Antonis Tsokos was born in Athens in 1976. His first poetry collection titled Swing with the stars was published in 2013, followed by One more drink, Charles, Hours of plural insomnia, and From Emmanouil Benaki to midnight, all by Gavriilides Books. His poems have been translated into German and have been included in various anthologies. His new poetry collection titled A cooperative of janitors was published in December 2024 by Kichli.

Since 2016 he manages the online magazine Monocle. In autumn 2021, he opened Monocle Bookstore in Feidiou str., in the centre of Athens and in spring 2023 the Monocle Editions.

Your latest poetry collection Συνεταιρισμός θυρωρών [A cooperative of janitors] was recently published by Kichli. Tell us a few things about the book.
Α cooperative of janitors  is my fifth poetry collection, the first to be published by Kichli. The poems included in the book were written from 2019 to early 2022. I don’t remember which is the first poem in the collection, I mean chronologically, but I do remember the last one, that is, “The Cats of Feidiou str.”.  This is the only poem written in a bookstore. I should say that these poems, to a large extent, are also children of the city. Of my beloved Athens and beyond.

Love and death, time that relentlessly passes by and an underlying sorrow for things that are irreversibly lost seem to pervade the poems of the book. Which are the main themes the book touches upon?
Love, an ancient art that is being lost day by day, is one of the main themes of the collection. Another theme is time, which often moves in reverse, from the present to the past, deep into its arrogance, wearing itself away instead of inflicting damage. There are also references to love, death, and wealth unrelated to material possessions. Finally, there are conversations with my favorite poets; poets who have exerted an influence on my daily life.

Since your first poetry collection in 2013 until today, more than ten years later, what has changed and what has remained the same in your poetry? Are there recurrent points of reference in your writings?
My first poetry collection is quite different from my subsequent books. Both in the style and form of the poems. First writing ventures have an innocence that is difficult to repeat. In Swing with the stars I focused on finding the rhythm of my poems. Poetry is a dance that begins on earth and ends in heaven. For this to happen, your knees have to bleed repeatedly.
This condition won’t change no matter how many years pass by. The wounds only differ, some have healed while others are still deepening. If there is a point of reference in my poetry it is the urban lifestyle. The trees that live in my poems do not know what life is like in the forest. They have all grown up on busy avenues.

Critics have commented on the use of surreal elements in your poetry. What purpose does this sense of the unfamiliar, along with a strong ironic and sarcastic element, serve?
Many times poetry goes beyond reality to put things into the right perspective. In one of my poems I write “have you seen birds stop at red lights?”. In societies boundaries are set by people; poetry is governed by other rules. The law of gravity weighs down objects; in human thought there is no predetermined end. Otherwise poetic irony and sarcasm is the only way out.

More generally, what role does language play in your writings?
Language is both the beginning and the end for those of us involved in writing. A dear person of mine used to say that it’s the tools that make the master. Language is the most important tool we have in our hands. If we use it right we can do wonders, if we overdo it we will prove unworthy. There is always the risk of still damaging the tool itself.

How does poetry converse with the surrounding environment? Could poetry be used to imagine what could be radically different realities?
The role of poetry is comforting, subversive and radical. Only through poetry can we imagine a world without prejudices and inequalities. Can a poem change the world? Definitely no. But it can help us reconsider our perceptions.

In recent years there has been a burgeoning of poetry in every form. How is this strong civic presence to be explained?
In recent years, the production of poetry books has been on the rise. This does not mean that the interest of poetry readers has increased as well. However, in order not to be level-headed, some steps have been taken in this direction. Small publishing houses, independent bookstores and some creators have contributed to this end. Important poetry festivals are now held both in Athens and around the country. What is needed is for the poets to put ourselves second. Poetry should always come first.

How do contemporary poets converse with global literary trends? Where does the local/national meets the global and the universal?
The new generation of poets has an important tool in their hands, the internet. Technology has unwittingly benefited the written word. It is important that the poetry written today in every part of the planet reaches the eyes, ears and consciousness of our own creators the moment it is written. From then on, it is up to each creator to decide what to keep and what to leave free in the sky of poetry.

*Interview by Athina Rossoglou

*From https://www.greeknewsagenda.gr

Κυρίες και κύριοι
Αυτή είναι η τελευταία λέξη μας
-Η πρώτη και τελευταία λέξη μας-
Οι ποιητές κατεβήκανε απ’ τον Όλυμπο.

