Tracy Fuad In Solidarity With Artsakh

Donald Hall Prize and Gloria Anzaldúa Prize winner, Tracy Fuad is the latest poet in our series of writers supporting the people of Artsakh. [This video was recorded on September 29, 2023.] “Hi, my name is Tracy Fuad, and I’m recording this message in solidarity with the Armenian people who are currently under siege in Artsakh after months of blockade, depriving them of food and medicine and basic supplies. Thousands are being driven from their homes. This is ethnic cleansing and we can’t look away at this moment. And I will read a short poem in solidarity. The poem is just a few lines. It’s comprised of sample sentences from a famous Kurdish dictionary, the “Henbane Borîne” which means bag of wonders, and which was the life-long project of Hejar Mukriyani, a Kurdish intellectual and one of the founders of the very short-lived independent Kurdish state, the Republic of Mahapat. When it was toppled, thousands of Kurdish books were destroyed though this dictionary survived.”