risk _ a poets' agora 2017

ΤHIS IS NOT A DERVISH

(Taksim Square, Istanbul, 2013)

Dark cypress-green velvet
with wide black canvas hem
billows unfurled as he turns and turns arms open
to the sky and earth
in the standing crowd
clapping its hands
on the bitumen-laid
wound of the square

But on his face – But the face
is neither saint’s nor man’s

The face is a mask:
a monstrous duck Eyes capped
the beak sewed up sealed tight
–against the tear-gas– White hospital rubber –gazeless, breathless– over the swelling cypress foliage

Stop
Stop
your clapping
Seize him
Save him
In his white diving mask the air will soon be spent He’ll sink to the ground and won’t spring up

[transl.: by P.Ι.]

~

On December 1, 2017, Theodoros Chiotis, Kyoko Kishida, and myself -kindly invited by "A Poets' Agora" originators and curators, Karine Ancellin and Angela Lyras, in the beautiful, early 19th c., Koutzalexis House (re-decorated by Yannis Tsarouchis in the late 1960's)- read (in Greek, with English commentary) three poems each, including one commissioned especially for the occasion. These poems is available to read online (mine: https://apoetsagora.com/panayotis-ioannidis/ - as well as above).

But also the entire beautifully produced (by G Design Studio) booklet (in English and Greek) is now available to download: https://apoetsagora.files.wordpress.com/…/a-poets-agora-ris… - and the readings can be heard here: [mine starts at:]https://youtu.be/SOx7_y-PVl4?t=9m2s [and ends at 21'].

(The picture is a photograph by Panos Kokkinias of a detail from the house's gorgeous ceiling decorations.)

pastiche: a mock-kleftic refrain

It must be something of an unusual –and quite thrilling– pleasure, I imagine (it certainly was for me), to be asked to contribute verses to be included in a 'thriller'.

In my case, it was for a novel relating the adventures of a “reluctant spy” in mid-18th century Venice. In The Four Horsemen (Polygon Books, 2017), the novel’s author (who is also Associate Professor of American Literature at Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, Venice), Gregory Dowling, has his previous novel’s, Ascension (Thomas Dunne Books, 2015), protagonist, Alvise Marangon, meet Komnenos, a Phanariot Greek who, among other things, recites pseudo-kleftic songs.

My ‘assignment’ (a challenge kindly relayed by Alicia E Stallings) was therefore for “a couple of lines in Greek, which would be the refrain, something along the lines "We must keep our knives sharp for we will need them soon"”. To concoct such a pastiche of 18th c. patriotic, mock-folksong in Greek, I turned for inspiration to the style used, for example, by Rigas Ferraios (1757-1798). And, after spending a fascinating time double-checking some words and grammatical forms with poems of, and dictionaries for that period, I proposed the lines:

Αδέλφια, το μαχαίρι βαστάτε κοπτερόν,
Ναν' έτοιμο να κόψη τυράννου τον λαιμόν.

Thus, the novel’s narrator, on p. 121, has the following dialogue with Komnenos – subtly condensing not a little historical and philological knowledge:

”So you recite poems about bandits”, I said.
“Songs composed by bandits but rearranged by me into more formal poetry for a more sophisticated audience. […] Here I am, clearly a man from an educated background, who has worked for the Ottomans, pretending to be a wild rebel ready to cut their throats.”
“Is that what was happening in your poem?”
“The refrain said ‘Adelfia to maheri vastate kopteron / Nan’ etimo na kopsi tyrannou ton lemon’, which is to say, ‘Brothers, keep your knife sharp, so that it may be ready to cut the tyrant’s throat.”

– hardly a spoiler; and there are another 181 pages in this historical mystery!