Για τους παλιότερους
Η ποίηση ήταν ένα είδος πολυτέλειας
Για μας ωστόσο
Πρώτης ανάγκης είδος είναι:
Αδύνατο χωρίς αυτή να ζήσουμε.

Σ’ αντίθεση με τους παλιότερους
-Κι αυτό το λέω μ’ όλο το σέβας-
Εμείς υποστηρίζουμε
Ότι ο ποιητής δεν είναι αλχημιστής
Ο ποιητής είν’ ένας άνθρωπος κι αυτός
Ένας χτίστης πού χτίζει τον τοίχο του:
Ένας κατασκευαστής θυρών και παραθύρων.

Εμείς κουβεντιάζουμε
σε γλώσσα καθημερινή
Σύμβολα καβαλιστικά δεν θέλουμε.

Κι ακόμη κάτι:
Ο ποιητής είναι εδώ
Για να μη γενεί στραβό το δέντρο.

Αυτό είναι το μήνυμά μας.
Καταγγέλλουμε τον ποιητή δημιουργό
Τον Ποιητή Κελεπούρι
Τον ποιητή χαρτοπόντικα. [ . . .]

Μπροστά από την πύλη της ομορφιάς υπάρχει ένας
ρακοσυλλέκτης και ένας ανάπηρος
όσο πλησιάζεις σου ζητάνε να θυμηθείς
και δεν μπορείς να βρεις τι
μια γυναίκα τρέχει να πάρει γάλα και ξαναμπαίνει μέσα
ω δεν ήμουνα εγώ αυτός, ποια είσαι εσύ
ο ταξιτζής που σταματάει
μια ερώτηση θα κάνει και θα έχει πει την ιστορία της ζωής σου
σταμάτα κάπου, διόρθωσε την διαδρομή
κάποιος βάζει τα δάχτυλά του στην λίμνη
και τα ψάχνει μετά για μια τουλάχιστον εποχή
όταν βρέχει προσπαθεί να τελειώσει εκείνο το γράμμα
τριάντα χρόνια μετά, παίρνει μια μονολεκτική απάντηση
συνεχίζει να προσπαθεί να γράφει
πρέπει να αλλάξω σκέφτεται λίγο την διατύπωση
η βροχή που ξαναρχίζει, τον κάνει να ελπίζει πάλι
έτσι ευχάριστα περνάει ο καιρός,
σταμάτα κάπου, άναψε τσιγάρο, διόρθωσε ότι μπορείς,
φύγε για λίγο, φύγε για πολύ, γύρνα, μείνε πολύ,
κοίτα έξω,
κοίτα την βροχή, μην γράφεις.

Ράψιμο

Με σκουριασμένα βελόνια με στομωμένα ψαλίδια κόβω και ράβω. Η δαχτυλήθρα μου τρύπησε, τρυπιέμαι κι εγώ. Κι οι καρφίτσες μου χαίρονται τα γηρατειά του μαγνήτη. Κόβω και ράβω παρ’ όλ’ αυτά, κόβω και ράβω, να φτιάξω ρούχο να ντυθώ. Γιατί θα ’ρθουνε μέρες κακές και χειρότερες νύχτες, που τα ψαλίδια ολάνοιχτα θα ξαγρυπνούν στα τραπέζια. Θα κλείσουν για πάντα τα μάτια των βελονιών, να μην περνάει πια κλωστή. Στο βαθύ σκοτάδι πίσω απ’ τον μπουφέ, στον αγύριστο, θα ’χει πάει η δαχτυλήθρα μου. Αστραφτερές οι καρφίτσες θα ξεσηκώνονται. Κι ο μαγνήτης μου θα ’χει πεθάνει.

*

Η σβούρα

Μέσα στα δώρα που της φέραν στη γιορτή της, βρήκε μια σβούρα σκοτεινή που δε γυρνούσε. Ώρες την έριχνε πια στο χαλί. Κι έμενε η σβούρα σα νεκρή, σκοτεινιάζοντας γύρω την κάμαρη. Έξω στη λιακαδίτσα, στ’ ωραίο χωματάκι, μόλις που έπαιρνε μισή στροφή και ξανασταματούσε. Και η αυλίτσα έπεφτε μονομιάς στη σκιά.

