Motion: Of Tongues and Tweets
Motion: Of Tongues and Tweets
Celebrating the Release of Two New Books:
Hrayr Varaz's #jivjiv #twitterpoem
Karén Karslyan's On the Tip of the Tongue
Presented by Dr. Shushan Karapetian and Dr. Tamar M. Boyadjian
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Sunday, January 22, 2023
4pm
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Abril Bookstore and the Poetic Research Bureau present Motion: Of Tongues and Tweets, celebrating the release of two new books: Hrayr Varaz's #jivjiv #twitterpoem and Karén Karslyan's On the Tip of the Tongue.
Presented by Dr. Shushan Karapetian and Dr. Tamar M. Boyadjian.
This bilingual event (English/Armenian) will put into conversation the recently published poetry books of two contemporary Armenian authors of diverse backgrounds and styles who utilize the Armenian language in new and unique ways. Both works will be presented individually and as part of the dialogue in rethinking the role of language.
#jivjiv is a bilingual collection of twitter poems written by queer Armenian poet and linguist Hrayr Varaz (ig hrayr_huh_died), cover and illustrations by Amy Kazandjian (ig amykazn). This first volume includes 29 pieces about Armenian language, food, holidays, people, coffee-cup readings. Each in Western Armenian and English with their corresponding pronunciations, written with speling freedoms.
On the Tip of the Tongue is a mixture of conceptual, kinetic, cinematographic, and traditional poetry, written in Eastern Armenian during 2007-2022 by Karén Karslyan. Here language, exploding in the midst of endless wars (whether military or everyday-life), tries to outline new symbolic traces of expression from its own fragments, to give a name to reality and existence, and to look for ways to escape the absurdity of life.
This is an all ages event.