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‘Neo-Hellene Poets an Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry 1750-2018. A Review’ by P.W. Bridgman

On By MayanaamIn Books, English Reviews, Poetry, Reviews, TranslationsLeave a comment

Important aspects of so many of our cultural institutions in North America and Western Europe can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks. We were taught that inescapable truth in our school classrooms and we have read it in our history books. And yet, for some reason, we in the West have been less mindful of modern Greek history and modern Greek literature in particular. There may have been a brief brush with Seferis during a second- or third-year poetry course at university, yes. And one perhaps recalls a fleeting encounter with Cavafy in an anthology of modern world literature in translation. Perhaps. But most of us are woefully ignorant of the great wealth of poetry that has proliferated in Greece since the mid-1700s. Manolis’ book of translations of the works of many, many diverse poetic voices from the modern era in Greece thus constitutes a great gift. He has given us—handily assembled between the two covers of Neo-Hellene Poets: An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry, 1750-2018—a ready resource to which we may now turn in order to make up that glaring lacuna that exists in our cultural education. Poems that are orderly and formal, and poems that are unruly and unbounded; works steeped in tradition and works that are wildly innovative; verse that is serious and sentimental, and verse that is droll and irreverent; it’s all there. The modern Greek poetic tapestry is multi-coloured, artful and highly textured and it deserves far more attention that it has gotten to date from scholars and from other members of Western societies who turn to poetry for pleasure and inspiration but cannot read or speak Greek. We must be thankful to Manolis for opening a door that has been effectively closed for three centuries. At last, English speakers and readers can feast at a long-overlooked table, a table well laden with many exotic literary delights. Mr. Waiter, would you please bring us the wine list?

P.W. Bridgman, author, poet.

View the book: Neo-Hellene Poets – An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry 1750-2018’ by Manolis Aligizakis

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‘Yannis Ritsos – the poet’ a comment by John Wall Barger

On By MayanaamIn English Reviews, Poetry, Reviews, Translations1 Comment

This new translation of Yannis Ritsos (volume II) is another triumph for Manolis Aligizakis, the foremost Canadian translator of Greek poetry. He has undertaken an important project: unearthing the many poems of the wonderful Yannis Ritsos for a new audience. As Chryssa Nikolakis says in the introduction to this volume, “Ritsos’ poetry is purely humane and existential, but also deeply lyrical. It speaks boldly about the revolution, about the adventures of the social vision, about love and the beauty of life— about everything human— in an unparalleled, universal tongue.” Aligizakis is particularly deft in capturing the dense mythic language of Ritsos’ long poems, “Shape of Absence,” “Ismene,” “Phaedra,” and others. But my favorite part of this book might be the elegantly translated short poems from “Exercises.” Listen to this: “The wet hat of the sailor was tossed / in the waves / like rye bread thrown away / while men were hungry. // It was the war.” (“Brief Story”). And it’s a gorgeous book physically, with illustrations from classic painters, and introductions to help the reader unpack some of the more difficult contexts.

— John Wall Barger, poet, lecturer.

View this book here:
‘YANNIS RITSOS: POEMS’ Selected Books Vol II – Translated by Manolis Aligizakis
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‘Longing and Ritsos’ a book review by Ilya Tourtidis

On By MayanaamIn English Reviews, Poetry, Reviews, Translations2 Comments

Reading Manolis Aligizakis’s translation of Ritsos’s poetry (Volume ll), I am struck by the undertow of longing that ebbs through Ritsos’s poems. There seems to be this heroic attitude of waiting for fulfilment, shadowing the events and circumstances Ritsos has chosen to focus his creative gaze upon. He seems to balance the frailty, anguish, and vulnerability he sees at the very heart of human nature with the defiant prospect of hope, and with the implied possibility of future wholeness. Though he never hesitates to decry and condemn the suffering caused by adversity and injustice, I think he modulates it as an inscrutable attribute whose redemptive meaning circles all the way back to the mythic forces inherent in creation. Perhaps like Job in the whirlwind, he accommodates the darkness of fate not only as a tragic flaw, but also as a divine element in the longing that saves.

Dramatically, I can imagine Ritsos sitting on a chair, center stage, against the back drop of a sun rising above the ocean, facing his audience— all those mortal men, women, children, animals and mythical aspects of an evolving self that sparked his awareness— then grinning defiantly, concludes with these final words: You are my advent. You are what I carry through the void. You are who I am.

