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Interviews with Diana Der-Hovanessian
Interview in the Armenian Weekly, December 24, 2011
Diana Der-Hovanessian: 'I
Write Almost Every Day'
by Artsvi Bakhchinyan 
Diana
Der-Hovanessian, New England born poet, was twice a Fulbright professor of American Poetry and is the author of more than
25 books of poetry and translations. She has awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Society of America, PEN/Columbia
Translation Center, National Writers Union, Armenian Writers Union, Paterson Poetry Center, Prairie Schooner, American Scholar,
and the Armenian Ministry of Culture. Among the several plays written by Der-Hovanessian, two (The Secret of Survival and Growing Up Armenian) were
produced and in 1984 and 1985 traveled to many college campuses in the 80s telling the Armenian story with poetry and music.
After 1989, The Secret of Survival with Michael Kermoyan and later with Vahan Khanzadian was performed for earthquake relief
benefits. She works as a visiting poet and guest lecturer on American poetry, Armenian poetry in translation, and the literature
of human rights at various universities in the U.S. and abroad. She serves as president of the New England Poetry Club. The following interview by Artsvi Bakhchinyan was
conducted in the poet’s home in Cambridge.
Diana
Der-Hovanessian
AB: This year, you added three new books to your publications. How many does that make?
DDH: Fifteen of my own books and 10 volumes of translations.
AB: The new translations are compiled in Armenian
Poetry of Our Time. And the book starts with 20th-century greats such as Daniel Varoujan, Siamanto, and Tekeyan, and goes
on to young contemporary poets such as Vahe Arsen. Do you think of translating as part of your own work? Do you consider it
an obligation? Or is it a way of being part of great poetry you admire?
DDH: I’ll answer yes to all those questions. Translating
isn’t as much fun as creating something new. And, it has a lot of responsibilities attached. But I started because there
was no contemporary anthology of Armenian poetry in English. Some individual poems had been translated by past poets, even
Henry Longfellow. But in 1896, working from literal prose translations from Armenian scholars and friends, Alice Stone Blackwell
produced the first edition in English of Armenian Poems. Then in 1917 for Near East Relief, and to call attention to the murder
of Armenian poets in 1915 and the genocide, she added more poems and published another edition.
AB: Alice Stone Blackwell was a great friend of
Armenians and a humanist. But she was not a poet. Do you think her translations hold up?
DDH: Of course, they are dated. She uses 18th- and
19th-century phrases. For instance, she begins Bedros Tourian’s Little Lake: “Why dost thou lie in hushed surprise,
Thou little lonely mere?” It’s too bad that Julia Ward Howe, who was also active (she was president of the Friends
of Armenia), did not do some of the poems. She was a known poet.
AB: Alice Stone Blackwell’s book has long been out of print, I believe. Was that why you started?
DDH: Before I had any book publications, but was
publishing poetry in journals and newspapers, a Bulgarian poet asked me to work with him on an anthology of Bulgarian poetry.
And I said, “No, I can’t do that…when there isn’t a modern Armenian anthology.”
AB: And you began…
DDH: I started it with my father. We had already
done a few translations together. The first were for a concert the Boston Pops was doing of Armenian sharagans for his friend,
the conductor Rouben Gregorian. And the second, for a lecture on Daniel Varoujan my hayrig [father] was giving and wanted
six poems in English for that program. I was publishing poems already in those days…and when I saw how the Varoujan
turned out, I sent them to one of my editors who surprised me by taking the whole batch.
AB: And that’s how you
started?
DDH:
No. Actually another editor of mine invited me to lunch and said she was thinking of starting a page, at the Christian Science
Monitor, of international poems and wanted me to do some Armenian, I told her I didn’t know Armenian that well. This
was a long time ago. And she looked at me, and said, “Well, you’re young. Learn it!” So I did, I took every
course offered at Harvard. And every course at Boston University. But, also, I had lots of help. After my father’s death
many friends sent me poems, or read to me. And of course, my students in Armenia would run around gathering books. And poets,
of course, would come to read to me. The only book I did all alone was the volume of Derian. I did it with a dictionary and
then had it checked. The Koutchag, too. Strangely enough, I didn’t find Koutchag’s dialect difficult. It sounded
similar to the dialect my grandmother had spoken to me. But Sayat Nova was hard. And most intimidating was Narek, even though
I worked from modern Armenian translations of the old krapar (classical Armenian). For the first anthology, I did the Narek
with the help of Hayr Oshagan, a priest at Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge. And for the book of Narek, translations were
done with Tom Samuelian… He would send a driver every morning with word-for-word translations done by a priest when
I was in Yerevan on a Fulbright. And then when I returned to Boston the rest were sent by e-mail.
