ROSA LUXEMBURG STIFTUNG, ATHENS, 2019

TRANSLATED BY Christiana Mygdali
EDITED BY Mania Meziti
EDITORIAL TEAM: Eirini Margariti, Fanis Papageorgiou

In a world that idolizes the unique and the individual, the coexistence of fifty poets in an anthology could be considered as a political act. An(other) anthology that attempts to chart the area of personal experience of people living and writing poetry in a crucial era. A bilingual anthology, that tries to describe personal experience through the power of verbal journeys, by imprinting aesthetical, stylistic and thematic tendencies – provided that they exist, seeking a community within speech, provided that it exists as well.

The fifty poems in the anthology belong to twenty-five poetesses and twenty-five poets. They refer to the space and the landscape that surrounds them, how they perceive it and how it interacts with their inner world. The male and female poets address any concerns they have such as political events that marked the country, the refugee issue, silence and the limited ability to react to the social reality, cancelled dreams, love and the anguish to safeguard it, historical developments, social exclusion, identity, gender, norms, diversity. All that seen through the eyes of people born from the Regime Change in 1974 to 1999. People in an age range that, during the economic crisis, found and still find themselves in the most productive period of their lives. The poems were written in Greek and have been translated in English in the expectation of them travelling farther away.

Poetry as an Art stemmed from the vibrant spoken word; however, the uniformity of the spoken word banishes it, that is to say it banishes what helps people become what they really are. Perhaps that is why we write poetry. To say not what we normally say, but what we don’t dare to admit. To invent and interpret. Even if it is expressed in a cryptic or a suggestive way, using expressive means such as metaphor and hyperbole, poetry invites the reader not so much to comprehend it, as to experience it.

download pdf: https://rosalux.gr/el/publication/xypnisa-se-mia-hora-i-woke-country