This impressive and insightful translation by an equally creative and prolific poet, will continue to give voice to the silence we inhabit.

Ilya Tourtidis, poet.

‘YANNIS RITSOS: POEMS’ Selected Books Vol II – Translated by Manolis Aligizakis
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‘Katerina Anghelaki Rooke – Selected Poems’ translated by Manolis Aligizakis

On By MayanaamIn Books, Canada, Greece, Poetry, TranslationsLeave a comment

Paperback 6/9
978-1-926763-52-1
$23.95
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Translated & Compiled by Manolis Aligizakis
Published by Libros Libertad & Ekstasis Editions, 2019

Katerina Anghelaki Rooke

‘Her poetry, explicitly erotic and passionate, defines her sensual relationship with the world, such a poet of passion she is, though over time Katerina Anghelaki Rooke became more thoughtful, paying attention to memory and to the chthonian and heavenly sense of a world that never loses its primeval powers. Equally dedicated is her intensity when she deals with her place of birth with its fluidity and music that transcend her poetry thus making it timeless and eternal; Katerina’s poetry remains eternally dedicated to a natural element as well as to the beauty and the pain life creates, the committee decided unanimously when they awarded her with the highest prize of the Hellenic Letters.

Chrysa Nikolaki, Theeologist, Poet
Writer, Literary critic
(Master of Arts, Hellenic Open University)

 

About the translator

Emmanuel Aligizakis, (Manolis) is a Cretan-Canadian poet and author. He was recently appointed an honorary instructor and fellow of the International Arts Academy, and awarded a Master’s for the Arts in Literature. He emigrated to Vancouver in 1973, where he worked as an iron worker, train labourer, taxi driver, and stock broker, and studied English Literature at Simon Fraser University. His articles, poems and short stories in both Greek and English have appeared in various magazines and newspapers in Canada, United States, Sweden, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Australia, Jordan, Serbia and Greece. His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Romanian, Swedish, German, Hungarian, Ukrainian, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish, Serbian, Russian, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, languages and has been published in book form or in magazines in various countries.
He now lives in White Rock, where he spends his time writing, gardening, traveling, and heading Libros Libertad, an unorthodox and independent publishing company which he founded in 2006 with the mission of publishing literary books.
His translation George Seferis: Collected Poems was shortlisted for the Greek National Literary Awards, the highest literary recognition of Greece. In September 2017 he was awarded the First Poetry Prize of the Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Festival, in Craiova, Romania.

‘IMPRESSIONS FROM ROMANIA’ by Manolis Aligizakis the 2017 Mihai Eminescu Academy Award Winner

On By MayanaamIn Awards, Distinctions, International, PoetryLeave a comment


Romania impressed me in an unprecedented way. Although this year’s trip was my second one, I was still amazed by the depth of culture the citizens of Craiova displayed. One day was dedicated to their most famous sculptor Constantin Brancusi whose ensemble of three works have deeply stayed with me: Brancusi’s works The Endless Column, The Gate of the Kiss, and The Silent Table which constitute an ensemble. The Endless Column symbolizes the concept of infinity and the infinite sacrifice of the Romanian soldiers; it stacks 17 rhomboidal modules, with a half-unit at the top. The incomplete top unit is thought to be the element that expresses the concept of the infinite. The Gate of the Kiss features a kiss motif on the gate pillars. It symbolizes the transition to another life that occurs through The Gate of Kiss. The Table of Silence is a circular stone table surrounded by twelve hourglass-seats, which symbolize time. The Table of Silence represents the last dinner before the Romanian men go to war.


Something else that amazed me in Romania where the people are 90 % Orthodox Christians: Their Christian Church of Saint Constantine and Saint Helen, in front of the City Hall depicts icons of saints not only inside the building but outside as well. But what intrigued me the most was that besides the Christian saints they also had icons for the ancient Greek writers, philosophers, law givers, such as Socrates, Plutarch, Thoukididis, Solon, Pythagoras, and others.


Another noteworthy impression was when I met a 7 year boy who in one week created the caricatures of 39 poets and poetesses who participated in this year’s Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Festival, held in Craiova. I told his mother, with the help of the translator, that her son one day will become a great Romanian.

