Rescheduled: Book launch and reading

 

Book Release and Poetry Reading with book signing and reception in-person 

for History of Forgetfulness by Shahé Mankerian

(Fly on the Wall Press, 2021)

Thursday, March 10th, 2022 at 7:00pm ET

Guild Hall | Armenian Diocese

630 2nd Ave, New York, NY

PLEASE NOTE: All attendees must provide proof of COVID vaccination

Readings by the author and NY area writers and scholars:

Nancy Agabian, Christopher Atamian,

Alina Gregorian, Alan Semerdjian,

Alina Gharabegian & Lola Koundakjian

Shahé Mankerian releases his critically-acclaimed debut collection, taking readers back to 1975 Beirut, where an un-civil war is brewing. 

Mankerian asks, “Who said war didn’t love / the children?” setting the tone for a darkly humorous collection in which memories of love, religion and childhood are entangled amongst street snipers and the confusion of misguided bombings.

For more information contact Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center

Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern)

630 2nd Avenue | New York, NY 10016-4885

zohrabcenter@armeniandiocese.org

www.zohrabcenter.org

World Poetry Day 2022 Triangulation Project to include Armenian poets and musicians

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Mar 5
UK: Ian Griffiths Ivor Murrell Alex Davis; musician TBA
COLOMBIA/SA: Carolina Zamudio Tallulah Flores Prieto Manuel Iris ; musician Medina
NYC: Joe Roarty Robert Gibbons Dorothy Cantwell ; musician Thomas Vincent Santoriello
comperes Ian Griffiths , Maria María Del Castillo Sucerquia
fb livestream by Walt Whitman Birthplace

Mar 6
BULGARIA; Anton Baev Elka Dimitrova ; Ivan Hristo (poet / musician)
GEORGIA: Shota Iatashvili Paata Shamugia; musician Erekle Deisadze
NYC Billy Cancel Patricia Carragon Chatham Grey; musician Ptr Kozlowski
comperes Anton Baev , Shota Iatashvili
fb livestream by Great Weather for Media

Mar 12
LOWER RIO GRANDE VALLEY: Octavio Quintanilla Edward Vidaurreire’ne lara silva; musician Ray Perez
KOREA: Hack Hee Kang Park Dukkyu Hanyong Jeong , musician Young Ok Hwang
NYC: Mike Jurkovic Kofi Kofi Fosu Forson Marc Ellot Marc Eliot Stein ; musician Alan Semerdjian
comperes Octavio Quintanilla , Tanya Ko Hong
fb livestream by Calling All Poets

Mar 13
PIACENZA: Antje Stehn Viviana Fiorentino Mauro Ferrari; musician Betty Gilmore and Il principio attivo (plus Sabrina De Canio , Piccolo Museo della Poesia Chiesa di San Cristoforo, Piacenza)
ARMENIA: Lola Koundakjian Nora Nadjarian Arthur Kayzakian; musician Aram Bajakian
NYC: Don Krieger Karen Neuberg Francine Witte ; musician Tom Gould ( Bossa Nova Beatniks)
comperes: Antje Stehn , Lola Koundakjian
fb livestream by Cultivating Voices Live Poetry

Mar 19
ROME: Lucilla Trapazzo Mara Venuto Alessandra Corbetta; musician Ermanno Dodaro
BUCHAREST: Mircea Dan Duta Shurouk Hammoud (SY) Masud Uzaman (BD); musician TBD
NYC: Matthew Hupert Anthony Policano Ngoma Hill ; musician Rick Eckerle
comperes Lucilla Trapazzo , Mircea Dan Duta
fb livestream by NeuroNautic Institute

Mar 20
BOLTON: Melanie Neads Emily Cook Dr Ben Wilkinson; musician Nat Clare
CHENNAI: Srilata Krishnan Poornima Laxmeshwar Hema Praveen; musician The Coconut Milk Project
NYC: Zev Torres Howie Faerstein Cindy Hochman; musician Didi Champagne
comperes Dave Morgan , Sriram Gokul (Sriramgokul Chinnasamy)
fb livestream by Live from Worktown

Shahé Mankerian’s debut poetry collection History of Forgetfulness book launch [postponed]

DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND OUR CONTROL, the event is postponed. WE WILL KEEP YOU POSTED.