AB: How do you choose which poems to include in
an anthology?
DDH:
I think a translator often does a poem he wishes he could have written himself. Or else it is a very important poem, pivotal
in some historic aspect, and must be done. For instance, I had to translate Bedros Tourian for the first anthology because
he was important historically… He was the first to use vernacular Armenian and write about personal themes.
AB: But you didn’t like
Tourian?
DDH:
No, although he was my mother’s favorite. He did have one great poem, “Drdounch.” My rules for translating
include three debts the translator owes: 1) The translator owes the reader the poem the original poet wrote. 2) The translator
owes the original poet the best possible version in the second language. The original poet’s reputation is in his hands.
3) The translator owes the poem a vibrant second life in the second language.
AB: You did a large volume of
Charents with M. Margossian. And some of those translations were used in a recent film made in Yerevan. Is Charents one of
your favorite poets?
DDH:
Not when I started. During the five years I was translating Charents, I would dream about him. We would have arguments in
these dreams. On my first trip to Armenia I was working on that book…and met his daughters and spent a lot of time
with Anahid.
AB: During another trip I took
you to meet the late Regina Ghazaryan, a friend of Charents’s who had buried some of his papers.
DDH: Oh yes, yes, yes. That was an unforgettable
meeting. It is important to meet people who personally know the authors you translate. I hope they remember Regina in Armenia.
AB: One of your new books is
Dancing at the Monastery. It has a lot of prosy poems. Have you abandoned formal verse and rhyme?
DDH: No, my very newest manuscript has a larger
share of sonnets and villanelles, etc.
AB:
But the brand new book, just out this month, from Cervana Barva Press, NOW I SEE IT, is in shapes.
DDH: Actually those poems are just published, but
were written a while ago. My editor at Sheep Meadow Press would also take out any light or humorous verse, any strange shapes.
But in the last few books he allowed sections of light verse. By the way, I’m a great admirer of Charents’s light
and satiric verses. I enjoyed translating those.
AB: And you didn’t have dreams then about arguing with him
about those?
DDH:
(Laughs) No! But to get back to the shaped poems, in the 16th century, English poet George Herbert did some religious poems
in the shapes of altars and wings, and more recently in the 50s in Brazil and Germany some artists were combining strewn words
on posters and art and calling the movement Concrete Poetry.
AB: Tell me a little bit about your writing habits. Do you write
every day? Do you rewrite? Do you keep old versions? You did a recent program with an American poet, X.J. Kennedy, titled,
“Where Does a Poem Come from?” Did you two decide where poems come from?
DDH: We decided, of course, that they come from poets. And they
come to poets from the most unexpected places: a news item, a remembered conversation, someone else’s poem you wish
to answer, a dream. A lot of poems used to come to me when I was half-asleep and I would get up to write them down. Now…I
just ignore them. But I do write almost every day…mostly rewriting. And I throw most of it away or my house would be
filled with paper. Even more than now! I do write on paper first. Then type it into the computer and keep changing it. What
takes up most of my time is the New England Poetry Club: planning programs, finding judges for contests, introducing speakers,
answering mail. I am hoping to retire from it soon. We have a good vice-president.
AB: Well I hope the Varoujan
Prize and programs on translations that you started will continue.
DDH: I hope so, too.
AB: I have one last question. I think you have often been asked, Have you thought of writing a memoir? After
all, you have known and worked with some of the biggest names, not only in Armenian poetry but world poetry: Andrey Voznesensky,
Bella Akhmadulina, Tomas Tranströmer, Yevgeni Yevtushenko, Czesław Miłosz, Seamus Heaney.
DDH: (Laughs) Mmm.
Interview with
New England Poetry Club President: Diana Der-Hovanessian with Doug Holder, July 27, 2004, on Poet To Poet/Writer To Writer, Somerville Community Access TV.
