Cretan Canadian Poet, Author, Translator, Publisher
Author: vequinox
BIOGRAPHY
Manolis (Emmanuel Aligizakis) is a Greek-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 is recognized for his ability to convey images and thoughts in a rich and evocative way that tugs at something deep within the reader. Born in the village of Kolibari on the island of Crete in 1947, he moved with his family at a young age to Thessaloniki and then to Athens, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Sciences from the Panteion University of Athens. After graduation, he served in the armed forces for two years and 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. He has written three novels and numerous collections of poetry, which are steadily being released as published works. 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, and Greece. His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Romanian, Swedish, German, Hungarian 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 book “George Seferis-Collected Poems” was shortlisted for the Greek National Literary Awards the highest literary recognition of Greece.
Distinguished Awards
Winner of the Dr. Asha Bhargava Memorial Award, Writers International Network Canada, 2014
“George Seferis-Collected Poems” translated by Manolis, shortlisted for the Greek National Literary Awards, translation category.
1st International Poetry Prize for his translation of “George Seferis-Collected Poems”, 2013
Master of the Arts in Literature, International Arts Academy, 2013
1st Prize for poetry, 7th Volos poetry Competition, 2012
Honorary instructor and fellow, International Arts Academy, 2012
2nd Prize for short story, Interartia festival, 2012
2nd Prize for Poetry, Interartia Festival, 2012
2nd Prize for poetry, Interartia Festival, 2011
3rd prize for short stories, Interartia Festival, 2011
Books by Manolis
Autumn Leaves, poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2014
Übermensch/Υπεράνθρωπος, poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2013
Mythography, paintings and poetry, Libros Libertad, 2012
Nostos and Algos, poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2012
Vortex, poetry, Libros Libertad, 2011
The Circle, novel, Libros Libertad, 2011
Vernal Equinox, poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2011
Opera Bufa, poetry, Libros Libertad, 2010
Vespers, poetry by Manolis paintings by Ken Kirkby, Libros Libertad, 2010
Triptych, poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2010
Nuances, poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2009
Rendition, poetry, Libros Libertad, 2009
Impulses, poetry, Libros Libertad, 2009
Troglodytes, poetry, Libros Libertad, 2008
Petros Spathis, novel, Libros Libertad, 2008
El Greco, poetry, Libros Libertad, 2007
Path of Thorns, poetry, Libros Libertad, 2006
Footprints in Sandstone, poetry, Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, 2006
The Orphans - an Anthology, poetry, Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, 2005
Translations by Manolis
Idolaters, a novel by Joanna Frangia, Libros Libertad, 2014
Tasos Livaditis-Selected Poems, Libros Libertad, 2014
Yannis Ritsos-Selected Poems, Ekstasis Editions, 2013
Cloe and Alexandra-Selected Poems, Libros Libertad, 2013
George Seferis-Collected Poems, Libros Libertad, 2012
Yannis Ritsos-Poems, Libros Libertad, 2010
Constantine P. Cafavy - Poems, Libros Libertad, 2008
Cavafy-Selected Poems, Ekstasis Editions, 2011
Books in other languages
Eszmelet, (Hungarian), poetry by Manolis Aligizakis, translated into Hungarian by Karoly Csiby, AB-ART, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2014
Hierodoules, (Greek), poetry, Sexpirikon, Salonica, Greece, 2014
Yperanthropos,(Greek), poetry, ENEKEN Publications, Salonica, Greece, 2014
Übermensch (German), poetry by Manolis Aligizakis, translated into German by Eniko Thiele Csekei, WINDROSE, Austria, 2014
Nostos si Algos, (Romanian) poetry by Manolis Aligizakis, translated into Romanian by Lucia Gorea, DELLART, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2013
Tolmires Anatasis, (Greek) poetry, GAVRIILIDIS EDITIONS, Athens, Greece, 2013
Filloroes, (Greek ) poetry, ENEKEN PUBLICATIONS, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2013
Earini Isimeria, (Greek) poetry, ENEKEN PUBLICATIONS, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2011
Stratis o Roukounas, (Greek) novel, MAVRIDIS EDITIONS, Athens, Greece, 1981
Magazines
Canadian Fiction Magazine—Victoria, BC
Pacific Rim Review of Books—Victoria, BC
Canadian Poetry Review—Victoria, BC
Monday Poem, Leaf Press-Lantzville, BC
The Broadkill Review, Milton, Delaware
Ekeken, Thessaloniki, Greece
Envolimon, Beotia, Greece
Annual Literary Review, Athens, Greece
Stigmes, Crete, Greece
Apodimi Krites, Crete, Greece
Patris, Crete, Greece
Nyxta-Mera, Chania, Greece
Wallflowers, Thessaloniki, Greece
Diasporic Literature Spot, Melbourne, Australia
Black Sheep Dances, California, USA
Diasporic Literature Magazine, Melbourne, Australia
Spotlight on the Arts, Surrey, BC
Barnwood, International Poetry Magazine, Seattle, USA
Unrorean, University of Maine, Farmington, Maine, USA
Vakhikon, Athens, Greece
Paremvasi, Kozani, Greece
Szoros Ko, Bratislava, Slovakia
Mediterranean Poetry, Sweden
Apostaktirio, Athens, Greece
Life and Art, Athens, Greece
Logos and Images, Athens, Greece
Contemporary Writers and Thinkers, Athens, Greece
Palinodiae, Athens, Greece
Royal City Poet’s Anthology, 2013, New Westminster, BC, Canada
To parathyro, Paris, France
Ragazine C.C, New Jersey
Artenistas, Athens Greece
Deucalion the Thessalos, Greece.