Please join us for the Book Release & Poetry Reading of Shahé Mankerian’s debut poetry collection History of Forgetfulness with readings by NY area writers/intellectuals Nancy Agabian, Christopher Atamian, Alina Gregorian, Alan Semerdjian, Alina Gharabegian, & Lola Koundakjian

The Zohrab Center was established through the generous gift of Mrs. Dolores Zohrab Liebmann in memory of her parents, and dedicated on November 8, 1987 in the presence of His Holiness Vasken I (†1994), Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians;  and His Eminence Archbishop Torkom Manoogian (†2012), Primate of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America. Liebmann’s father, Krikor Zohrab 1861-1915), was a renowned author, jurist, humanitarian and community activist in Constantinople, who was among the first Armenian intellectuals killed in the 1915 Genocide.

December 2, 2021  7:00pm ET 

at Zohrab Center

630 Second Avenue

New York, NY 10016-4885

World Premier collaboration of poetry, music and art

On Sunday, June 27, 2021, the Armenian Institute will present a world premier of a new multimedia collaboration with Aram Bajakian (guitar), Kevork Mourad (visual), and Alan Semerdjian (poetry). Discussion follows.

An Armenian Triptych: Retracing Our Steps

7:00 pm 8:30 pm (GMT+1)

2:00 PM EST

11:00 AM PST

For more information, click the AI's calendar of events

https://www.armenianinstitute.org.uk/events/an-armenian-triptych-retracing-our-steps

Alan Semerdjian: An Image Writes the Poem

SOMETIMES it’s an image that writes the poem. I see the photo of a hole in the bombed ceiling of the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi, a puncturing wound in the psyche, and immediately become a bird who flies in and out of that hole studying the way the light still, miraculously, shines through. Sometimes it’s a patch of audio from half a world away — the family gets outside the bunker for fifteen minutes a day, they say. Sometimes it’s the idea of a ghastly thing—glowing like a toy found in the woods—in a child’s hand. The new eruption of war and violence and death and destruction in Artsakh has shaken those of us who are far because of its ripples, but this shaking can only be a feint version of the shock felt by those who are living in the heart of it, those who are inextricably part of it. The poem is born in this witnessing and is an attempt at understanding what is, unfathomably again, inexplicable

I read this poem as part of Don’t Look Away: A Literary Series for Artsakh, hosted by the newly-founded International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) to raise awareness and funds for those under attack in Nagorno Karabakh, the black garden. You can view the first reading here, hosted by Olivia Katrandjian and featuring Peter Balakian, Carolyn Forché, Nancy Kricorian, Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte, and Lory Bedikian, and the second here, hosted by Arthur Kayzakian and featuring Lola Koundakjian, Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, Armen Davoudian, Nairi Hakhverdi, Alene Terzian-Zeitounian and myself. Learn more about the conflict and how to support those affected on IALA’s website.




____________________


The Hole in the Church of My Heart

There is a hole in the church of my heart,
a fire in the palm of the young boy’s mind.

There is loss at the monument of topple
unannounced at midday unsteadiness.

There are fifteen minutes to see the birds
when my breath and its rooms escape me.

There are myths of intention circling skies
like vultures and parades of new madrigal

incantations, the letters of former words
scattering away from clusters of pages,

munitions. There is a swallowing of whole
tongues, a burying of more than just heads.

In the afternoon, these voices seek shade
to complete their inconceivable sentences.

In the evening, there is a snake in the black
garden. The children begin to chase its tail

again because there is no other play. I see
the moon through the whole of the night,

and I know, at least, that in thickening
smoke and holy gaze, I am not alone.

This poem appeared in Poetry International 

Don't Look Away: A Literary Series for Artsakh continues Saturday October 17, 2020

Please join the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) on Saturday, October 17th at 3:00 PM Eastern for the next installment of Don't Look Away, a literary series raising awareness and funds for #Artsakh, featuring Arthur Kayzakian, Lola Koundakjian, Mashinka F. Hakopian, Armen Davoudian, Nairi Hakhverdi, Alene Terzian and Alan Semerdjian.