Τι σβούρα ήταν αυτή; Ποιος της την είχε χαρίσει; Η μαμά της δεν ήξερε να της πει. Μακάρι να ’ξερε, της έλεγε, να του τα ψάλλει. Τις ξαδελφούλες της πια ξεμονάχιαζε, τις συμμαθήτριές της. Και τι μας πέρασες, μωρέ σαχλή; της κάκιωναν εκείνες. Μια παλιοσβούρα, και χαλασμένη, θα σου φέρναμε εμείς στη γιορτή σου;

Μόνη της έπρεπε να βρει την άκρη. Το σχολείο της ήτανε μέσα στα πεύκα. Κάτω απ’ τα πεύκα στεκόταν στο διάλειμμα, με τη σβούρα αγκαλιά, και κοίταζε πέρα.

Κάποια φορά, όταν χτύπησε πια το κουδούνι, κι όλα τα κοριτσάκια χαθήκαν στις τάξεις, αυτή στεκόταν ακόμα εκεί. Συλλογισμένη πήρε να περπατάει. Σε λίγο δεν έβλεπε πια το σχολείο, το σπίτι της, βρέθηκε πολύ πιο μακριά, κι αργότερα κρύφτηκε πίσω της το τελευταίο σπιτάκι, ενώ το δάσος, ατέλειωτο, συνεχιζόταν.

Τότε είδε μπροστά της έναν τεράστιο πύργο. Σκοτεινός και παράξενος υψωνόταν στα σύννεφα, κι είχε την πόρτα του ανοιχτή και την καλούσε.

Χώθηκε μέσα, δισταχτική. Μια σκάλα στενή διακρινόταν στο βάθος. Πού να οδηγούσε; Όσο κι αν κοίταζε ψηλά δεν μπορούσε να δει, γιατί εχτός που ήταν γύρω σκοτάδι, η σκάλα φαινόταν να χάνεται στα ύψη. Περπατώντας δειλά προς τα εκεί, χάιδευε τη σβούρα της ηλεκτρισμένη. Κάτι σα λάμψη πήρε να την τριγυρνά. Έκατσε χάμω, στο πρώτο σκαλάκι, κι ήσυχα ήσυχα, προσεκτικά, χωρίς καθόλου να στρίβει τα δάχτυλά της, άφησε πλάι της, με τη μύτη, τη σβούρα.

Που πήρε όμορφα στριφογυρίζοντας ν’ ανεβαίνει, μέσα σε σπίθες χρυσαφιές χρωματιστές σκαλί σκαλί, με κινήσεις χορεύτριας, με στροβίλους καθώς πάει τ’ αδράχτι.

*Από το βιβλίο «Του Λιναριού τα πάθη – Ο Μέγας Μυρμηκοφάγος» (μικρά πεζά), εκδόσεις Άγρα, Αθήνα 1993. («Του Λιναριού τα πάθη» πρώτη έκδοση: Άγρα, 1986)
**Εμείς τα αναδημοσιεύουμε από εδώ: https://ppirinas.blogspot.com/2016/04/blog-post_12.html

Αγνοούμενος

Ο πατέρας μου
ένα κανάτι κόκκινο
ψημμένο από ήλιο και κάματο.
Ένα καΐκι αραγμένο σε μπαλκόνι
αντίκρυ στη θάλασσα
Πού και πού, σκόρπιες κουβέντες
Ένας φίλος που πνίγηκε στον Ινδικό
Μια Σερραία που του ‘κλεψε την καρδιά
Κάθε που μιλάει για τα παλιά
φουντώνουν γαλάζια έλκη στο σώμα του.
Τον αφήνω έτσι να νοσεί, του κάνει καλό
Έπιασε ψύχρα πατέρα,
γυρίζω να πω
Μα εκείνος λείπει.
Στην κινούμενη άμμο της λήθης
ξανά αγνοούμενος
Του ρίχνω μια ζακέτα στην πλάτη

*

Η επιστολή

Αγαπητέ φίλε,
Εκείνη την ομπρέλα που σου δάνεισα
παρακαλώ να την επιστρέψεις.
Τη χρειάζομαι
να τρυπάω τις αερολογίες των φαύλων
μα και των νουνεχών
να σκουντάω όσους λαγοκοιμούνται στα παγκάκια
και ονειρεύονται σωτήρες
να αποκρούω τα σάλια των κολάκων,
τους φανφαρόνους και τους προφέσορες.
Κι όταν το μένος μου για τούτο το καταραμένο
κοπάδι ξεθυμάνει
με δυνατό βοριά και την ομπρέλα μου ανοιχτή
θα αναληφθώ.
Όχι σαν κάποιος θεόπνευστος,
μα σαν κάποιος πολύ κουρασμένος

*Από τη συλλογή “από αλάτι”, Εκδόσεις Θίνες.

