127. Holding Histories in Poetry w/ Glendale Poet Laureate & Educator Raffi Wartanian

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On this episode, Daniel Dissinger talks with Glendale’s first Poet Laureate and UCLA Writing Program professor Raffi Wartanian. This Writing Remix starts out with Raffi reading and sharing (check out the video episode on Substack) three poems as his bio. In the six years of Writing Remix, this is a first, and it’s always good to know that there are still firsts to be had this deep into this growing archive.

Raffi Wartanian takes the audience deep into the history and impact of the Armenian Genocide, how this tragedy has created cultural, political, and personal repercussions, the power that poetry has as a vessel for historical narrative and conservation, how backpacking after college from France to Portugal, hiking along the Camino de Santiago in Spain, then going to Marseille, Cyprus, Lebanon, Kuwait, and the UAE became this moment of poetic birth for him. Raffi also discusses what it’s like to be the first Poet Laureate of Glendale and the mix of responsibility, joy, and challenge of this position.

Oh! And how can we forget to mention the time he biked from Baltimore to San Francisco as part of a cancer fundraiser.

Saying that Raffi Wartanian is an active poet doesn’t do justice to the number of experiences he’s had, the number of projects he is involved in and is creating, and the dedication he has to his students at UCLA, not to mention his growing music career.

The conversation on the podcast weaves through so many spaces and ends on a much-needed conversation on rest, relaxation, and peace.

Approximate Rundown

00:00 Welcome & Guest Intro

01:49 Poetry as Introduction

02:58 True Rapture on Sheet Music

06:15 Portrait of a Capgras

10:31 Lebanon Poems & Context

12:59 Survivor’s Guilt Draft

18:00 Why Poems Not a Bio

24:31 Genre, Music, & Reading List

28:46 Writing Process & Revision

33:13 Creative Origins & Early Arts

36:23 Theater & Teaching

37:31 Bike Ride Journals

39:07 Backpacking Into Poetry

40:54 Choosing an MFA Path

42:38 First Poet Laureate

45:15 Education System Rethink

53:13 Building Glendale Programs

59:16 Poetry in Civic Crisis

01:05:35 Rest in Hard Times

01:16:43 Upcoming Work & Farewell

Raffi Joe Wartanian is a writer, musician, and educator who teaches writing at UCLA and serves as the inaugural Poet Laureate in the City of Glendale, California. He is a 2025-2026 Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets to support poetry programming with communities impacted by the January 2025 Eaton Fire, and an արդ եւս | in view Grantee with the Gulbenkian Foundation to cultivate a Western Armenian poetry community at the intersection of language and folk music.

An advisory board member with the International Armenian Literary Alliance, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. As a musician, he has released two albums of original compositions, Critical Distance and Pushkin Street.

People, Texts & Podcasts Mentioned in the Episode

Writing Remix is an Affiliate w/ Bookshop.org. Money from any book purchases from this episode goes to supporting Writing Remix

“I really try to put my heart and soul, and who I am, and the questions I think about, and my family’s experience into my poetry.”
-Raffi Wartanian

“What would life be without that ache? That constant sense of near arrival.”
-Raffi Wartanian

“After the genocide, Western Armenian essentially became a language in exile.”
-Raffi Wartanian

“Mr. Regis [a former teacher] [h]e said, ‘The, the meaning of life is what gives your life meaning.’”
-Raffi Wartanian

“I think of poetry as the most authentic form of self-expression because we can write so freely […] Like, word choice matters and form matters, but we can write in free verse. We can experiment. We can invent words. Poetry can be so many different things and can take on so many different subjects. So, I’ve always thought of poetry as the most authentic form of self-expression because it has the least amount of constraints.”
-Raffi Wartanian

“What I’ll say about for me personally and for my family is that my grandparents and great-grandparents survived the Armenian Genocide, and my parents were displaced by the Lebanese Civil War, and my brother served in the US Army from 2002 to 2004. So even before 9/11 happened, we were living with stories of genocide and civil war, and then seeing the remnants of it, not just in Lebanon whenever we’d visit, but also in the psychology of the intergenerational trauma.”
-Raffi Wartanian

Episode Reflection Questions:

  • Contact an elder in your family, this can mean whatever it needs to mean for you as long as they are much older than you and ask them to tell you a story about ___________. This blank is up to you to fill in. Be specific. Record this story however you need.
  • Now that you have this story, use a specific moment or quote from their story and launch into a poetic landscape/reflection. Go as deep as possible.
  • Write a letter to an elder that you never got to meet. Write as long as it takes to get passed the surface level niceties so that you make contact with them and then continue until exhausted. Fold this letter up and put it somewhere you can see it and read it when you want.

127. Holding Histories in Poetry w/ Glendale Poet Laureate & Educator Raffi Wartanian
(Transcript)

127. Holding Histories in Poetry w_ Glendale Poet Laureate & Educator Poetry as Biography_ Raffi WartanianDownload

The theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can follow the podcast & all social media: Linktree, join the newsletter/Follow Dan’s Medium & Follow the Substack to watch the full episode videos

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