Aim for Wide Water: Angelos Kouros


I intend to carry on promoting poets and have some videos in hand, but it’s time to shut the #plagueopoems down. Happily it can be found forever at the blog

https://pestilencepoems.blogspot.com/?m=0

On the YouTube channel #plagueopoems

and preserved in the Special Collections Department of University College, Dublin. This is an ongoing curation and not all videos have been captured yet.

https://wayback.archive-it.org/15292/20210106110141/https://pestilencepoems.blogspot.com/


Now for Sunnier times!
When I was in Greece in 2017 I attended a Translation Symposium in Athens for a short time until I was spirited away by Stavros Haviaras for drink. The work of Angelos Kouros was being translated at this event by Angelos Sakkis, who asked me for a wee bit of advice on some of the English and I also owerset one of his translations - Anafi- into Scots. 


The product of the Angelos' collaboration - 'A Way of Summer'- has just been published. So what better way to mark ends and beginnings than by a slice of fierce Greek sunlight caught by Angelos Kouros  and translated by Angelos Sakkis ? 


Angelos Kouros (1972) comes from Dolo, a small village in the north-west Greece, near the city of Ioannina. He grew up in Athens, Greece, where he currently lives & works. He has published four poetry collections in his native Greek language.  The collection "a Way to Summer" is the English translation of his second collection. 

Here he reads 'Port of Piraeus':



Port of Piraeus


I find the secret every year
written on some small
glossy pieces of paper

on the back the small print with terms of boarding
and vehicle portage, details
about cancellations and refunds

as soon as I have them in my hands
I start reading them
because somewhere in there
between two lines or
in a small blank space
I’ll find written the very words that
like Sesame will open for us -
“Anthi Marina open up”-
a hold-hatch and the great treasure
for this summer

an endless blue sea
rolling between the Cyclades

 

Buy 'A Way to Summer':



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