Στης ακρούλας την εύθραυστη καμπή
φτάνουμε στου χρόνου αιωρούμενη πυξίδα
Αέναη κυκλικά γύρω από του εαυτό της μας αγγίζει φευγαλέα
μα πάλι γυρισμένη είχες την πλάτη σου

Σε ό,τι τυλίγει τις σκόρπιες εικόνες
με ένα αόρατο νήμα
και δίνει σχήμα στην χαώδη σου μορφή
που άσκοπα περιφέρεται

Σε ό,τι περνά μα διασπείρεται
στης συγκυρίας την άτεγκτη μοίρα
που- παρά τα λεγόμενα- ίσως προσπεράσει και αργά δεις τα ίχνη
πεταμένο μαντήλι στην άκρη του άδειου βροχερού δρόμου

Τρίτη, σχεδόν ξημέρωμα,
και στην απέραντη ακτή
σημάδι μελανό, προκλητικό,
μόνο το μπλε σακίδιο
να περιμένει.
Μέσα ο χρόνος καιροφυλακτούσε
στο παλιό ρολόι,
που οι δείχτες του δεν ξέραν πώς
να σταματήσουν στις οκτώ και πέντε.
Μια καθαρή τσατσάρα
τυλιγμένη προσεκτικά
σ’ ένα φτηνό χαρτί,
μία τυρόπιτα, λίγο νερό μεταλλικό,
δέκα ευρώ,
σε μια ζελατίνα η ταυτότητα,
να σε αναγνωρίσουνε αμέσως.
Λιτό περιεχόμενο,
ένας μικρόκοσμος λιτός,
λιτή ζωή.
Κι εκείνο εκεί το χτένι
να μην μπορεί με τίποτα
τον κόμπο που ’χω στον λαιμό μου
να ξεμπλέξει.

Efstathia P. (pen name: tria epslion) was born in Thessaloniki in 1994. She speaks fluently English and Spanish from which she translates poems and essays in Greek. She has a Bachelor degree in Greek Literature and a MA degree in General and Comparative Literature. She is working as an educator, an editor and a translator. Her first writing venture I know those women who weave in the middle of the sea [γνωρίζω αυτές που πλέκουν στη μέση της θάλασσας] received the First Unpublished Poetry Collection Award by Thraka in 2022. The collection has also been shortlisted for the Award of the literary journal Anagnostis. Poems and translations of hers have been published in several digital and print magazines.

Last spring, when I was thinking about a potential title for my collection of poems, I realized that it is essentially a book that speaks about women trying to survive (literally and figuratively) on an island or in a country that is amidst the sea. Historically, women have found their power through telling stories. This was especially valuable for women who didn’t have a house (or a room) of their own. They resorted to creating a home, symbolically, with their voices and their presence. Until today, one of the most powerful tools a woman can use to reshape reality is her voice, as it is something that nobody can take away from her.

Your first writing venture I know those women who weave in the middle of the sea received the First Unpublished Poetry Collection Award by Thraka in 2022. Tell us a few things about the book. What about the title?

For me, this book is an attempt to depict and combine thoughts, images, and moments that were crucial to me. I brought them together to compose an image of a collective life with the Mediterranean landscape as its background. Its two parts reflect two aspects of life – social and personal. Sea, from this perspective, resembles a thin line in a child’s drawing, a border between what is visible and what is not. Above the sea, our everyday life, all these things that make us go on. Under the sea, people who didn’t make it, or at least, this part of the history that people don’t want to listen to.

Poet Tonia Tzirita Zacharatou has recently commented that contemporary poetry is characterized by a new sensitivity, by poems that talk about “the transformative dimension of friendship, the politics of love”. How is this new solidarity expressed in your poetry?

In the last decade, many female authors thematized the healing potential of female friendship, and it became a part of the debate about literature in the literary world. Rightfully so, because the moments in women’s everyday lives in which we express solidarity with other women, were neglected from the literary discussions for a long time. And, for me, the only way to survive and prosper is with solidarity: by forming safe spaces and fostering communities that position love as their primary goal. Friendship, especially women’s friendship, is radical: through strong bonds, it creates new forms of existence, reshaping the way of living. Women have always been kind and supportive to me and that’s how I am trying to be; not just to pay them back, but mostly as a means of survival. In this violent reality, it feels as if we only have each other. That is why we need to be gentler and kinder to our friends. We also need to talk and write more, making a statement about the current state of living, which is not functional any more.

