Author Offers a Perspective on the Impact the Armenian Genocide Has Had on His Work
Pulitzer Prize winning poet Peter Balakian held talks on “Imagining the Past: Atrocity, Trauma, and the Armenian Genocide” at Claremont McKenna College, University of California, Los Angeles, and California State University, Fresno. The readings were held on April 16, 18, and 23, respectively.
Balakian’s reading and autobiographical talk — given in conjunction with the commemorative events for April 24 — focused on the impact of the Armenian past on his work. The author discussed how he has worked through filaments of Armenian history to create his particular language and modes of representation.
He emphasized that he writes about all the things poets write about: daily life, love, the body, nature, culture, war, politics, but that he has also been affected by the pull of history. Balakian’s lecture and reading explored how his work has moved across generations in writing both poetry and memoir. He reflected on how a past historical event can be transformed by the literary imagination in the American literary tradition and cultural present.
The author also discussed how various family figures and ancestors have provided a grounding for his work. He discussed the impact of his great-great uncle, Krikoris Balakian, Bishop in the Armenian Church, who was one of the 250 cultural leaders arrested on April 24, 1915 at the onset of the Genocide, and his grandmother, Nafina Aroosian, who was a survivor along with her two young daughters, endured a harrowing death march into the Syrian desert.
Balakian was hosted by professors at each institution, including Professor of History and Holocaust Studies Wendy Lower and Director of the Mgrublian Center For Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College; Professor Ann Karagosian, Director of the Armenian Promise Institute at UCLA; and Professor Barlow Der Mugerditchian, and Dean of the College of Education, Professor Sergio LaPorta, at Fresno State University.
The lectures were followed by robust Q&A sessions, as well as book signings.
