Burning Poet(s)

Burning Poet(s) is a joint initiative of 3 sister PEN Centers – PEN Armenia, PEN Georgia and PEN America, co-financed by HRHF (Human Rights House Foundation). The project brought together 12 poets from Armenia and 8 poets from Georgia for trilingual stage readings and filming.

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A BUSY POET
by Paata Shamugia
read by Karen Antashyan

No visa is required from my language,
I obtain business contracts from verbs and nouns,
I use intermissions for interjections,
I’m a busy poet.
I lead diplomatic negotiations with binary oppositions,
I stand after a prefix – like a gentleman,
but I turn a blind eye to the past—impudent!
I check my base – I have to stand strong,
I’m a busy poet.
I practice all forms of interrelations – I’m in shape.
I rebuild the crumbed infrastructure of my body – I run.
For leisure I invest my hormones in the first girl I meet – oops!
Nothing personal, just poetry,
I’m a busy poet.
I set everyone free
from a life in the prison of ready-made answers.
It’s time to be sentenced to peace!
It’s time to be sentenced to love!
We deserve even worse!
Zero tolerance for petty obsessions!
I’m a busy poet.
I try to eliminate the separatism –
the separation of language (AKA the State)
and human beings (AKA human beings).
The one who speaks is always lying.
The one who writes is always
exposed by the lies he writes.
My lies are ordinary,
my poems extraordinary.
I’m a busy poet. 

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EULOGY FOR PRIVATE MARTIROSYAN
by Karen Antashyan
read by Paata Shamugia

Private Martirosyan, Mrdo, brother,
Today after work, dinner with the family,
Putting my boys to sleep, watching my TV show,
I magnanimously tried to find time
To open a new Word doc, choose my favorite font
And write, on the occasion of your death,
This absurd eulogy with postmodernist ambitions.
Private Martirosyan, Mrdo, brother,
I wrote your name once and can easily copy/paste it now
Repeating it once every five lines, once every holiday calendar, every military parade,
Once in every obituary for our other brothers, once every… to keep things brief
Let me just say that there are now many hashtags and phrases to properly mourn you –
motherland, soldier, sacrifice, hero, glorious, I prostrate myself,
They died so that we, they are gone so that we, their names must be
Let me say at once that there is a special procedure to mourn you
Overseen by an ad hoc committee, once formed and never disbanded.
Its director maintains a ceremonial silence at the right moment and even sheds tears.
Private Martirosyan, Mrdo, brother,
There are epic precedents to justify your death
Your hazy ancestors slammed their hands against these rocks
And there’s a scabrous, conspiratorial pleasure in licking the poison off these journalists’ tongues
And wimpy snobs like us read this cynical newsfeed
And feel the need to keep scrolling down, deleting and forgetting you.
Private Martirosyan, Mrdo, brother,

You may be unaware, but your minor death has created potential for action in this wide world, from the district registrar’s office to UN headquarters in New York; someone says that the heavenly kingdom can’t not exist, or else where would our noble brother go, someone says I cannot rest until I have drunk the blood of that son-of-a-bitch Turk, someone says choose me and I will significantly reduce the number of deaths among new conscripts, someone says to take this money is to sully the walls of your city with art projects encouraging peace and tolerance, someone says this is the victory of Armenian genes, we have survived for millennia thanks to such sacrifices, and then someone does not speak but understands that hey, you shouldn’t be getting too rowdy in this part of the Empire or your boys will… so we don’t get too rowdy.

Private Martirosyan, Mrdo, brother,

Sorry, but before we go to sleep my wife and I always check our doors, which open to an Ararat view, and our windows, which look out onto Mount Ararat, and imagine that at least our boys will grow up to live in a quiet, seaside city, out of reach of the bullet that got you, even though it keeps flying and keeps piercing, through space and time, regiments of martyrs that depart.

Private Martirosyan, Mrdo, brother,

On the occasion of your death, the most sincere thing is sorrow for those virgin girls who will be left without flowers and your love, and who will not be able to experience, even in their dreams, the honey of your loins, and will not fall, pierced by your glorious spear, the tint of the peach tree flower will wilt on their lips bearing your name, they want life, they want children, they want a house and a mortgage, they want a trip to Paris, they want to grow sick and tired of you, they want to suffer because of you, they want to tire of your uselessness, but… they don’t want to bury you, brother.

Private Martirosyan, Mrdo,

The worst thing is your mother’s broken heart, and how there will no longer be any wine drunk in the ruins of her gaze, no matter how many posthumous medals are sent to your home, no matter how much fundraising is done in your name, no matter how many drab classrooms are named in your honor, no matter how many campaigns she is dragged to and no matter how many concerts are given at the opera, forcing her to continue being deprived of her son, to be in mourning, to be in black, to be a hero…

And we will keep scrolling and forget, but the cold of your forehead will keep burning her lips with a terrifying suspicion of emptiness on the other side, a terrifying suspicion that you have been left alone for eternity.

Translated by Nazareth Seferian with Elina Alter

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THE ACCUSED
by Diana Anphimiadi
read by Tatev Chakhian

This man’s accused of dying.
He died in a dishevelled bed,
his head lolling to one side and, oh my God,
he died with his mouth hanging open. Shame on him.
He didn’t get round to tidying his room,
and left the dishes dirty.
Imagine, even his ashtrays are overflowing with dog ends.
Oh, and those shelves are thick with dust.
He forgot to erase the photos on his phone,
and, this is awkward to mention,
some of those messages.
How could he just die like that, naked?
How utterly disrespectful.
Shame on him.
He didn’t make amends to his girlfriend,
nor pay his debts,
or sort out his credit or loans.
He still owes his neighbour for repairing the lift
and the lock on the door to the block.
He could at least have got his washing done,
and when it was dry, taken it in off the line.
He failed to climb the ladder in his profession,
he didn’t attract investment in a start-up,
never became a blogger or an influencer.
How could bring himself to die like this?
What will people think?
Why isn’t he ashamed?
He could at least have had a shave
and run a comb through his hair before he died,
beaten and in pain,
alone at night.
 

Translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Victoria Field

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MIGRANT POINT
by Tatev Chakhian
read by Diana Anphimiadi

Europe –
To understand each other better
I’ve learnt a couple of your languages,
but you haven’t even tried to pronounce my surname correctly.
On our first date
I guffawed – as my people used to do,
then howled of pain – as I used to,
but you warned
that here after 10 PM any sound is considered to be a noise.

Europe –
You’ve surprised me as I did myself
by becoming much paler and blonder than you,
by feeling in my waters screaming at your protests
against those not chosen by me.
In the nights of your blue-eyed, blue-blooded, red-passport men
I’ve seen your dream,
but your mornings have never belonged to me, Europe.
You’ve made love with me, but never asked for my hand.

Europe –
You’ve expected the tales of thousand and one nights,
but I couldn’t recall any from my childhood darkness
full of shelling and screams of war...
All the children inside me have grown up…
All the soldiers inside me are tired…
All the wanderers inside are wholly lost…
I’ve come to sit on your laps and to be nothinglike,
to calm down for a while…

Europe –
My heart is heavier than this 56 kilos you see,
but if you don’t care of my heart,
then also connive my body.

Translated into English by the author

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MY BEAUTIFUL LIFE
by Eka Kevanishvili
read by Arpi Voskanyan

And finally, where can I find my beautiful life? 
 So much I have craved for, haven’t I? I allegedly remember
Fencing a place for it – here you must be, my beautiful life.
Kinda have I carved so many logs, kinda have I painted so many palings. 
How many times have I made a fire and how many times have I laid that
Red, checked cloth, so heartily.
Jewels for holiday parties in films with happy endings.
Think I did everything needed:
Here I got high education,
Here I got a good job,
Here is my child,
Here is my husband, it happened – not the only one I’ve had, though,
Here is my big love which, admittedly,
Smashed down in pieces, but it did exist, indeed it did.  
Why did I lose this beautiful life like I lost that famous man
Who once thought I was a good writer and sacredly asked
Me for an interview, praised me as well.
Like the woman whispering – how she wished to become a writer like me
And made me feel like I sat on thorns.
God saved me – I didn’t believe it.
Well, where are you, my beautiful life? Don’t hide away from me.

What haven’t I done enough, what have I missed to do for you?
Maybe you’re hiding from me as I never cared for any dog or cat?
Or maybe I should’ve turned thinner? Or maybe I should’ve studied something else
At this old age?
Or maybe begging for other’s words and mincing them in a meat-chopper for others
And putting them into their mouths like soft tiny bits
Was a mistake from the very beginning?

Maybe, on the contrary, I have turned into awful weather forecast?
Announcing disasters?
But I definitely craved for a beautiful life.
Implicitly, I must have had much money in that life. I must have.
I must have never shopped in outlets.

My sweetheart must have dragged those idiotic heart-shaped balloons
On my birthday.
Must have set off fireworks at 12.
Yes, yes, this is how I imagine a beautiful life.
You might not, might you? Is all this very cheap happiness for you?
As for me – much more than enough.
And what is it like now, the life I live or the life that lives me?
Maybe, we have to confess that when something does not fit
You should either change it or fit it in the way
Not to strangle your spirit at least.
Obviously, the life I have been wearing and never taken off – is not beautiful at all.
I just often wash it thoroughly,
And that’s why it’s such dazzling white.
From afar.

Translated by Inga Zhghenti

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THE WRITER’S DEATH
by Arpi Voskanyan
read by Eka Kevanishvili

My last great love is ‘someone who writes’
And when forming an opinion of the writer
To avoid mistakes
I refer to the views of others.
Like all his colleagues
He likes great writers,
Because when praising them
One is less likely to be wrong.
In order to deserve his praise
A writer must first be dead,
Because when it comes to the dead one is supposed to say
Something good, or nothing at all,
And a speech full of praise can also
Be considered a eulogy, proposed as a toast.
Dead writers are also convenient in that
They won’t sprout up from beneath the earth
And won’t force themselves on the delicate strings of your soul
With their dusty and decrepit bodies
Weighing heavily down on you,
Demanding that you prove your words with actions,
And buy them a double shot,
Or lend them 500 drams.
Like his colleagues, my love
Hates writers in the very depths of his soul,
And the long-dead greats, to him,
Are simply a way to display
The mediocrity of the living.
He writes articles,
Critiques, monographs,
Condemning to posthumous glory
The great deceased and
Protecting their writing with his chest,
Which nobody can strike,
For lack of bravery or desire.
As for women,
Nobody of that sex has managed yet
To appear in his field of vision.
All the great ones are men,
Greatness is not suited for women, in general,
And death does not adorn them.
But I have dropped everything, all day and all night,
I fry poems for him,
Though I know he won’t notice me that way,
While I am a woman and with no Nobel Prize.
The path to his love
Goes through the Pantheon.

Translated into English by Nazareth Seferian with Elina Alter

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To find out more about the Burning Poet(s) click here.