We are so excited that our 20th anniversary celebrations launched a new digitisation project with a focus on Mischa Kudian’s Mashtots Press, which the Armenian Institute acquired the rights to in 2021. The first digitised publication of this project is Soviet Armenian Poetry, a beautiful and touching compilation of work by poets from Armenia’s Soviet Era, originally translated and edited by Kudian in 1974 and published through Mashtots Press.
With the help of a dedicated group of volunteers, trustees and staff members, we are well on our way to becoming an established digital publisher, following the success of our physical publications over the last 20 years. The digitisation project was conceived by Stephen Masters, led by myself and designed by my colleague Anoushka Berberian with great love and dedication. This could not have been possible without people in our community like Hasmig Topalian, Paula Melville and Zara Mandel who spent hours at our library in Farringdon scanning the books. Once Stephen had processed these scans through an OCR software, we then recruited more help from our staff and board like Arda Eghiayan, Becky Jinks, Tatevik Ayvazyan, Hasmig and Paula who spent hours proofreading the texts. The foreword was written by myself and my colleague Nik Matheou; designs went back and forth as Anoushka worked tirelessly to ensure it all looked perfect, and once we felt it had, our final draft was sent to Gagik Stepan-Sarkissian to sign off.
Throughout the proofreading process, there were a number of eloquent lines and stanzas that stayed with me. During this time, I was on a hiatus from my hectic London life and was supporting AI’s activities abroad, from the South of Cyprus while visiting my mother. It was a time of great change and new beginnings, which is perhaps why some of these excerpts particularly struck me. I can’t express the deep gratitude I have to be able to proofread gorgeous Armenian poetry as part of my job, and I hope that the love and appreciation that went into this project is felt when you read the book.
Here is a selection of what touched me the most:
By Olivia Melkonian