Shahé Mankerian: Keepsake
In my office, Father’s framed
This poem was published in These Fragile Lilacs Poetry Journal, Volume II, issue II.
Հայ Բանաստեղծութեան Համացանցը։ Projet de Poésie Arménienne
In my office, Father’s framed
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 2/09/2017 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
When the shovel fell, the dirt exposed
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 2/08/2017 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
The bakery crowd looted the last
of the loaves. A beggar child
driven by hunger ignored
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 2/07/2017 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
Dana Walrath, a writer, artist and anthropologist, likes to cross borders and disciplines with her work. After years of using stories and art to teach medical students at University of Vermont’s College of Medicine, she spent 2012-2013 as a Fulbright Scholar in Armenia where she completed her first book, Like Water on Stone a verse novel about the Armenian genocide of 1915. Loosely based on the story of her grandmother, Like Water on Stone is a Notable Book for a Global Society Award Winner, a Bank Street Best Book of 2015, a Vermont Book Award finalist, and more. Her just released graphic memoir, Aliceheimer’s about life with her mother, Alice, before and during dementia, has been featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books and the Philadelphia Inquirer. She has spoken extensively about the role of comics in healing throughout North America and Eurasia including two TEDx talks. She has also shown her artwork in a variety of venues throughout North America and Eurasia.
Her anthropological work on childbirth, genocide, and the end of life has appeared in edited volumes and anthropological journals and she is a co-author of one of the leading college textbook series in anthropology. Her recent essays have appeared in Slate, Somatosphere and Foreign Policy. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a BA in visual arts and biology from Barnard College. She lives in the mountains of Vermont.
Co-curator Lola Koundakjian enjoys her poetry diplomacy, touring the world to read at poetry festivals, and, promoting Armenian culture through the Armenian Poetry Project. This fall she is reading in three venues around New York City: in September as part of National Translation Month in the Inkwell series at the KGB Bar, a literary institution in the East Village neighborhood of New York City; in October, in the Americas Poetry Festival; and in November at the ZIC. She is the author of The Accidental Observer (2011 USA) and Advice to a Poet (2014 Peru; 2015 USA)
Shahé Mankerian is the principal of St. Gregory Alfred and Marguerite Hovsepian School in Pasadena and the co-director of the Los Angeles Writing Project. As an educator, he has been honored with the Los Angeles Music Center's BRAVO Award, which recognizes teachers for innovation and excellence in arts education.
His poems have won Honorable Mentions in 2011 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award and Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture. Shahé was a Semi-Finalist for the Knightville Poetry Contest. He was the first place winner of 2012 "Black and White" anthology series from Outrider Press.
Mankerian's most recent manuscript, History of Forgetfulness, has been a finalist at four prestigious competitions: the 2013 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, the 2103 Bibby First Book Competition, the Quercus Review Press, Fall Poetry Book Award, 2013, and the 2014 White Pine Press Poetry Prize. His poems have been published in numerous literary magazines.
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 11/15/2016 09:00:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Dana Walrath, Lola Koundakjian, reading, Shahé Mankerian, USA
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Labels: Contemporary, reading, Shahé Mankerian, USA
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 7/23/2016 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: reading, Shahé Mankerian, USA
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Labels: Alec Ekmekji, Alina Gharabegian, Contemporary, reading, Shahé Mankerian, USA
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 5/04/2016 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 5/03/2016 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
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Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 12/12/2015 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 12/11/2015 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
There was a time when my family was happy.
Father played the violin on Sundays, and sunlight
filled the living room of my memory. Mother fried
eggplants in the kitchen. She hummed like Fairuz.
My brother read books on the Arabian Nights
on the red couch. I rolled on the Persian rug
until I felt dizzy. Then a bomb exploded near the souk.
Our windowpanes shattered. The mosque collapsed
on the bridge. The violin broke from the neck.
The eggplants charred. Brother bled on the couch.
I waited for the rug to magically rise
and take flight into the night.
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 12/10/2015 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
The television bleats like a kumquat sheep.
The Ojibwa postman knocks on the door
when she washes the feet of the dining table.
Lucullus must be her lover; she sees him
sitting in the coffee residue. We don’t let her
kiss the demitasse. In the backyard,
the apricot tree hangs her Komitas;
her chemise hangs from the terracotta chimney;
she hangs Armenian poems on the clothesline.
When the telephone doesn’t ring, she speaks to it:
The cat likes to sleep in the refrigerator.
She calls all her sons, Rostom, and offers
the cleaning lady lozenge because she coughs
like someone’s daughter.
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 4/15/2015 06:59:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
On my last visit, I decided
to wash my hands before joining
you at the coffee table.
In the bathroom bowl, the strainer
cupped a clump of white hair
and a morsel of bread.
I was tempted to reach
with my index and pick a souvenir.
Instead, from the brush on the counter,
I pulled a strand from a tangled
disarray of whiskers and placed it
in my wallet. Marguerite, I didn't know
what to make of the wet crumb,
the wafer. Your late husband
saw visions in the Syrian desert.
On bended knees, he drooled
on the sand and imagined
kneading the dirt into dough.
Shahé Mankerian, our winner for the adult category, is the Principal of the St. Gregory's A. & M. Hovsepian School, in Pasadena, CA. He tells us "Mrs. Marguerite Hovsepian (1915-2012) is the benefactor of Alfred & Marguerite Hovsepian School in Pasadena. She was the daughter of Ezra and Alice de Witz Schuknicht of New York. She was married to Alfred Hovsepian who was a genocide survivor. "
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 2/02/2013 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: 2012 Competition, Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
I tell him, My father is from Haifa.
“I already know this from your hazel eyes;
your mother must’ve drank olive oil
during pregnancy,” he smiles.
“Who’s your father?” Nazareth.
“Like my city,” he says, “but no coincidence.
You and I have the same wild blueberries,
pomegranates, and black, pitless cherries
in our blood.” I misunderstand, pitiless.
I say, Father died in ’94. “I know this,”
he says, “because you never buried him;
he still lives on your tongue. When you come
to Nazareth, we’ll lay him to rest behind
the church, deep in the overgrown lilacs.”
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 6/03/2012 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, Translated into Armenian, USA
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 12/04/2011 03:56:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
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 Shahé Mankerian’s reading of his poem My name.
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 5/30/2010 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Audio Clip, BPC, Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 4/01/2010 07:00:00 AM 1 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 3/25/2010 07:00:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
We didn’t go to school
that day because a bomb
was found still ticking near
the cafeteria.
We were euphoric–wild.
Who said war didn’t love
the children? We were free
to zigzag through parked cars,
climb over walls, and move
away from teachers who
pretended that they loved us
with their demonic rods.
We ran toward a dead-
end street where the trash rose
two stories high. The stench
fulfilled our wanderlust.
We stopped. We couldn’t wait
to start a bonfire. Books
of matches surfaced from
each pocket. Ready. Set.
An underfed cat strolled
between our matches and
the heap of trash. Our eyes
were burning. Someone kicked
the belly of the cat.
Another lit the pile
of Al Nahar, and some
fed textbooks to the fire.
We were the amber gods
that day; we turned away
from childhood, faced the smoke,
and screamed much louder than
the cat, the scorching rats,
the maggots fed on flesh;
and louder than the bomb
that stopped ticking at last.
Copyright Shahé Mankerian. Used here by kind permission of the author.
Posted by Armenian Poetry Project at 6/19/2007 04:04:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: Contemporary, Shahé Mankerian, USA
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