Poetry and contemporary Armenian poets

I had briefly corresponded with Tsovinar Chilingaryan, a contact made through my old friend Onnik Krikorian, and had an opportunity to meet with her on Thursday night. Tsovinar arrived and just as I was introducing my poetry project, Onnik and Zara, another young poet arrived.

I recorded 5 pieces written by Tsovinar, who read them most beautifully, and I still feel the chills up and down my spine. The evening ended with a bottle of Areni -- dry red wine -- nicely ingested.

On Friday, I took my first day trip outside the city. I embarked into a 5 hour day trip to the pagan temple of Garni, and the Geghart monastery complex. It's the first day my camera worked overtime.

In the afternoon, I metup with writer ARTSVI BAKHCHINYAN and met his family. Artsvi read 5 of his poems for the poetry project and offered me some of his writings as gifts. At 7pm we went to a centre where he lectured about Armenians in China, the topic of his current research. It was fascinating. Bumped into some more acquaintances there such as Tom Samuelian and Raffi Setian.




Saturday morning, decided to sleep late, and worked on converting the poems into MP3s before heading to the Manuscript museum, aka MATENADARAN. There I saw Prof Peter Cowe who is on sabbatical from UCLA and doing research in Armenia. Peter mentioned that I should go to Paris since it's "L'annee Armenienne en France" through June 2007; something to consider.

Tonight another concert and hopefully a dinner with friends.

Tomorrow: Vernissage