As an accomplished New-York-based poet, editor and translator, Lola Koundakjian has led many poetry-writing workshops throughout her career. But never one quite like this, exclusively in London for the Armenian Institute, in which she will, for the first time, enable participants to take inspiration from the photographs of her father, the late photojournalist Harry Koundakjian.

Harry Koundakjian (1930-2014) was an outstanding international photographer, who roamed the world during the golden years of photojournalism to document political upheavals and weather disasters for the world-renowned news agency AP. Today, the Koundakjian family is generously donating Harry’s archive to the Armenian Institute, who thus becomes the guardian of thousands of prints and documents by the late photographer. As his daughter and the instigator for this high-profile donation, Lola has a uniquely detailed knowledge of his career and vision.

Come and engage in a completely unique way both with Harry’s pictures, through the eyes of his daughter, and with Lola’s skill as a writer and engagement for Armenian poetry. Lola will select pictures from her father’s archive and propose ways in which you can use them as points of departure for writing.

This event is held in association with the Poetry Society.

This event is part of Heritage of Displacement: Oral Histories from the UK Armenian Communities (2023–2026), funded by a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant, thanks to National Lottery players.

Many eyes go through the meadow,
but few see the flowers in it —Ralph Waldo Emerson

About Lola Koundakjian

After her degrees in Fine Arts at Hunter College and Ancient History at Columbia University, Lola honed her skills as an editorial board member at the Ararat Literary Quarterly, in New York. She runs the Dead Armenian Poetry Society and curates and produces poems and audio for the online Armenian Poetry Project. Lola’s translations from Western Armenian are in Ararat, Armenian Poetry Project, Rattapallax, Poetry International with more scheduled in Wasafiri in 2024. Since 2010, Lola has read her work throughout New York City and online. She was invited to read in person at international poetry festivals: Medellín, Colombia ; Lima, Peru; Santiago, Chile; Ramallah, West Bank; Trois-Rivières, Quebec, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2021 her third book The Moon in the Cusp on my Hand won the Minas and Kohar Tololyan Prize in Contemporary Literature.
www.lolakoundakjian.com