Tamara Wilson

Dr Tamara Wilson is an award-winning poet, academic and research fellow at the University of Roehampton, London. Alongside the investigation of postcolonial legacies in literature, she is interested the exploration of identity and memory in categorization-resistant hybrid literary forms from a feminist perspective.

The Remnant’s Merelots

Sometimes, it is the irreverent grace of a khatchkar; at others, the seal of Divine Essence on a desolate site: the holy breath of God. This is how the natives of your long-lost land appear before you with the first rays of the sun. This is when the hymns you hear begin to sing to you in the silenced tongue of the heart. Each note, each word reminds you: you are nothing more than an unredeemed carcass. Garod won’t leave you alone you soon realise and head to the local graveyard: to leave flowers on the graves of strangers, the namesakes of your loved ones. To feel you belong. To prove you had a family once, you had a home. To own a tombstone to anchor your soul. But Garod is a merciless sadist, Garod is a callous sod, and he haunts you relentlessly in the voices of the longed.

The Monday after Easter
Is the day of the dead.
A day to unearth, a day to greet,
All your past selves, your hidden pains.
One face at a time they will appear,
While you hold your hushed, one-man vigil
Most faces are as nameless as you now,
Most places, frozen and still.

Garod: A profoundly intense level of longing in Western Armenian.
Khatchkar: A stone memorial stele bearing a cross-centre and traditional Armenian motifs.
Merelots: A commemorative day observed following each of the five major feasts of the Armenian Apostolic Church.