Click here to register: http://bit.ly/ArtsakhSeries2

ALAN SEMERDJIAN: THE POLITICS

So many voices in the room
all missing each other

like a laser beam circus
or the part in the movie

where the thief needs
to infiltrate the stash’s safe

or get the remaining pearls
but the zig zag of red

lines is in the way (he mustn’t
touch the line in his routine

or else all hell will break
loose in the form of sirens

and bells, cutaways and fades
to possibly a sprinkler

system about to go off as well);
we are those obliqued lines

in hot pursuit of anything
but each other, too electric

to touch or embrace for long
or extend the figure of a

shoulder out for a head to lay
on, to cry on, and/or while

the thief steps over us—too
easily, now that we think about

it—and gets to what he must,
inevitably, get to, which is,

of course, whatever is behind
that goddamn unforsaken door.


From As It Ought to Be online magazine


About the Author: Award-winning writer, musician, and educator Alan Semerdjian’s writing has appeared in several notable print and online publications and anthologies over the years including Adbusters, The Brooklyn Rail, and Diagram. He released a chapbook of poems called An Improvised Device (Lock n Load Press) in 2005 and his first full-length book In the Architecture of Bone (GenPop Books) in 2009, which Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Balakian called “well worth your reading.” His most recent work, The Serpent and the Crane, which is a collaboration of poetry and music focused on The Armenian Genocide with guitarist/composer Aram Bajakian, was released this past April.

Alan Semerdjian's contribution to our Call for Poems on the topic of epidemics, illness, medicine, death and healing

Alan Semerdjian of New Hyde Park, NY, USA, has shared this original poem.


THE DELUGE OF HUSHED URGES

In this deluge of hushed urges, this 

leveling corridor beyond the frantic 

carnival house,

I’m starting to understand how the 

secret to poetry is not in the reading 

of it

but, rather, in the readying for it. 

Because the charge is always there, 

we need

to keep the words on hand and 

attached to us for that just moment 

of opening,

so that we may be swallowed into it 

like the rabbit does into 

snake

or the krill into whale. Let ourselves 

give in more often and we might 

feel as if

in flight, a kite-less tail, the wing of a 

plane disappearing into cloud, see all 

this

language suddenly vanish and 

the page it’s on following swiftly. 

And if that

moment of opening is 

elongated like the vibration of a 

single singing

bowl alone and free in the once 

busy city center now 

abandoned streets,

the fall into itself is the poem, and the 

only memory of what we were starts 

to fade

into immeasurable alphabets of 

invisible ink.




APP thanks Alan for his latest contribution

Alan Semerdjian: Children of Genocide (poem with music and video)

https://vimeo.com/407827624


GRANDCHILDREN OF GENOCIDE
Alan Semerdjian, In the Architecture of Bone, Genpop Books, 2009


The audio track, "Grandchildren of Genocide", is the first from a poetry and music collaboration between Vancouver-based guitarist Aram Bajakian and New York City writer/musician/educator Alan Semerdjian.

We think of bombfields and big when we think of genocide. We think of mass cleansing. We think in holes. We think the whole page. We think what’s under it, what they’ve been covering up. We think there might have been people
in those whole pages.
We think of chambers when we think of genocide. We think
of people crying. We think of people climbing. We think of people climbing and crying, crying and climbing. We think of both people climbing and people crying. We think in chambers.
We think in those horrible chambers when we think of genocide. Those horrible 20th-century chambers.
When we think of genocide, we don’t think of mountains and deserts. We don’t think of bazaars. When we do think of them,
we don’t think of young democratic people and pomegranates.
We don’t think of young democratic people with pomegranates
at bazaars when we think of genocide. We don’t think of them next to our grandfathers. We don’t think next to them.
Then there are young democratic people who don’t eat pomegranates and don’t think of genocide. We don’t think of them either.
We don’t think of them when we think of genocide, but we do think of moustaches. We don’t think of long and lovely moustaches,
but we think of moustaches when we think of genocide.
When we think of genocide, we think of families. We think
of faces of families, but we don’t think of birth. When we think
of birth, we don’t think about babies. But we do think of mothers.
When we think about genocide, we do think about mothers.
But we do think of mothers, but we don’t think of women.
We don’t think of women dancing.
We don’t hear the music when we think of genocide.
These things we think about and do not hear when we think about genocide.
And we don’t think of civil war as genocide. We hear about it. We don’t call in enough with such information.
We think about reconciliation, but we don’t
think about reconciliation when we think about genocide.
We don’t study the memorials, we don’t explain the play in papers, we don’t shake hands and make up. When we think of genocide, we do other things with our hands.

