Karen Antashyan
- Armenia -
Karen Antashyan (b. 1983) is a Yerevan-based Armenian poet and essayist. In 2005, he launched Granish.org, a literary project that grew into a vibrant community and one of the most comprehensive online platforms for contemporary Armenian literature. He is also the founder of Ayleren.com, an online dictionary of Armenian slips of the tongue, known for its ironic pseudoscientific commentary.
Antashyan regularly contributes essays to Yerevan Magazine, offering reflections on significant social and cultural issues. From 2011 to 2015, he served as editor-in-chief of Granish Literary Magazine. Since 2013, he has chaired the Board of Trustees of Boon TV, Armenia's first scientific and educational television channel. In 2018, he was elected to the Yerevan City Council. A member of the Armenian branch of PEN International since 2021, Antashyan won first prize in poetry at the Yerevan Book Festival in 2022.
Antashyan has authored five poetry books: After the End, Before the Beginning (2004), Antashat (2009), Tsili-Tsov: A Book of Spells (2014), Dzon (2021), and WTF։ meme-poems (2024).
I started presenting myself as a poet in public long before I began to doubt whether what I was writing was poetry at all. This happened at a gathering of young writers at the Writers’ Union guesthouse in Tsaghkadzor, on a splendid spring day. We were all eager to read our wise and sorrowful poems about the tragic and hypersensitive aspects of life and the lonely path of the suffering poet, so we could then head down to the hotel restaurant to gossip, drink beer, and dance. That day, I realized we weren’t reading poetry but something we had collectively agreed to call poetry.
There is a good expression in Armenian, "finding a language," which simply means "to understand." Since that doubt-filled day, my primary creative challenge has been to find the language of my time. A language that reflects the reality of the place where I live and present myself as a poet. A language that neither seeks to flatter nor resist any particular group. A language that tells the whole story without trying to select only pleasing words and proper dialects. A language that does not aspire to be definitively serious or merely entertainingly frivolous. A language that attempts to sell you nothing except the joy of locating your own existence through its presence.
It took many failed attempts to realize that, as a text-producing subject, I should not serve the entangled dance of truth and falsehood, good and evil, joy and sadness, love and hatred, darkness and light. Instead, I must address the primary challenges of my time: boredom and uncertainty. What could someone who is bored of everything, including their own existence, call authentic poetry? How can one become a compassionate hand guiding an individual towards themselves in the uncertain, as-yet-unnamed times ahead without promising anything? This, I believe, is what literature has always been and must continue to be.
Poetry
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Eulogy for Private Martyrosyan / Ներբողական. շարքային Մարտիրոսյանին
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The Miraculous Effect of a Peach on the Human Body / Դեղձի հրաշագործ ազդեցությունն օրգանիզմի վրա
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Adventures / Արկածներ
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DIY / DIY
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The Big Event / Իրադարձություն
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Halfway There / Կեսճամփիս
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Dying is terribly boring / Մեռնելն ահավոր ձանձրալի է
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Dilemma / Երկմտանք
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Other Self / Ուրիշս
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Closed / Փակ է
