
(45:37):
sure that. Just the other two days ago, I gave
a reading for the People Stand with Raza and there
was a Greek in the room who's a solidarity activist,
and he came up and he was like, I'm not
even Armenian, but it meant so much to hear you
there because I'm Greek and our genocide is never mentioned.
And those are the moments when you realize as a
(45:59):
poet that you're just if you just do your best
to be truthful, that is so valuable to people and
to others. And I think that's the work. I think
the work is just to be as truthful as possible
and to work as as hard as possible. But again,
it's about bending the arc toward justice.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Morality, absolutely absolutely, all right, Well, tell us a bit
about our final final question. Tell us a bit about
what the rest of twenty twenty five is looking like
for you. Any events folks can look into and tell
us where we can check you out in terms of
your social social media website, all that good stuff.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
Thank you for that opportunity. On Instagram, E Magian, it's
just my name YETVAT is Edward in our Armenian so
E M A J I A N is my personal
and then in bio there you'll find my organizing work
is under Armenian non Violence. You'll find that my poetry
organizing work is under the Poetry Unfold. The Poetry Unfold.
(47:00):
That's where you can find me. What am I looking
for in twenty twenty five. I'm looking for a publisher,
So if you're looking for this kind of material, I'm
looking for a final home for the collection. I'm very
hopeful that I will find one. And also in the meantime,
I'm looking to connect more and more with justice oriented people,
(47:23):
fostering solidarity, talking about what it's meant to be in
Armenian for the last five years, and finding ways that
relevant in the broader conversation against what's happening with ice
in this country, what's happening in terms of just there's
so many brutal things taking place, and so I really
want to step further into being a performer, to perform
(47:44):
more often. That's why I've printed the manuscript so that
I can always perform from it and to basically step
into that more so, anybody who ever wants to put
together a show to showcase something justice oriented. That's what
I'm here for. That's what I'm trying to do twenty
twenty five. And it's and things like this, a man
like meeting you and working with you and getting to
(48:05):
know you and fostering friendships that are aligned for something deeper.
That's what it's about.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Absolutely all right, yet Bart, thank you so much for
being a guest on the pot Speaks podcast. Everyone. All
of yet Bart's information will be down in the details
box below, no matter where you listen to this podcast,
be able to check out all his links and all
that good stuff. All right, mister yet Bart, thank you
so much for being a guest today on the Poet
Speaks podcast.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Absolutely all right, everyone, check out all his amazing stuff
again check the details box down below, no matter where
you listen to the podcast, everyone, this is the Poet
Speaks See soon go
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