Diana Der-Hovanessian is the president of the venerable literary
organization: The New England Poetry Club. Based in Cambridge, Mass., it was founded by Amy Lowell, Robert
Frost and Conrad Aiken almost ninety years ago. Lowell's vision was to bring well-known poets to large audiences. In the
1960's through the 1980's the club became insular and provincial, with meetings held at the Brahmin enclaves of Beacon
Hill and the Harvard Faculty Club. Der-Hovanessian changed this by inviting Russian poets such as: Andrei Voznesenky and Yevtushenko
to read at the club. And since then scores of South American and Latin American Poets have visited and read there, as well
as prominent American poets such as: Robert Creeley, X.J. Kennedy, Robert Pinsky, and many others. I spoke to Diana Der-Hovanessian
on my Somerville Community Access TV show: Poet
To Poet/Writer To Writer.
Doug Holder:
How did you become involved with the club?
Diana Der-Hovanessian: I joined it when Victor Howes was running things.
He asked me to be secretary. I said "I don't do shorthand." (laughs) He said: "No...No. Not that kind of
secretary." So for eight years he had me do programming. I became president in 1980. It's been a long time and we
are due for another election!
DH: Amy Lowell started the club. She was quite an eccentric character, wasn't
she?
DDH: When I first went into the club we had people who actually knew her. They had interesting stories about
the early days. She started the club in 1915, when she came back from England. She was under the influence of Imagists, like
Ezra Pound. But Robert Frost and a group of Formalist poets took it away from her. Frost, who was the second or third president,
got into big fights with the Imagists, in those days.
DH: Lowell's goal was to reach a large audience through
poetry and poetry readings. Has this been your goal?
DDH: This vision of expansion had stopped for awhile when
I came around. I felt like we should expand. Now we bring in name poets to make it more exciting. We also have our own members
read. We also have free workshops for members.
DH: What is the mission of the Club?
DDH: To expand
poetry. To bring people into the art. To show off the best. To be a forum for an exchange of ideas.
DH: Can you
talk a bit about the poets who have read for you over the years?
DDH: We had an Irish festival some years ago
with the help of Seamus Heaney, who is on our board. He brought a lot of poets from Ireland, like: Evan Boland. Some of the
Club's other readers over the years have been: Robert Lowell, Robert Creeley Stanley Kunitz, James Merrill, to name just
a few.
DH: Did you have a relationship with the Beat poets?
DDH: We did sponsor
a reading by Allen Ginsberg. Once I went to the airport to meet a visiting poet, and Ginsberg was there with him. Ginsberg
was wearing a tie. He told me that he was dressed up for the Club. I told him that he didn't have to do it. He turned
his tie over and said, "Brooks Brothers. I got it at Good Will."
DH: What do you think of the Slam poets and the Hip-Hoppers? DDH:
We had a program for them at the Boston Globe Book
Festival. There was someone on the Globe
who wanted it: Patricia Smith. I thought it was fun. I love the fact that they memorize their poems. I envy them. I could
do that when I was young. DH: You are a respected poet in your own right. I believe you are a Fulbright Scholar, and have written extensively
about the Armenian Holocaust. Can you talk about your education, and early influences? DDH: I've been a Fulbright Scholar twice. I went to Boston
University as an undergraduate. I studied with Robert Lowell at Harvard. I took his last workshop. It was really great. They
said he wouldn't show up. But he did. He was there every single week. It was one hour of teaching poetry, and one hour
of going over student poems.I completed nine volumes
of translations from the Armenian. I have always been interested in the Armenian Holocaust. When the Turks started the genocide
against the Armenians in 1915, they started by murdering the leaders. You wouldn't think that poets were the leaders.
But they started out by killing two hundred poets.DH:
How did you start the Longfellow House readings in Cambridge?DDH: Erica Mumford was a board member. She and I were walking down Brattle St. We looked over at the Longfellow House
and said, "Wouldn't this be a perfect place for a reading." We walked in and said, "Don't you want
poetry too?" (They had concerts.) And they replied, “Sure, if you want to do it." And that's how it started.
It's been going on for almost twenty five years now.DH: Any plans for the 90th anniversary? DDH:
Depends on the funding. We want to bring our
Golden Rose prize winners together for a big celebration. We are the oldest reading series
in the country.
