Litterroir Blog

at Rattapallax online

Catherine Fletcher's Litterroir offers investigation, excavation, and good old fashioned digging into the flavors of place distilled through poetry.  She explores the world of verbal art in lesser translated languages, traditions, and the intersections of the oral and written word.  Click on the links below to view previous articles.

Reinventing Armenia: Poetry after the Genocide

The years from 1915 to 1921 were the turning point in modern Armenian history, characterized by displacement and emigration.  This brief selection of poems by iconic poets Nigoghos Sarafian, Paruyr Sevak, and Zahrad, along with an interview with the Armenian Poetry Project’s Director Lola Koundakjian, offers a sampling of the richness of post-genocide writing in this Year of the Armenian Book

Familiar Strangers: the Ghazals of Simin Bebahani

Iranian poet Simin Behbahani has written 10 collections of poetry, won several human rights awards, been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and—most recently—been named MTVU’s Poet Laureate.  For most of her poetic career she has been known for reinventing the ghazal in the Persian language.  A look at her work and the ghazal tradition.

Speaking of Haiti

An investigation of Haiti’s poetic traditions in Kreyòl and French; the work of Haitian-American poets; oral and literary poetry; includes work by Felix Morisseau Leroy, Frankétienne, Anthony Phelps, Michèle Voltaire Marcelin, and a new translation of Georges Castera’s “Kreyòl Drum”.