Talin Tahajian (2014, English) was born and raised in Massachusetts.
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.
Banner image: Semyon Borisov, via Unsplash.com
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