Which are the main themes your poetry touches upon? How does the social and the political converse with the personal and the individual in your poems?

In my poems I mostly speak about what makes me feel. Inequality, migration, and social violence, but also love, hope, and friendship. I want to open up to readers and let them in – to speak about what I consider important. I am trying to share with others my perspective on things. Personal is always political and vice versa. I write about a lot of different topics such as surpassing cultural and physical borders, creating bonds with people, and living in solidarity. This is why I would say that my poetry mostly speaks about my reality, my experience as a human being, a woman ‘living in Greece’, and all the other realities that intersect with mine, primarily those of my students, friends, and fellow citizens.

What about language? What role does language play in your writings?

Language is a vehicle. I work as a teacher, mostly teaching Greek and English as second languages, while at the same time, I am an editor. For me poetry is sharing a point of view, making experience a common ground. So I try to write my thoughts, with a lot of detail, for the reader to recreate a moment, a moment in which I was present. Probably it might have been easier to become a photographer, but with poetry, I enjoy the fact that there is only language, it’s more direct. Language is a tool, and its primary goal is the transmission of ideas. For me, art for art’s sake is a dead end. We write things because we want people to read them, hoping that they will like them or at least that we will have the slightest interaction with them.

Which are the main challenges new writers face nowadays in order to have their work published? What role do the social media play in the promotion of new literary voices?

We should not forget that writing literature is usually a privilege. It requires time and resources. These are conditions that are not easily created, and also it’s becoming more and more difficult to strike a balance between being a partner, a worker, a political subject, and also an active artist. I won Thraka’s award, and I received a lot of support and care both from the publishing house but also from my editor Katerina Iliopoulou. I know that many people, including a lot of friends of mine, don’t face the same reality when they try to publish something.

The best way to share your work is through writing networks, festivals, fanzines, and other literature-related events. The Internet is also one of the tools that help young authors share their work. It makes literature more accessible and inclusive, both for authors and the readers. However, it would not be good for our reading practices to entirely move to an online sphere because, on the internet, texts are decontextualized and mass-produced. We need structural changes, but until then, the internet is a good coping mechanism.

How do young writers converse with global literary trends? Where does the local meet the national and the universal?

When I was studying Greek Literature, I was wondering why it is so important to identify the trends, topics, common motifs, and styles in poetry, since poetry was for me more of a diary back then. I was lucky enough to change my perspective through the years. I believe that it is important to create maps of the literary field because it is an alternate form of History, it expresses the unsaid. When we see certain topics becoming more common, such as gender or crisis, that means that the majority of the writers are probably affected by them and they wish to share their experience through literature.

But at the same time, talking about global literary trends is a very complex task, especially regarding poetry, which is usually less visible outside of its country of origin. Poetry is highly personal, as it comes from an author, but it is also a product of a collective. Thus, it is subjective, but it also relies on the shared understanding between a poet and the readers from the context it stems from. For instance, a woman in Greece that works in retail will face different problems than a migrant woman from an eastern country that works as a maid in a hostel, and their poetry will carry in itself the implications of different experiences in everyday life.

Of course, when women write to claim their rights through poetry, it is feminist poetry, but at the same time it is not a trend, it is simply a need that is being expressed; it is the way people are trying to survive, through their art, creating space for them in History, trying to find a place in the map. And that’s when the local meets the universal, and poetry becomes the language of our mutual understanding.

*Interview by Athina Rossoglou

**Από το https://www.greeknewsagenda.gr/reading-greece-efstathia-p-tria-epsilon-on-bringing-the-voices-of-women-to-the-forefront-as-a-means-to-reshape-reeality/

By James Provencher*

Like her sisters in the art of crystalline complexity, Australian poet and novelist Antigone Kefala persevered through years of isolation, obscurity, and critical neglect.

Commemorative Edition: Fiction/Poetry by Antigone Kefala. Two Volumes: Fiction (375 pages), Poetry (287 pages). Paperback/Boxed Set: $80 (AUD),  available singly for $34.95 (AUD), Giramondo Publishing.

