Austerity Measures, edited by Karen Van Dyck (2016)

I picked up this book in Chania. I was happy with this pick because it was in Greek and English and I was just getting into poetry so this married up a new passion with an old passion of wanting to improve my Greek. I took ages to read this book, reading almost a poem a day trying to absorb the artistry and the language at the same time. In the end I just let go, reading all in one hit, allowing myself to pick up what I could and remain confused about what I didn’t understand.

I liked the structure, which broke up the poems into themes (diaspora, Athens based etc.) and I enjoyed the context provided by the editors, which enlightened me to Greek poetry websites and gave me an idea of the scene. I think I liked the performative poetry the best. It was the most visual and the easiest to comprehend. I didn’t make the effort to flag the poems I liked throughout this book but will definitely flick through in the future.

What I picked up about the Greek poetry scene wasn’t just the diversity of the writers and styles but also their cosmopolitanism. They wrote not just about class and pain and their own personal reflections but through that uniquely Greek lens between East and West. There were calls to western artists, but also Turkish language, occupation, migration, poverty, history, and culture.