BORDER ZONES
Poets between Cultures and Languages
Shifting decisively beyond the confines of a single country, this section is necessarily the most varied. What characterizes this group is the central importance of another place to their poetry: these poets came late to the Greek language from other lands and tongues, or – though still writing in Greek – now live or spend considerable time in other countries, speaking other languages. As both immigrants and emigrants, moreover, they share the diasporic multilingualism so often ignored in national accounts of Greek literary history. Many are translators, translating one another or themselves. Often they are in academia, where their subjects are linguistic and cultural difference in a wide range of fields. Their poems address these concerns in form and theme. Mehmet Yashin writes macaronic works, mingling Greek and Turkish on the page. This is a more Balkan, betweenworlds perspective which he shares with Stathis Gourgouris – both of them older than the others here and more recognized outside of Greece. Iana Boukova, Moma Radić, and Hiva Panahi bring the influence of Balkan and Middle Eastern languages – Bulgarian, Serbian, and Persian, respectively – to bear on Greek. Dimitris Allos is Greek, but also publishes in Bulgarian, translating Boukova, who translates him in turn. Gazmend Kapllani’s early poetry mingles Albanian and Greek. And then there is the European side. Theodoros Chiotis, Christos Angelakos, and Yannis Livadas circulate among them between London, Paris, and Athens, drawing on a wide range of influences from the Beats to recent experimental code poetry. Thodoris Rakopoulos, an anthropologist who lives in Bergen and Athens, reworks the divided life into an experimental poetics. Not surprisingly, these are also the poets whose work has inspired the most experimental translation.