Literary Lectern, Athens, Greece
Homo Universalis, Athens Greece
In an Old Book In an old book, about a hundred years old, forgotten amid its pages, I found an unsigned watercolour. It must have been the work of a good artist. It had the title, “Presentation of Love.” But a more fitting title would be “Love of the extremely sensual.” Because it was obvious when you looked at the piece (the artist’s idea was easily felt) that the young man in the picture was not meant for those who love in somewhat healthy ways, and within accepted boundaries, with his deep brown eyes, and the extraordinary beauty of his face, the beauty of his deviate attractions, with his ideal lips that grace a beloved body with sensual delight with his ideal lips made for beds common morality calls shameless.
Helena On the first day of spring, I call you ‘Come, let us spread colours to the edge of the plain to the far end of the cosmos a cyclamen deep in the rock fissure of empathy, ‘Come, let us unfold the whitewash of hyacinths unto the hoarfrost of last night perhaps the impulse of blood will turn its icy mirror into the freshest cicada song a new illumination that becomes a fireball like the virgin sun ray that opens a smile on the gardenia white petals exploring the laughter of your emotions and the crystal star blushes in the embrace of the serene firmament
Memory Sandwich The Monroes migrated from nobody-knows-where just as the swallows were turning up famished at our backyard feeder. A van with lilting shocks and unfamiliar licence plates deposited their belongings on the lawn of a neglected two-bedroom. By the time the leaves on the poplars in Falaise Park had begun to coil, just as the wings of the leatherjackets started to sag, the family up and moved away, a memory. Afterwards a succession of temporary tenants occupied the bungalow. There were couples with children and couples without. There were lessees, owners, renters and loners, none of whom were able to do anything about the air of despondency permeating that sullen cedar structure. Fresh paint, a garden — nothing worked. For years it sat empty, victim to vandals, rodents and mould, roof shingles scattered, windows lost to target practice. The day it was bulldozed that house looked much as it did the day the Monroes moved in: unloved. Besides the adults, Nelson and Connie, there were three kids: Gus, the eldest at 16, had a purple birthmark splashed across one eye; Lana, a year younger, was a quiet girl whose attempts to conceal sprouting mammary glands were unsuccessful. Shortly after their arrival the youngest crossed the street to where I was fanning my collection of baseball cards. I had been aware of Freddy observing me from a bedroom window. He introduced himself with the assurance of someone accustomed to the role of stranger. There seemed a precocious savvy in those squinting eyes. – Wanna be friends? he asked. To facilitate camaraderie Freddy faked an interest in baseball. He misused terms like line drives and pop fouls, cannily eschewing…
Unobserved The unobserved specks blow by stay anonymous while drinking coffee in the morning not fathom its meaning like some innocence in your kiss remains unnoticed like hand touching pencil shaft while you write reverently but when you idle mesmerized by a moonlight, distraught sensation arousing stops you on your tracks or refreshes delight of crafting poem
. . . Stathis, Stathis, however did you manage it? Everything is going superbly, just as your fine lad said. It is almost as if all this never . . . A bolt of energy struck through him. Exercise. But at this intersection of hour and mood? To him, morning and exercise are related. Exercise collided with now. The commitment of discipline must not loosen, derange, or unfasten him. As if on command, he rose and stood at attention. His body commanded his mind to command it: a few knee-bends, jumping jacks, and he extended his hands almost to the walls. Inhaled deep, exhaled slow, his breath became cuprous, tarnished, an obese air; but he continued, and his lungs butterflied and collapsed, perhaps in rehearsal for a ritual in which he might never take part. There has been no extraordinary exertion, yet the burden of boredom diminished him to the figure of a junkman’s nag tolling uphill before the overload of relic erudition. Half of a man knew it was war; half of a man insisted it wasn’t. In the confusion, it was difficult to discern which entered the theatre of war with a plowshare. The blunder into the hunt, to discover oneself, was a quarry that dogs followed in all directions of the cosmos, dogs which ran and followed his steps as if ready to bite, to dig deep in his flesh with their teeth. He stopped as abruptly as he started and sat on his bed. His mind flew back to the island.
