IALA X h-pem | 2024 Young Armenian Poets Awards: The Sanctuary of Language

I’ve been thinking a lot about the notion of home and, especially, Egyptian writer and Nobel prize winner Naguib Mahfaouz’s jarring rendering of a definition, how “home is not where you were born” but rather “where all your attempts to escape cease.” The first part of the definition certainly resonates for those of us who have made the migrations or whose families have made them, the birthplace slowly subordinating and fading like an old photograph. The place where one lands becomes solace and, possibly, respite from the chaos that propelled one to leave in the first place. The second part of Mahfouz’s definition sketches a more complex picture of an almost liminal space. It suggests that this life is always about movement away from what traps or hurts us—what we fear maybe—and towards a resting place, safety, the newer and calmer address. Can home here be a state of mind? Perhaps it’s less about where we are physically and more about where we are psychically. Is it that the moment we stop running is when we find home? Or is home found, as one of this year’s judges Gregory Djanikian pondered, “in the sanctuary of language”?

The submissions in this year’s Young Armenian Poets Awards—one of our highest totals yet—grappled with the concept of home as presented by the prompt in new and inventive ways and illustrated once again the extraordinary talent that exists in the next generation of our writers and thinkers. Their propensity to engage with abstraction in artful ways while making meaning of their relationship to Armenian tradition, culture, and story was nothing short of amazing. Our three winners and one honorable mention are evidence that this notion of home is deeply resonant for young Armenian lives from all over the world.

And, of course, how could it not be? We’re still living in the wake of over 100,000 violently displaced and ethnically cleansed residents of Artsakh who grapple with a definition of home no dictionary on earth can fully articulate. And everyday on the news and in the feeds, the senseless tentacles of empire and everything wrong with history are still present and alive and doing the nefarious and unthinkable. Yet the writers here demonstrate a fierce resistance through poetry that explores all the corridors of our internal and external architecture and, in doing so, builds an intrinsic hope that sustains dark times. These poems laugh and cry and build and take down and sing and pray. They are a reminder that humanity has always been our home and needs to be in the future if we are to live in this world together.

The Young Armenian Poets Awards cannot happen each year without the generosity and wisdom of our terrific judges, and I want to thank them again for their commitment to spotlighting our youth. Additionally, our partnership with h-pem is integral to casting that light on the work made and broadening its reach to communities around the world. Thank you, h-pem, for this important part of the process. And to the family of artist and musician Tamar Asadourian, for whom in honor of the Young Armenian Poets Awards is now named, we’re indebted to your support of our program. Finally, I’d like to extend gratitude to our Executive Director Hovsep Markarian and everyone at IALA who supports our initiative and gets the word out year after year as well as Founder and President Olivia Katrandjian, whose subtle suggestions for prompts always lead to something sublime.

The 2024 YAPA in honor of Tamar Asadourian winners are:
•⁠  ⁠I Was Raised by Survivors by Lenna Karapetian
•⁠  ⁠⁠home is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on lavash bread by Hasmik Tumasyan
•⁠  ⁠⁠For Mariam, by Madeline Berberian-Hutchinson

The 2024 YAPA in honor of Tamar Asadourian honorable mention is:
•⁠  ⁠Tip-Toes by Ani Kradjian

Watch this space to read the winning pieces soon! And register for IALA’s Emerging Writers Showcase to watch the winners read their work.

YAPA Director Alan Semerdjian is a writer, musician, and educator. His works include In the Architecture of Bone (GenPop Books, 2009), The Serpent and The Crane (a collaboration of poetry and music with Aram Bajakian), and several collections of critically-acclaimed albums covering a wide range of genres from singer-songwriter to free jazz and alternative rock. He has taught English and Creative Writing in public education for 25 years and is currently the poet laureate of New York’s Nassau County.

The International Armenian Literary Alliance is a nonprofit organization launched in 2021 that supports and celebrates writers by fostering the development and distribution of Armenian literature in the English language. A network of Armenian writers and their champions, IALA gives Armenian writers a voice in the literary world through creative, professional, and scholarly advocacy. Learn more by visiting www.armenianliterary.org.