The May edition of Literary Lights 2025 reading series will feature Gregory Djanikian, award-winning author of “Nostalgia for the Future,” in conversation with writer and New York Review Books editor, Susan Barba. The virtual event will take place on May 10 at 10 a.m.
With “Nostalgia for the Future: New and Selected Poems, 1984-2023,” award-winning poet Gregory Djanikian returns to the literary scene with a collection that spans and celebrates his prolific career.
Written over several decades, “Nostalgia for the Future” takes for its many subjects romantic love and its difficulties, the horrors of the Armenian genocide of 1915, the émigré experience and the joys and struggles of acculturation, the allure of landscapes and vast distances, the polarity of our material life on earth and our longing for what is ethereal and elusive, all in tones that are humorous, elegiac, contemplative, lyrical, and suffused with a gratitude for the mysteriousness and wonder of life itself.
“Like each of us, Gregory Djanikian keeps re-realizing that to be alive is deeply dangerous. ‘Sometimes the earth’s a desert of promise, / the world-soul damaged, dream-cities ruined.’ The world is cosmically scary, so we need at least ‘a surprise / to make you think / it’s not all ruthless / even as the shots ring out / in the heart of the city.’ Beyond that, we have to believe in some ongoing meaning in our lives—so each day we suspect ‘Whatever has a surface has a deeper meaning.’ We keep looking for ways to accept life; when Djanikian finds a way, his acceptance is more grateful than skeptical. ‘Never pass up a good time, history tells me, / and I’m breathing in that crazy oxygen.’ His generously readable poems help us feel that life is livable, full of ache but also of possibility,” said Mark Halliday.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt of Armenian parentage, Gregory Djanikian came to the United States when he was 8 years old and spent his boyhood in Williamsport, PA. For many years, he was the Director of Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania and is the author of seven collections of poetry from Carnegie Mellon, most recently of which is “Sojourners of the In-Between.” His poems have appeared in numerous journals, and in many anthologies including “Best American Poetry,” “Good Poems,” “American Places” (Viking), “Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem” (Knopf), “Seriously Funny” (Georgia), “Becoming Americas: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing” (Library of America), “Poem in Your Pocket” (The Academy of American Poets), “Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond” (Norton), and “180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day” (Random House). Learn more by visiting the website.
Susan Barba is the editor of “American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide” (2022), winner of the 2023 American Horticultural Society award, and the author of “Fair Sun” (2017) and “geode” (2020), a finalist for the New England Book Awards and the Massachusetts Book Awards. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, and her poems have been translated into Armenian, German, Romanian, and Swedish. She works as a senior editor for New York Review Books. Learn more by visiting the website.
To register for the event, visit the website.
Literary Lights 2025 is a monthly reading series organized by the International Armenian Literary Alliance, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, and the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center. Each event—held online or in-person—will feature a writer reading from their work, followed by a discussion with an interviewer and audience members. Keep an eye on our website and socials for the exact dates of each event. Read along with the series by purchasing titles from the IALA Bookstore powered by Bookshop.
