World Poetry Day: Talin Tahajian

She says, ‘Correspondingly, the first few poems I loved—spending time inside of whose music was probably pretty rhythmically formative—include an array of the postwar Americans. Though I’m not sure what first moved me to try to write, I remember, in particular, being awed by chance encounters with the work of Elizabeth Bishop, Frank O’Hara, George Oppen, Brigit Pegeen Kelly and Frank Bidart.’

Having completed her undergraduate degree at Sidney, Talin moved back to the States to study for an MFA in Poetry at the University of Michigan, returning to Cambridge to complete an MPhil in Medieval and Renaissance Literature.

‘There’s no doubt my time at Sidney made its way, and continues to make its way, into my writing: I think about the wisteria, the gardens, the turrets and gothic facades of the front courts—not to mention the whole adjacent world of the fens up- and downriver, the Cam, the Backs, Jesus Lock, Midsummer Common, the willows, the cows and swans—most days.’

Talin’s poems have featured in publications including POETRY, Narrative, Best New Poets, The Kenyon Review, Pleiades and TriQuarterly. She is currently working towards a doctorate at Yale, and is an Assistant Editor of The Yale Review.

Lent

Chance says

you won’t call. Again, I dreamt

of a fountain in Croatia

in the middle of a beautiful square. Edmund and his girlfriend

tried to convince me it wasn’t a dream. I insisted. You won’t

remember this. In Whitechapel, a girl

leans from her window

and yells to a boy in the street, her silk pyjamas

rippling. Joy? I wonder,

the bus turning a corner. Above us, the sky

quivers like a vast, dark plot. What wouldn’t I do

to abate my fear of loneliness? What wouldn’t

you? I can’t show you the moon,

but it’s perfectly round

and small as the tip of your finger

or a door.

Lent by Talin Tahajian.

© Talin Tahajian 2023, by kind permission of the author.

First published by bath magg.