The long-neglected and often marginalized Australian poet and novelist Antigone Kefala died in 2022 in Sydney at the age of 91. Thankfully, her publisher, Giramondo, has recently gathered a life’s work of seventy years into a Boxed Commemorative Set Edition.

It is a gift to have her complete works available in two immaculate, compact volumes: two hundred poems, six novellas, and ten short stories. A somewhat slim oeuvre, some would say, but Kefala’s formidably distilled vision resonates with considerable lyric power. Her prose and the poetry are spare, elliptical, and minimalist. Highly compressed force-fields, Kefala’s creations are primed to detonate, to release what she believed to be deeper nurturing forces and energies. Reading her work, one is put in mind of Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Anna Akhmatova, and Elizabeth Bishop. Like her sisters in the art of crystalline complexity, Kefala persevered through years of isolation, obscurity, and critical neglect.

A newcomer from an old country, a High Modernist European type who was out of step with Australia’s vogue in the ’50s for social realism, Kefala was early on labelled an ‘outsider’ because of her gender and ethnicity, excluded because she was pursuing an immigrant aesthetic. Summing up the early years, Kefala recalled: “I always felt that I was trespassing, that I was left waiting by the wayside, passed by, shunted to the side of the road.”

Recognition would come, but late. In 2005 she finally won Australia’s most esteemed poetry prize, The Judith Wright Calanthe Award. Then, shortly before her death, she won the country’s highest literary honor for her body of work: The Patrick White Award. That must have been ironically gratifying for a monastically modest artist who wryly maintained: “Reputation is something one must avoid at all costs.”

Kefala’s backstory is an archetypal journey to find a new home in a new world. Born in 1931 in Brailia, Romania to a Greek family that originally hailed from near Ithaka, she grew up speaking French at school and Romanian at home. Her father spoke Greek. The Germans invaded at the beginning of World War II. Then, with their retreat, the Russians marched in, forcing the family to live for three years in Greece, first in an abandoned orphanage, then in a displaced persons camp.  Waiting for transit to somewhere, anywhere, Kefala learned Greek, her third language. She called this her refugees-in-waiting period: “Foreign here, there, foreign everywhere.”  It was 1950 and she was sixteen when she finally traveled to another dislocation, another hemisphere, down under in New Zealand.
 
The Promised Land
The roads were of candy
the houses of ice cream
the cattle of liquorice.
Pretty, we said,
drinking the green air,
as in a fairy tale we said,
eating the green water, brackish,
breathing the smoke that rose
from the greenstone hills
and the moon alone
nailed to the bottom of the sky.
 
In the ’50s, when Kefala, as part of the post-war Greek Diaspora, reached New Zealand and then Australia, she found both countries firmly in the cultural grip of Western empire, colonialism’s long hangover: “I found these places to be more English than English, a people merely shifting from a small to a larger island.” “The Dominant Culture,” she observed, “complains there are too many voices while the minority one complains there are too few.”

Working for the Maori Cultural Council in New Zealand, and then for the National Arts Council in Australia, Kefala fought for a number of causes. They included broadening official definitions and categories of aesthetic-creative pursuits by immigrant artists, as well as challenging patronizing expectations of ethnic writing. She had arrived at a propitious time; Australia was beginning to undergo a questioning of its national identity — there were intimations of a great sea-change.

Responding to socio-political pressures as well as political realities, the government embraced diversity as a national program, welcoming a wide range of refugees, encouraging European and Asian-Pacific immigration. The influence exerted by this foreign influx was deep and dramatic: it expanded the confines of the country’s Anglophile arts culture. Australia’s cultural coming of age paralleled Kefala’s own rite of passage as a young female writer trying to find a place to belong.
Understandably, Kefala’s early work — the novellas and short stories — fits into the Bildungsroman genre. In her case, Kefala traces migrant female characters who are navigating the travails of growing up challenged by cultural dislocation, linguistic estrangement, and aesthetic and gendered restrictions. The titles of her early fiction are telling: The First Journey, The Boarding House, The Island (a tri-lingual edition in Romanian/French/Greek), Alexia (Kefala’s child-persona), Intimacy, and Waiting.  

Strangers in a strange land, Kefala’s fictional personae are forced to negotiate a life as they decipher alien mores, maneuvering their way across the minefields of English. This was the writer’s fourth acquired tongue, and she pronounced it to be a rather pragmatic instrument. These fictional transits into female adulthood are unsettling, at times wrenching, but always enlightening.  Kefala’s vulnerable, questing protagonists learn to tread carefully — a misstep can lead to alienation, loneliness, and emptiness. Scenes of serene stability for these characters prove to be false; a sharp tear, a rent, arrives and suddenly the bottom falls out. These are tales of tenuous footholds in a fragile world; their detached, understated tone casts a spell of twilit expectancy.

