Saturday, November 14th, 7pm

Armenian-American poet and former Huntington resident ALAN SEMERDJIAN will speak about and sign copies of his new collection of poems,
In the Architecture of Bone.

Combining the idiosyncrasies of family history, news items heard on NPR, and keen observations of immigrant and emigrant experience, Semerdjian's new collection is an essential exploration of what it means to be an individual in America today.

At the center of this book is the question of what it is to be an immigrant—a “hyphenated American”—and of how geography provides evidence of our past as well as a way to approach the present, living with “the mind of a landscape.” Semerdjian takes recent Armenian history, a history of persecution and genocide, and juxtaposes it with contemporary news items on NPR about “incursions detainees interrogations.” In the Architecture of Bone is a stirring presentation of individual experience as central to communal history.

Alan Semerdjian, a former caretaker of Walt Whitman’s house, has published poems and essays in numerous print and online magazines—including Arson, can we have our ball back, Diagram, Lyric Review, Rattapallax, Ararat, Adbusters, and Chain; several anthologies including Primal Sanities (Allbooks Books, 2007) and Long Island Sounds (TNSPSP, 2008); and a chapbook, An Improvised Device (Lock n’ Load Publishing, 2005). His songs have appeared in films and television and have charted on CMJ. He has performed and read across the United States, and currently resides in New York City’s East Village. Visit him online at www.alanarts.com.

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