For the full album, please visit

amerge.bandcamp.com

Alan Semerdjian: ADVENTURELAND

Fifteen and flipping
burgers and selling
dreams, in one ear
and out the other
door to the big park
of the mind, the kid
stares at infinity,
loses his virginity,
swoons recklessly
at the elevation.
And when the older
machines creak and
groan when bending
this way or that, it's
all about the rides
they've seen, neon-
dipped romantic rides,
lonely ones, serious
ones, ones that leap
the heart to places
like the future where
adventure never fades
and the past, which
is, sometimes, empty
seats in winter, so
much potential still.

This poem appeared in the Fall/Winter 2014 issue of the Long Island Quarterly and its poetry section --  Walt's Corner -- named after Walt Whitman.  As per its founder and editor, George Wallace, "The Long-Islander is the oldest continuously-published community newspaper on Long Island, and Walt's Corner has been home to over 1500 poems written by the famous and the unknown in America and abroad".

Alan Semerdjian and Aram Bajakian collaborate with PRIMER

Armenia, you are more than a piece of ass parade on the newsfeed.

Armenia, you are the split decision.  Armenia, the schism.

The first tribe to be converted.  Armenia is a country of a metaphor

tucked into the folds of breath and veil.  In between forever

bordered and borderlust, in love with a mountain felt

in the pit of the groin.  This aching, this naming,

this never having, thick with Eurovision’s beard, sick with genocide, 

sucking the holy thumb and the Russian cloak spit on with angels, 

miles with lambs, cathedrals, monasteries, characters in suits 

working on tracks with impeccable shoes, pride cascading down 

the runways, more than all of this, a lake cupping the delicious seeds

of history, which may or may not ever break the internet.

I want to write a poem for you, young Armenians from here to there.

I want my poetry to ring loud and clear like a song from a mountain

for all the girls and boys who eat dolma, for the marginalized

who eat dolma, for the wealthy, for all of us ate dolma once in our lives.

I want to make something that makes sense for you and all of them,

and because some poetry just doesn’t make sense with all its matter

of fact witty humor and subtle stabs and no big heart and big laugh,

I want to make a poem that slides off of William Saroyan’s mustache

and lands in a plate of fasulya.  I want to write a poem that shines a flash-

light on the dark rooms of my grandfather’s house of art and your grandfather’s 

and your great grandmother’s and her sister’s and their brothers’.

I want to make sure that my words don’t alienate but reverberate, make sure 

that everyone in Kentucky even, near the beautiful Ohio River, in the Galt House

overlooking the pedestrians, the walkways and highways and in every way

can relate in the heart and in the head.  If Tom Sawyer were Armenian,

he’d throw pomegranate seeds at the girl or boy he loved and use the tongue

to make sure each and every last one is tasted and swallowed.  If Emily Dickinson

were Armenian, well, she already is – pause and hesitation equal longing,

and longing is what we know, young Armenian beauties, what we use

to mark the time, the great and indifferent calendar of the internal universe,

which is, after all, the only real universe for us or for anyone with a heart.

And if Neruda were, and if Anansi, and if Obama, and if Mother Teresa.

I want to make something, anything, that fills even a part of your void, 

young Armenians from here to there, even if you think you’ve filled it up

with prayer, culture, or lahmajoun, friends, miles, or Facebook, modernity or 

solemnity, genuflection, navigation, or irrigation for the new gardens

of the world.  The void, which is everyone’s void, every nation, every person

forgiving and forgiven.  I want to write a poem.  And give it to you.  Now.

The audio clip of this poem is available at http://www.lolakoundakjian.com/RSS/Primer.mp3

Writer, musician, and educator Alan Semerdjian’s poems and essays have appeared in over a hundred print and online publications and anthologies including Adbusters, Diagram, Ararat, and Brooklyn Rail.  He released a chapbook of poems called An Improvised Device (Lock n Load Press) in 2005 and his first full-length book In the Architecture of Bone (GenPop Books) in 2009, which Peter Balakian has described as “dynamic” and “well worth your reading.”  His songs have appeared in television and film and charted on CMJ.  He earned his MFA at Goddard College in 2002 and currently teaches English at Herricks High School in New Hyde Park, NY.  Alan resides in New York City’s East Village.