The heroine of Alexia, for instance, is a young girl caught between two cultures. She arrives in New Zealand with a small suitcase of memory, a few books, and a violin. Kefala called New Zealand, her first home, a place where “the Elders had read the signs and buried the magic.” These Elders, of course, were the Maori, and it was this very ‘magic’ she sought to absorb and display in her fiction and poetry.

Departing New Zealand for Australia in 1959, Kefala sailed through Sydney Harbor, where she was first struck by the light: “numinous, Grecian-bright, a palpable honey-apricot, milky and powdery. The platinum bay aglitter, sandstone cliffs at the Gap, glowing amber.” She felt buoyed, almost at peace. Sydney would be her residence for the next 70 years.  Settled in a home at the edge of the harbor, she primarily wrote poetry. These are the books for which she is the most admired: The Alien, Thirsty Weather. European Notebook, Absence, Journeys, and Fragments.

She had undergone considerable difficulties, but now, on a farther shore, where the First Peoples sang to keep everything alive, her feet were planted on hard but fertile ground. In her verse she embarked on mapping journeys into her interior zones. She called these explorations of consciousness “serious business”: “Everyone forgets that writing arises out of an inner necessity, that each piece has its own measure, determined by itself, which no one can alter without altering its nature.” In other words, one had to bring a tenacious sense of organic form to the task of probing inner landscapes. In his poem “The Next Life,” William Carlos Williams articulated the point compactly: “The sea is not our home—Inland we must go.”

Out on the very edges of South Australia, in a terrain so rough and hostile that the early explorers gave up and turned back, the last small rise was named Mt Hopeless. That is where Kefala’s poems begin, and press further on: tracing primal journeys, leaping from outer to inner landscapes, from the known into the unknown, from the earth into the metaphysical, from charting the space in dreamtime to speculating about existence in the afterlife.

As a child, while searching for shells on the beach with her mother, Kefala listened carefully to the susurrus of the sea within herself. And that inspired questions: “Do you hear the sea inside me? Does your heart open to my voice?” These interrogatives are at the center of Kefala’s elemental questing vision — humanity’s search for a home.
 
Coming Home

What if
getting out of the bus
in these abandoned suburbs
pale under the street lights,
what if, as we stepped down
we forgot who we are
became lost in this absence
emptied of memory
we, the only witness of ourselves
before whom shall the drama be enacted?
 
*James Provencher, a U.S. expat living in Canberra, Australia, is a former teacher/poet in residence at The Frost Place, Robert Frost’s farm and museum in Franconia, NH.

**Published here: https://artsfuse.org/311215/poetry-commentary-antigone-kefala-voice-from-another-shore/?fbclid=IwY2xjawK3srtleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHqrMZDDqAOUi4MGddBA6p2xFc_vSW9cdVr3FqKTMDmNdaDeXPd6CBn_De6TX_aem_HI0Z52OREn9vb4gzG_LlDA

Never in my life have I learnt
To submit to anyone
Here I am locked up,
Far from my home,
My wife, my workshop.
And even if they kill me,
If I must die,
To give up is to lie!

But if the chains broke
Then I would breathe in sunshine
At the top of my lungs – Tyranny!
And I would cry to the people: be free!
Forget to submit yourselves!
To give up is to lie!

Ο φυλακισμένος

Ποτέ στη ζωή μου δεν έμαθα
Να υποτάσσομαι σε κανέναν
Εδώ είμαι κλειδωμένος,
Μακριά από το σπίτι μου,
τη γυναίκα μου, το εργαστήριό μου.
Και ακόμα κι αν με σκοτώσουν,
Αν πρέπει να πεθάνω,
Το να παραιτηθώ είναι σαν να λέω ψέματα!

Αλλά αν έσπαγαν οι αλυσίδες
Τότε θα ανέπνεα στη λιακάδα
Στην κορυφή των πνευμόνων μου – Τυραννία!
Και θα φώναζα στο λαό: Ελευθερωθείτε!
Ξεχάστε να υποταχθείτε!
Το να παραδοθείτε είναι σαν να λέτε ψέματα!

*Απόδοση: Δημήτρης Τρωαδίτης.