A sad story, Lona thought. She wondered how many other homes had buried treasure—perhaps the owners didn’t even know it. Back in New York the buyers would be interested in stories like this one. When she got home should she find a buyer for the icon, too? No, she wanted the icon for herself. She would not be turning it over to the businessmen on her return, but somehow, she would have to account for the cash—it had cost $50 U.S. dollars—that she had been given to purchase these items. She would cross that bridge when she came to it. She considered its size, weighing it in her hand like tomatoes at the grocery store. She checked once more that the door was locked, then she carefully unwrapped the distinctive Beryozka wrapping paper from a newly purchased balalaika, a musical instrument with a long narrow neck and a triangular body. There was no mistaking its shape even in wrapping paper. Once the paper was removed from the balalaika she wrapped the icon in her kerchief, then squeezed it into the space between the strings and the body of the instrument. It just fit. She re-wrapped the Beryozka paper around the balalaika, being careful to tape it in exactly the same spots as before, then held it up for inspection. You could hardly tell a thing—just the merest suspicion of something rectangular. She placed the wrapped balalaika into a mesh shopping bag such as the Soviets seemed to carry everywhere. This one she would be taking on the plane with her and stowing in the overhead baggage compartment. That done, she pulled out a kit from her suitcase that contained some acrylic paint such as children use and bottles of powder and Vaseline. The jewellery, a pendant of solid gold and very old, was easy to doctor up; it was not of religious significance, although Krov had tried to tell her otherwise. It would find a buyer who was simply looking for something pretty and special. She considered if she had time to invent a provenance for it—a story about some czar giving it to his mistress, perhaps? The consortium had rapped her knuckles once before for inventing but she couldn’t resist. Who’s to say that it was not true? What Russian peasant before the revolution would own such a rich thing? She removed the elaborate gold chain and put it with her own modern jewellery, then re-hung the locket on a leather strip. She put the locket into a tiny, leather, filigreed sack. She would wear it around her neck. The prayer scrolls were also easy. They would be placed among the pencil sketches of St. Isaac’s Cathedral that she had completed…
The Day Before The Circle H Ranch Willow Springs, Montana It was Saturday. The day before the sale at the Circle H. Joel had toyed with the idea of driving over to the Ramage place, but a part of him was saying that wasn’t right. He knew from his conversations with Roy that the Ramages saw him as competition. This had been the weekend of their production sale for years. For Joel, he had set up a competitive situation by piggybacking on the Ramages’ clients. Joel didn’t like that at all. He had run into Jack Ramage once in town only a week or so earlier and had tried to make pleasant conversation with him. He could tell that Jack was carrying a lot of anger and resentment toward him. At first, he thought that it was all about how Ramage felt about him, but later in the day when he was telling Cindy about the chance meeting, she added another angle to the conversation: the Ramages were advertising that their sale was also a herd reduction sale as a result of the drought. The Ramages had traditionally sold their horse crop as saddle-broke two-year-olds, but this year, in addition to the fifty two-year-olds for sale, they were also selling thirty mares and thirty yearlings. They were really cutting back. The good news for Joel was that the sale of the quality mares and younger horses should draw even more folks into the country for the sale. The bad news was that, with that kind of horseflesh available on the day before his sale, he wondered how many people would have any money left on the Sunday to invest in any…
There are, truly, thousands of ways for one to regain his life and only one to waste it. The tenants complained for my oily hair that had covered half of the roof, they didn’t know how many forgotten people still existed yet, to be truthful, they weren’t shooting; what’s the purpose of getting involved with death trances, better sit by the window and knit a sock. This often happened to unfortunate Rachel as she’d step up on the chair to dust the window she’d suddenly see her true life; then she’d step down a bit cold on her shoulders and she’d put her overcoat which still seemed as empty. The villagers finished hastily as if in fear and they discovered a choked person there between the potatoes where they were digging. Thus, after we lost everything, mother used to leave the door open and Hagia Anna got pregnant although very old, until at the end you could find most of the dead among the survivors, old stories to narrate sitting by the fireplace after a good supper and the trap of certainty under the carpet.
Inebriation He too fought side by side with Thanatos he too longed for peace and prosperity for a wife and two kids, he longed for values his parents taught him, he longed for the little life of the citizen who spends his days at the factory, cursing for no reason shouting just to be heard over the endless buzz of the machines. He too had a good time at home, he raised two kids one became a policeman, with a steady job, wages, a pension, the other took up studies to be a teacher, he said he wanted to mould the new generation of pacifists, anarchists, and disobedient citizens, reactionaries, the ones who always complain about anything and everything like those who think they know everything though unable to play with their penises properly and the old legionnaire sitting alone in the dimmed lights of their Legion sips his beer, all problems solved, he thinks. The rest of the details are for the thinkers of this country, let them untie the Gordian Knot, the rope he was tied to was only five meters long and like a donkey tied with a rope to a stick in the ground, the poor legionnaire had only this far to reach, enough, enough of this philosophy, he too adhered to set rules, he too begged for his share of the Heavenly Prize and grabbing his beer once more he dissolves himself in his inebriation after all he too fought for the motherland’s freedom, for their values, for peace one achieves by fighting a war, and which the legionnaire realized is but a euphemism, an idea once held, a pipe dream for which he fought only to be left alone and miserable drinking his beer and waiting for Thanatos to come and make his day by taking him away for good.
Manolis Aligizakis 