In the Mirror-Spectator, December
29, 2007, by Susan Pahigian: Diana Der-Hovanessian has just returned
from Taiwan from the annual Taipei World Poetry Festival. Since Ms. Der-Hovanessian is the author of 23 books of poetry (her
latest, The Second Question, appeared this summer from Sheep Meadow Press), she thought she was being invited as
an American poet. However, she learned that she was also there as the translator of Armenian poetry.
And that the director of the festival was a fan of hers. We decided to interview her to ask what
a world festival of poetry was like. Before going to the Festival in November she had been invited to Armenia
in October by the Armenian Writers Union and was surprised there to receive the gold medal from the Minister of Cultural Affairs
for her writing and translations.
SP: You dropped out of
the Cambridge Poet Populist Contest. Is it because the name was changed from Poet Laureate of Cambridge? DDH: (laughs) No, no! I
had to go to Taiwan the day all the candidates read for the City Council. I was invited to the Taipei Poetry Festival, a world
festival of poets and poetry that I thought would be a very interesting experience. Besides, I had accepted the invitation
to China before the date was set for the Cambridge reading. SP: You are president of the old New England Poetry Club. Were you invited
to China because of the club, your own poetry, or what? DDH: At first I didn’t know. Since the invitation
came to me through the New England Poetry Club I assumed it was because of the club. SP: And you have a new book out this year, your 23rd? DDH: True, but the invitation
had nothing to do with either club or new book. Fora long time I kept asking other poets if they had attended this festival, and I heard from
Afaa Weaver at Simmons that, yes, he had, and it was a wonderful world festival and that I should definitely go. He organizes
a Chinese poetry festival himself at his college. SP: Did the Taipei people want you to organize such a festival? DDH: No, I wrote to them asking why they
had picked me? Who recommended me? My publisher, Stanley Moss of Sheep Meadow? The
Writers Union of Armenia? SP:
The Writers Union of Armenia just gave you a gold medal, didn’t they? Wasn’t that this summer? DDH: Actually it was
the Minister of Culture in October, when I was in Armenia to give a paper for the Writers Union on “Identity in a Hyphenated
Society.” But it wasn’t the Writers Union who recommended me the Chinese Festival. It turned
out to be the director of the festival himself. He wrote me an email…in answer to my query. SP: The Director of the
Festival is a Chinese poet? DDH:
Also a film maker. He wrote me that he was a great admirer of the Armenian film maker Sergei Parajanov.
And two years ago when he went to Armenia to visit the Parajanov museum and attended the Golden Apricots Film Festival
he began reading everything he could about Armenian culture. He began to read translation of Armenian poetry. And every time
he found a beautiful one… SP: It was by you? DDH: Yes. I know it’s not very modest to say so. But… SP: And he also discovered your own poetry. DDH: Yes. And I was invited.
I didn’t know about the Armenian connection at first and so when they asked for a batch of poems to translate
for an anthology they were putting together I sent my poems. But when I learned I was being invited as
an Armenian I
sent translations. And I changed my talk to be about Armenian Poetry Today. And, I suppose, how it
got that way. SP: In
other words, you told them the influences on modern Armenian literature. DDH: Yes, the pagan, early Christian chants, the folk poems, the genocide. SP: That removed all
the poets and writers of 1915. DDH: And the usual influences today on world poetry. SP: All this was also translated into Chinese? DDH: Yes, and also projected on the walls
as I spoke, projected in Chinese characters. It was very interesting. Some of my poems were set to music.
And sung in English and Chinese. Some of the poems by Davtian and Emin were also translated and while I spoke…huge
photos of Mt. Ararat and photos taken by German witnesses of the genocide were projected on the wall. A lot of research and
work was done by that committee. I have nothing but respect and gratitude for them. SP: So did you meet a lot of poets from around the world?
DDH: Some. I was there for only a week. I heard
Bengali poet Taslima Nasreen, French poet, Mr. Jean Lewinski, Vim Nadera from the Philippines, Jennifer Kronovet from USA.
I missed a huge group of Vietnamese writers and Chinese poets speaking about film and other new ways of presenting the spoken
word. I definitely recommend this festival to anyone who wants to combine a trip to the Orient with poetry of all flavors.
Link to Interview with Diana Der Hovanessian by
Gloria Mindock, editor, Cervena Barva Press
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