‘Manolis Aligizakis visited Romania in August-September 2017 to participate in the Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Festival where he won the FIRST POETRY PRIZE for 2017 awarded by the Mihai Eminescu Academy in Craiova, Romania..’ More is at the link below:
manolis-algizakis-wins-the-first-poetry-prize-for-2017
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‘NOSTOS and ALGOS–A REVIEW’ by Cloe Koutsoubelis

On By MayanaamIn Poetry, ReviewsLeave a comment

nostos and algos cover

Awareness is the title of the first poem of this collection and not without reason.

The poet selects this poem as the first one but one wonders: awareness for what? Is it because this poetry collection is subject of the natural laws of decay, like tree leaves that turn yellow and fall at some moment leaving behind them the gaping void that lies under every poetry collection behind every creative form? Or is it awareness because, as the last verses claim, nothing stays forever?

The collection is dedicated to his parents who lived their last years in the village and the second poem of the book “Old Couple” is at that exact place with images such, olives, feta cheese, wine, salad under the grape vine, monologue of loneliness, epilogue of their lives. Agony for a son away in a foreign land but expectation, longing, and the everyday events transcend into moments of happiness and laughter, you forgot to make the salad.

What is the poet’s primer? Prime roll plays the sound of the letter t from the word tenderness. When one doesn’t open himself to love one has no reason for living. The slow spark that reverses the equation and turns into a wick and becomes a conflagration, or a night flower that turns into the kaleidoscope of the Universe are the underlying forces of this book. Eros and at the same time Death that lurk behind everything; the unstoppable law of the cosmos that controls the people’s lives and emotions.

I too grieve,
that night has passed by so fast

the poet says in Night Flower:
Heracleitos’ philosophy of the ever changing world, the continuous movement of things and people like a river that forever evolves and renews this is the backbone of the book Nostos and Algos.

For the poet the microcosm and the macrocosm are but a rose, a thicket of trees in the afternoon, the mound of a woman, a flock of sparrows, a bed-sheet that wrapped the body of the beloved, the simple events of everyday life, the brushing of teeth, the washing the face of a beloved person become a mystery into which he delves with willingness and humbleness.

Yet the poet is afraid that the mystery of these simple everyday events may be violated by the sacrilegious people of the cement city who make dust of every emotion and refinement, by the hierodules and pimps who turn every ideology into a profit thus flattening everything in their path.

For the poet everything vanishes, everything flows through his fingers; we arrange our date with Death at every moment, everything except of a smile that is whole, it can’t be divided, it can’t be analyzed, it is the moment that boils and bubbles.

Fate is predetermined. Our date with Death occurs every day. We betray ourselves and others, we yearn for things that belong to others, we move between high and low tide in currents that take us forth and back we fight at every moment the feeling of this futile life and the void.

Then, there must be
      another time
      there must be
      it must
the poet says in Tides

Deep philosophical, existential collection is this book by Manolis. The miracle passes and vanishes, the silent acceptance and the effort to understand, is but the vague oaring in a foggy day.

In the poems Turret, Heroes, Sunrise, the poet is sarcastic to the leadership that sends men to war like lambs to the slaughterhouse, for the sake of the generals, the bishops, the flags and the business of war.

In his last four poems, Lens, Craving, Branches and Insistence toward the end of each poem the words and you said — appear as if the poet talks to someone next to him and I can see no other way to end this beautiful book but the phrase of the last poem:

Again I shall try to transform
      the cricket’s song
      into a shiver.

~ Cloe Koutsoubelis, ENEKEN, No 33, Salonica, Greece, Fall-Winter 2014

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‘Eroticism in the Poetry of Manolis Aligizakis’ by Alexandra Bakonika

On By MayanaamIn Poetry, Reviews2 Comments

ubermensch_cover

Poet Manolis Aligizakis has familiarized himself with the tragedy by seeing life through the multi-faceted lens of observation and by living experiences that gave him the ability to perceive first-hand the injustice, exploitation, greediness and the various expressions of violence. Unquestionably the ugliness of this world saddens him like a wound that doesn’t heal. When he feels uncertain with himself and divided in two we find in his poetry a messianic sense that leads him to wish to change the world and make it better free of all ugliness and lawlessness. However he has no illusion that idealism, visions and civility are things easily accomplished. If great gestures and practical action retreat before the opposition, at least what one can achieve through messianic ideas is the beauty through poetry that brings harmony, enjoyment and ultimately truth.