Guitarist Aram Bajakian has worked extensively with Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed, jazz vocalist Diana Krall and avant garde maven John Zorn. Bajakian's latest solo album, there were flowers also in hell (2014, Sanasar Records), has received universal praise, and was called "one of the best instrumental rock records of recent years," by New York Music Daily. Bajakian’s other 2014 release entitled Dálava, is a collaboration with his wife, vocalist Julia Ulehla, and was called "groundbreaking" by Vancouver’s Georgia Straight and “a masterpiece” by acousticmusic.com. Bajakian received a Masters Degree in Music Education from Columbia University’s Teachers College in 2002. 

“Primer” is the first in a series of collaborative experiments between Alan Semerdjian and Aram Bajakian combining poetry and music.

Alan writes: The poem is a bit of a meditation (Ginsberg style?) on this desire to connect and embrace the other side of our hyphenation.  It stemmed from the attention (good and bad) on social media newsfeeds and beyond around the Armenian Genocide centennial, the reverberations of that attention, etc.  Aram's wildly inventive and free guitar playing was composed after the poem was written from the other side of North America and then pasted together to make what you have here.  It's an idea that was born quickly with lo-fi punk aesthetics and, hopefully, old-school avant-charm.  We all want to write for each other in the end.  The many of us.  And be heard.  Sincerely.  

This collaboration it is being released jointly through both Hye-Phen Collective and The Armenian Poetry Project.

Live from Holy Cross: Alan Semerdjian reading Siamanto

Click to hear the audio segment

Alan Semerdjian - photo by Khatchik Turabian

The Dance
by Siamanto (Atom Yarjanian 1878-1915).

(Translated by Peter Balakian and Nevart Yaghlian)

In a field of cinders where Armenian life
was still dying,
a German woman, trying not to cry
told me the horror she witnessed:

"This thing I'm telling you about,
I saw with my own eyes,
Behind my window of hell
I clenched my teeth
and watched the town of Bardez turn
into a heap of ashes.
The corpses were piled high as trees,
and from the springs, from the streams and the road,
the blood was a stubborn murmur,
and still calls revenge in my ear.

Don't be afraid; I must tell you what I saw.
so people will understand
the crimes men do to men.
For two days, by the road to the graveyard …

Let the hearts of the world understand,
It was Sunday morning,
the first useless Sunday dawning on the corpses.
From dawn to dusk I had been in my room
with a stabbed woman —
my tears wetting her death —
when I heard from afar
a dark crowd standing in a vineyard
lashing twenty brides
and singing filthy songs.

Leaving the half-dead girl on the straw mattress,
I went to the balcony of my window
and the crowd seemed to thicken like a clump of trees
An animal of a man shouted, "You must dance,
dance when our drum beats."
With fury whips cracked
on the flesh of these women.
Hand in hand the brides began their circle dance.
Now, I envied my wounded neighbor
because with a calm snore she cursed
the universe and gave up her soul to the stars …

"Dance," they raved,
"dance till you die, infidel beauties
With your flapping tits, dance!
Smile for us. You're abandoned now,
you're naked slaves,
so dance like a bunch of fuckin' sluts.
We're hot for your dead bodies."
Twenty graceful brides collapsed.
"Get up," the crowed screamed,
brandishing their swords.

Then someone brought a jug of kerosene.
Human justice, I spit in your face.
The brides were anointed.
"Dance," they thundered —
"here's a fragrance you can't get in Arabia."

With a torch, they set
the naked brides on fire.
And the charred bodies rolled
and tumbled to their deaths …

I slammed my shutters,
sat down next to my dead girl
and asked: "How can I dig out my eyes?"

Siamanto, Bloody News from My Friend, Wayne State University, 1996.

Alan Semerdjian: Crush

I once had a crush on the word
     reconciliation
how it moved in and out of my life
          its slippery cil rounding corners


and rubbing up against the hard con
     how I misused the word
on more than one occasion
          meaning almost clear


at once here and never here
     there but never somewhere.
And though the past may sound
          a lot like history


it was about love, and it’s always
     about love, this forever
balance of stretching and returning
          this push and pull


like some sad scavenger hunt or
     tug of war for the soldier
never quite back and the object
          of his affection


like a word broken at the syllable
     the need for more space
her always here, her never left.
          This is how it goes.


