Book Review

The Medusa Glance is a present-day triptych, a rich and profoundly nuanced contemporary narrative, sensitive to all the immanent and minute shades of reality, aspiring to embrace and incorporate the whole spectrum of lived experience. As a key motive, the author invokes Medusa, the female monster with venomous snakes on hear head. Stricken with fear, we are nonetheless tempted to be immersed in the poetic universe of Manolis. The epigraph characterizes the bold enterprise of the author aimed at the explicitation of the inner architecture and dynamics of experience, at the renewal of narrative practices and at the constant (re)negotiation of identity. The reader is swept away by a polychromatic tempest of verbs and embarks on a journey guiding him to the dimension of the minute and infinitely multifarious undulations of sublunary consciousness.

The Diachronic Contribution of Greek to Other Languages is the new volume compiled and edited by Dr George Kanarakis and published a few months ago in Athens by Papazissis Publications. Dr Kanarakis, Professor of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Charles Sturt University, is a well-known linguist and hellenist.

Poetry, EKSTASIS EDITIONS Ubermensch, by Manolis Aligizakis is the most difficult and most philosophical poetry book I have come across.…

«Είναι απλό: Δεν σε πεθαίνει ο τρόμος. / Ο τρόμος μόνο σε ξεγεννάει. / Βγάζει το φίδι απ’ την κοιλιά σου. / Ο μαιευτήρας σού χαμογελά, / Που ζεις μια τέτοια αιθέρια νύχτα / Είναι απλό: Ο τρόμος δεν σε ταπεινώνει. / Σε αίρει στο ύψος των περιστάσεων. / Απλώς πατάς πάνω στον εαυτό σου. / Ο τρόμος δεν επείγεται. Σε περιμένει. /Μπορείς, σκεπτόμενος, να διαφύγεις./ Απλώς δεν μπορείς να σκεφτείς./ Στον τρόμο ένα κι ένα κάνουν δύο./ Απλώς δεν βρίσκεις το πρώτο και το δεύτερο: / Τη στιγμή αυτή ο ένας σε ψάχνει / Κι ο δεύτερος του φανερώνει τη θέση σου. / Ο τρόμος προνοεί. Είναι ψύχραιμος. / Εξάλλου ξέρετε κι οι δυο τι θα αξιώσει. / Πίνει ακόμη μια γουλιά απ’ τον καφέ του / Κι απλώς σηκώνει τα μάτια του πάνω σου. / Είναι απλό: Η φωνή του αέρα, / Οι ψίθυροι οι σοφοί των ερειπίων, / Το κουρέλι από την υγρασία που απομένει / Σε κάποια σκιερή γωνιά του πυρετού, / Όλα γλιστράνε μέσα στο φρεάτιο. /Ο ήλιος βάζει το δάχτυλό του στο τζάμι / Και κάνεις τη βουτιά. Αυτό ήταν. Θα δεις τώρα / Σε όλη την απλότητά του τον τρόμο».

At Diasporic Literature Spot, being a literary website, from time to time we receive books from established as well as aspiring writers. I would say that in most cases these books can be a hassle to read and an even bigger problem to write about. However there are those certain books, by certain emerging or inspiring and aspiring writers that we feel privileged to receive, to hold in our hand and to read deepest thoughts in creamy or white colour pages. These specific books are the reason why Diasporic Literature is in existence

Lucy Sussex gives public voice to the private thoughts, experiences and observations of selected nineteenth-century seafarers to the Australian colony. These seafarers kept a record of their voyage either as letters to loved ones left behind in England or in journal entries. The white glossy cover of Saltwater in the Ink, composed of a chair covered in red patterned fabric, a red quill, a laced decorated fan, pewter cup and barrel, is aesthetically appealing and invites exploration.

A careful hand is needed to translate the poems of Yannis Ritsos, and Manolis is the ideal poet to undertake such an enormous task. Born in Crete, Manolis’s youth was intermingled with the poetry of Ritsos. Once a young man moved by the Theodorakis version of Epitaphios, he’s now a successful poet in his own right who is still moved to tears hearing the refrains of those notes from half a century ago.