Can Manolis channel beauty as easily as he describes it in his verse? “an old time leader/like an anointed and pious/a musical instrument of free flowing innocence/ready to speak with words that relieve the pain and free the spirit?” Yes and his main tool is his first hand experience of the power of Eros. His psychological makeup draws and transmits authenticity and felicity based on his adoration of and being adored by feminine figures sensual and provocative exposing him into an ecstatic transcendence through their lusting bodies and their devoted deep love and understanding. It’s obvious he finds his contention in being passionately in love with his beloved.

He doesn’t hide that before he was born he wanted to become “a festival song/a bird’s flutter/an evening vesper/a simple sigh/that will scar the lips of his beloved.” If he feels powerless before the inconceivable and undefined Fate, he declares a woman’s embrace invites him and he likes to give in to her passion: “obscure and vague circle/forever indeterminable/and this, the command/and this, the obedience/and this, the orgasm/ and this, the Eros/and this is you.” He feels that being favored by Eros he diffuses his fiery passion with light that fills his erotic verses. As a gallant defender of lust and sensuality and of the true emotions of love he hands down delight and exhilaration of the soul.

Idealism as well as pragmatism, messianism but also tradition in the languor of the senses, love affairs devoted to the ephemeral satisfaction and erotic drunkenness compose the variations of his vast poetic content. Having the maturity of an accomplished poet and the ability to craft evocative imagery in a personal way the poet introduces us in what constitutes the most brilliant expression of his innermost thoughts and beliefs opposite the world of his time and age.

In his book “Ubermensch” his eroticism is somewhat subdued although is part of Manolis’ imagery along with his messianism which is the main stigma Manolis introduces us to in his very first poem.

….truly we accepted it: our God was dead.

Buried him yesterday afternoon with no songs,
no paeans, nor lamentations and we felt a lot lighter. ….
while fear, I would say, was hidden deep in our hearts. ….
and in an eyrie we filled our chalice with courage
and we mailed it to the four corners of the universe
and promised never to be trapped again in the idiocy of a system.

The Andian condor we declared heir of the flesh.
The wind and the rain we proclaimed our catharsis.

Evoe, oh, free elements, evoe.

A big part of the western philosophy since the end of Medieval Times doubted the existence of God although that doubt was subdued concealed because of the fear of the church. Only Nietzsche dared stand up and declare the death of God and in its place he proposed the Ubermensch-Superman. Manolis’ poetic vision in in his book Ubermensch is based upon this daring mind of the German philosopher. However who is Ubermensch? What values does he promote for the tormented world? These questions find their answers in this poetry collection which is a way of initiation for encouragement and exaltation. Ubermensch is the great initiate who guides man onto a long and tiring process that will free his soul from the clutches of dogmas thus hoping to contribute to his happiness. He evangelizes man’s rebirth and renewal through gaining free will which is the basis of every spiritual lifting in this earthly life, the only one we have, while the metaphysical hope of the Christian after life is negated.

Free will leads to search, doubt, continuous quest for knowledge, to the brotherhood of men for a more just and more sunlit world, fundamentally it leads to an effort to make the conditions of life better based on self- knowledge and virtue. On the other hand earthly enjoyment shouldn’t be put aside. The Apollonian spirit has to walk parallel to the Dionysian revelry. Dancing, music, poetry possess a central role in the philosophical exaltation Ubermensch proposes. He prompts us to enjoy the delightful aspect of life, to taste it with all our senses. Drunkenness through joy empowers the spirit to endure the arduous path toward philosophy and virtue.

Manolis Algizakis has no illusions that the gaining of free will and spirit is an easy path to follow, it does demand spiritual strength and as an introduction to this poetry book he declares quite clearly:

“For those who dare melt into the concept of freedom and for an infinitesimal fraction of time they can claim: freedom I am. This book is not for the faint-hearted. Dare to read.”

For this poet, the initiates and initiated, the rope walkers and the Ubermenschen resemble a tree that grows and stares the ever brilliant sun while their limbs root deep into the abyss. They have to follow this inescapable duality in order to succeed in the battle of man against the beast.

Jun 14, 2016 – ENEKEN

Greek version first published in Thessaloniki, Greece; English version published at the Libros Libertad web site.

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