Time ends up making a postcard
     from him to her
and two rooms on either side
          of the world


his boots heavy with memory’s lead
     in one bed, her need
to reconcile in the other, and me
          still in love


with a word, with an idea
     all of us
are so desperately
          trying to understand.




This poem has appeared in the online version of ARARAT.

Alan Semerdjian:Two Towers

Bending around the highway
slicing the horizontal still: two towers.


The sun between verticals then later
blinding two towers.


Radio spitting fire, the correspondents
still for two towers.


History and historians, two towers
in and out of focus.


Birds circumnavigating
clouds above two towers.


Not sure if maybe on
a clear day but two towers.


A flag for two towers; a pin
approaching a balloon.


The idea of two sinking
then rising – the towers


out of the sink, the sink
rising up from the towers.


Two dogs, off leash, proud
down avenue C: both towers.


Two memories swaying, window
open revealing towers.


On the way, photoshopping covers
with towers, a plane to catch.


Two lovers shouting their heads off:
two towers.


Two apartments, blocks, trains,
miles to go from two towers.


To build or not, to cry
or always cry for towers.


Forgetting two towers, then one,
then another, then none.




This poem has appeared in the online version of ARARAT.

Alan Semerdjian: Letters

Letters
after Saroyan


The War Department is a bucket of rain
we left out on the porch.


Each day the water gradually disappears
like family members


after holiday dinners; one by one
the sleep takes over them


until the bucket is emptied, the soldiers
all returned to Ithaca.


This, of course, can only happen in summer
when the heat simmers


all memories dry. But oh the winters,
heading to and returning from,


the bucket seems forever filled, heavier
from the weight of it all.





This poem has appeared in the online version of ARARAT.

Alan Semerdjian reading in New York City

Saturday, February 26th, 2011

5:00 to 7:00 PM

Poetry Reading at Smalls Jazz
183 West 10th at 7th Avenue
New York New York 10014
(212) 929.7565

The Smalls Poetry Feature series is hosted by poet Lee Kostrinsky
The guest readers will be Sarah Sarai and Alan Semerdjian

Live from the Bowery Poetry Club: Alan Semerdjian (2)

Gartal and the Armenian Poetry Project are proud to release this audio clip recorded live at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City on April 2, 2010. Click to hear Alan Semerdjian’s  reading of his poem Grandchildren of Genocide.

We think of bombfields and big when we think of genocide.

We think of mass cleansing.  We think in holes.  We think

the whole page.  We think what’s under it, what they’ve been

covering up.  We think there might have been people

in those whole pages.

We think of chambers when we think of genocide.  We think

of people crying.  We think of people climbing.  We think of

people climbing and crying, crying and climbing.  We think of both

people climbing and people crying.  We think in chambers. 

We think in those horrible chambers when we think of genocide.

Those horrible 20^th century chambers.

When we think of genocide, we don’t think of mountains and deserts.

We don’t think of bazaars.  When we do think of them,

we don’t think of young democratic people and pomegranates. 

We don’t think of young democratic people with pomegranates

at bazaars when we think of genocide.  We don’t think of them

next to our grandfathers.  We don’t think of next to them.

Then there are young democratic people who don’t eat pomegranates

and don’t think of genocide.  We don’t think of them either.

We don’t think of them when we think of genocide, but we do think

of moustaches.  We don’t think of long and lovely moustaches,

but we think of moustaches when we think of genocide. 

We don’t think of grandfathers plural or generations of grandfathers

before that when we think of genocide.  But we do think of mothers.

And mothers before that.  But we do think of mothers,

but we don’t think of women.  We don’t think of women dancing. 

We don’t hear the music when we think of genocide. 

These things we think about and not hear when we think about genocide.

And we don’t think of civil war as genocide.  We hear about it.

We don’t call in enough with such information. 

We think about reconciliation, but we don’t

think about reconciliation when we think about genocide. 

We don’t study the memorials, we don’t explain the play in papers,

we don’t shake hands and make up.  When we think of genocide,

we do other things with our hands.