Join us to celebrate the launch of You Must Become Field, the debut poetry collection by Lebanese-Armenian poet Perla Kantarjian, published by Bad Betty Press.
Rooted in the long aftermath of the Armenian Genocide, You Must Become Field moves between inherited memory and the urgent present, tracing the ways history persists—in language, landscape, the body, and across generations. Kantarjian’s poems attend to what survives rupture and displacement, and to the forms of remembrance, intimacy and resistance that emerge in their wake. For the evening, Kantarjian will be joined in conversation by Sarah Mnatzaganian, an award-winning British-Armenian poet whose writing moves through family, Armenian identity and the textures of memory Together they will explore the histories and inheritances that shape the collection, the possibilities of writing across distance and generations, and what it means to make poetry in the presence of histories that are not past. Their conversation will be followed by a reading from You Must Become Field.
About the Speakers
Perla Kantarjian is a Lebanese-Armenian writer with recent work in Mizna, Electric Literature, Wasafiri, The Rumpus, and Black Warrior Review. Longlisted for the National Writing Competition and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, Kantarjian is Pushcart Prize nominated and has garnered recognition from the Southbank Centre, The Poetry Society, Palette Poetry, and more. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia where she was selected as Sonny Mehta Scholar. Her debut poetry collection, You Must Become Field, is forthcoming from Bad Betty Press in 2026.
Sarah Mnatzaganian is anAnglo-Armenian who poet lives in Ely. Her work has been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies. Her first book, Lemonade in the Armenian Quarter, won the Saboteur Award in 2022 and inspired a song cycle by the composer Noah Max. Sarah was runner-up in the Telegraph Poetry Competition 2025 and is currently on the long list for the 2026 Forward Prize for best single poem. Sarah is finalising the manuscript of her next book, which explores her Armenian family in Jerusalem, and which is being translated into Hebrew by Dr Tamar Drukker.