On Wednesday The Pharos Arts Foundation, in collaboration with the Moufflon Bookshop, will present the book launch of Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis, followed by a talk by the book’s editor Theodoros Chiotis at the Shoe Factory in Nicosia.

Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis features some of the most daring new voices in Greek poetry, together with international poets with Greek connections. These bold and critically aware texts stake new poetic and political ground: they articulate what it means to live in a time when capitalism is buckling under its own weight and new ways of living and thinking seem to be emerging.

From Grexit to Troika, the ongoing crisis in Greece has spawned a whole new vocabulary and dominated newspaper headlines for over five years. Now, a powerful and timely anthology offers a poetic reply to the social and economic disaster which still threatens to overturn the whole European project.

Times of protest and political upheaval have always inspired poets and artists; and beyond the headlines, elections and debt agreements a powerful Greek literary movement has been stirring. Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis introduces a new generation of writers inspired to highlight the plight of a country in a continual state of emergency.

Many of the poems featured in the book explore the gradual, often violent, modification of personal and collective identity in a time of crisis. From a city whose walls bear urgent messages and complex political graffiti come dynamic, angry voices.

Futures is edited and translated into English by Athenian writer Theodoros Chiotis and features poems from prominent Greek poets, poets of Greek descent and others personally affected or moved by the struggle to survive and resist. A vital snapshot into the Greek crisis, this is poetry that mourns the fall, damns the greed, and pounds a drum for change.

Chiotis, who will be giving the talk in English, is a poet and literary theorist, and Project Manager at the Cavafy Archive. He has studied at the universities of London and Oxford. His work has appeared in magazines and anthologies in Greece, UK, US, Sweden, Croatia and Australia. He has published critical essays on poetry, Modern Greek literature, autobiography and new media. He has also translated a number of essays into Greek.

Copies of the book, which is in English, will be available for sale at the event and some of the contributor poets will also be present to read their poems. At the end of the event, a reception hosted by the Embassy of Greece will follow.

Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis

The Pharos Arts Foundation presents the book launch followed by a talk by the book’s editor Theodoros Chiotis followed by a talk. April 6. The Shoe Factory, Nicosia. 7.30pm. In English. Tel: 22-663871





