Poochigian Wins the New England Poetry Club Varoujan Award
The venerable New England Poetry Club offers an annual award "for an unpublished poem (not a translation) worthy of Daniel Varoujan, a poet killed by the Turks in the genocide which destroyed three-fourths of the Armenian population."
Here is a link: http://www.nepoetryclub.org/contests2011.htm
I am honored to be a 2011 winner of this award for my poem "The Parlor" (aka "Ottoman") in the book "The Cosmic Purr":
Nothing was an heirloom. We had none,
but a cause cherished like a vintage gun
hung there: why goatherds in a mountain town
had filed into a ditch and lain face-down.
I'm vicious even as a great grandson
when people tell me what was done is done.
Our women--raped not just be anyone.
We never called the couch an ottoman.