There is a buzz about Greek poetry at the moment: quick on the heels of the impressive Penned in the Margins anthology Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis comes a Penguin compilation Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry (ed. Karen Van Dyck). I haven't read it yet, but the review in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago implied the book captures an exciting resurgence precipitated by economic turmoil which rather than bemoan current social hardships does what “poetry does best: offer new ways to imagine what can be radically different realities”. I'm pleased to introduce a further Greek poet today, Natalie Katsou, a multi-talented and polymathic young writer, theatre-director and teacher I worked with until recently. I find her poetry ambitious and disarming, a collage of giddy imaginative jumps full of cathartic drama and dissonance. I reprint here a sequence from her third volume Nymphalidae (Kedros, 2015), followed by her brief bio:
Chrysanthemum
Cartes Postales
the dreamy woman lies down on the bench with the dead shellfish she wags
her tail shines her teeth with the tongue her black bitten tongue
behind fear there is a smile
when the painter wakes up he’ll seize the knife on the bench and stick
it in her breast for spring to flow he will cut her into thin slices place her
on lumps of salted rice and share her out among the orphans
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Left like a gabardine on the table of an entrance dripping a lake after the rain on the wooden floor as on the grass with the thistles and a bunch of poppies that will shed their petals before nightfall soaking the red linen on the sleeve and the last rays hitting the lining while a bag of fresh trout slips gently off the table onto the lake on the floor. The impending moment of return to this spot stretches and hovers and gathers wind-like in corn till the lake dries up the trout falls among the thistles sweeping the linen to cover it with a red cast-off garment.
Left on an entrance hook she slides towards the lake till a red cast-off
garment covers her.
Left on the grass with the thistles she stretches and hovers and gathers. Like the wind.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Arranging flowers and the weight of transparency while horseshoes in copper pots overflowing with boiled snow like a midnight kiss with a guitar’s empty belly for a pillow with a long exotic arm straining the cold in the hive exhaling between the chords as momentarily a swan.
Grief tears the lonely apart
thoughts rust in the isolation and smell a cage to protect them
wind Eumenides worms in windstorms
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In the light’s parting the brain’s woolly parcel
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In the light’s parting the brain’s woolly parcel
bloats an octopus in the nest and climbs up while the eyes wriggle
half-blind against the bats that swoop down with visions behind the fleshy
nutshells
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The earth is a square mat to sharpen the fingertips exorcizing the flapping of wings
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The earth is a square mat to sharpen the fingertips exorcizing the flapping of wings
The dream-haunted woman who dares not sleep appears ornamental
A head sleeps beside her swearing to the form of sleeplessness as a spot
of an irrational ocean and giving it a comrade’s name
Dead beauty
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------observing a water lily caught in a white transparent ice cube
mouths crystallize or a long straight line with two human ends
disappearance within another – a future
sustained of exhaling
is the emptiness between the days that passed with nothing
happening
happening
silences in a cloud ostensibly heartless
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Lying prostrate on the grass with yellow hair
bearing a quiver with a pomegranate in the pocket
barefooted and a deep cut full of dry blood
hiding blades and secrets under her breast.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She had the look of a dead fairy.
Or a blue entrapped dragonfly.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
with the rain
the earth jolts
short-lived psychopomps like seasons
dissolve before eyes spotted from the past
and closed
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the butterflies flee in packs
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homeless guards of those who don’t return
words flying with paper wings exchange
captive skies
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Dragging a parachute ripped round a branch
ready for a hideout. A map made
of pencil sharpening and
cotton bread. The ticket is cut
again and again
into smaller pieces.
Repatriation is a vanilla and salt ice cream in an ancient newspaper
next to the map with the ticket.
The teeth break with every attempt.
Buried there it never melts. Without
a kiss.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wearing the parachute for a nightie.
Impersonating sleep.
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A far-off scream in the sand dripping on and on and echoing the stars’ asphyxia
for there they don’t know of the twin band binding us to chaos its yellow
imprint runs among the bare trunks
as though pleading to be uprooted
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infuriated palimpsests of inner flesh fissures of touches shrinking in a
broken vase of sand I stand and sweep it up clean it tidy it and with my fingers
I lay each grain on the tip of the tongue
the blood afire and instantly white mercury shoots me up to the clouds
I swear to be contained in this doom before the cut off word dawns on
the forehead
electrifying the moment and casting it as thunder in the mind
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hand and foot battle in a woven basket of moulded cherries. Eyes gagged, sleeves pinned in a line,
thoughts in chains. A groan and a kick
towards the exit. Suction and
dissolution. Birth
Substantiality
Ultimate performative act to bring about the raising of joy and
catharsis
Place Japan
Place imagined and necessary
Place everywhere
Time excluded
Time the self
Translated by Yiannis Goumas
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Natalie Katsou was born in Athens. She studied Law and Theatre Studies at the University of Athens and she had her Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Directing at East 15 Acting School, University of Essex under the Minotis Scholarship by the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece. She lives and works as a theatre director and a drama lecturer in London; she is the Artistic Director of Operaview.“Magodos” (Kastaniotis Publ. 2008- nominated for the DIAVAZO Literature Prize) , “Cochlea” (Kedros Publ. 2012- nominated for the ANAGNOSTIS Literature Prize) and “Nymfalidae” (Kedros Publ. 2015).Her poems have been translated in English by Yiannis Goumas, in French by Michel Volkovitch and in Spanish by Mario Dominguez Parra. Her poetry features in magazines such as POIHSI, and poihtiki and in various e-zines such as poeticanet.gr, e-poema, Mediterranean.nu, Quarterly Review and others.
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Natalie Katsou was born in Athens. She studied Law and Theatre Studies at the University of Athens and she had her Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Directing at East 15 Acting School, University of Essex under the Minotis Scholarship by the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece. She lives and works as a theatre director and a drama lecturer in London; she is the Artistic Director of Operaview.“Magodos” (Kastaniotis Publ. 2008- nominated for the DIAVAZO Literature Prize) , “Cochlea” (Kedros Publ. 2012- nominated for the ANAGNOSTIS Literature Prize) and “Nymfalidae” (Kedros Publ. 2015).Her poems have been translated in English by Yiannis Goumas, in French by Michel Volkovitch and in Spanish by Mario Dominguez Parra. Her poetry features in magazines such as POIHSI, and poihtiki and in various e-zines such as poeticanet.gr, e-poema, Mediterranean.nu, Quarterly Review and others.
You can hear Natalie reading with two other Greek poets, Nikos Erinakis and Haris Psarras, in both Greek and English this Sunday 17th April at The Proud Archivist in Haggerston. More details here.
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