0612 _ blind date #12

blind date #12 [please follow the links below to 3 slideshows]



01 _ the space as found



02 _ working on the installations



03 _ opening night

0905

[click here for the full slideshow]

0904

[full slideshow here]

poetry place, london

'Are you here for the zen thing?' she asked us outside of the 'Poetry Place'. We could have been.

But it was also 'Poetry Unplugged': each one -including my friend Chris Sakellaridis and 23 others- reading for a maximum of 5'. A healthy mix of voices. And so nice that T., C., D. & D., and -unexpectedly- K., C., and P. were also there. Read "A poet growing up" then "Burning candle" -the two poems preceding the last one in the Lifesaver- then "The orchard", that opens the book (in English versions by myself and Stefanos Basigkal).


Afterwards, we repaired to the nearest pub - a sweetly summery evening.

[Photograph taken in London, April 2009.]

saturday / spring

[A piece in Greek, weaving together the Saturday afternoon when I saw Let the right one in, with Niki-Rebecca Papageorgiou's astonishing 'prose poem fairy tales', John Felstiner's two books on Paul Celan, and a Greek version of Tadeusz Rozewicz's poem 'Pigtail'. The photo was taken in Cracow in May 2008.]

the orchard / again

The lifesaver ['To sosivio', Kastaniotis editions, 2008; reprinted 2009] hit the water again:


The orchard

That man was meant for this one
As the sunken statue for the sea
the wind for the dress hung out to dry

Their bodies, earth and water
of a single orchard


But the wind tore the dress apart
– the stone is ravaged by the sea

The orchard though remains

Fruitless – yet every morning
finds its soil damp

The orchard waits



[English version by Panayotis Ioannidis and Stephen Bacigal.
The photograph shows a detail of Monika Zawadzka's print that adorns the cover.]

'time for reading'

[a piece in greek, moving from the anonymous poster -'time for reading'- that appeared in athens after the december 2008 riots, to a celebration of the merits of both john gray's straw dogs and rebecca solnit's hope in the dark - and of the fact that both were recently translated in greek]

epiphany

[a most telling photograph by tina rota, taken during the athens riots, on 10.xii.2008, stadiou st.]

happy new year

[greek version -based on the english translation by maya peretz- of a poem by the polish poet halina poswiatowska: as a small new year's present to readers known and unknown.]

for the solution

[a piece in greek, commissioned by lifo free press weekly. written on 8 december 2009 -the riots in athens had started in the night of 6 december- it principally expressed my consternation at the impasse that violence, under all its guises, represents.]

[not?] a chance meeting

[a piece in greek -commissioned by 'kathimerini' daily for the 'comment on a theme' column of its saturday 'life & arts' section- weaving the rich intellectual and social activist heritage described in rachel cohen's a chance meeting with one of its vindications: barack obama's recent election as president of the u.s.a.]

sailing in

On 3.xii.2008, the publication of To Sosivio [The Lifesaver] was toasted with red wine, thanks to the kind invitation of Kastaniotis Editions and the flagship 'Eleftheroudakis' bookshop, on Stadiou St., Athens.