The Brazen Plagiarist

Kiki Dimoula is a Greek poet, member of the Academy of Athens. Born 1931 she published her first book in 1952. She lives in Athens and her poetry is translated in English, French, Swedish, Spanish, German and Italian.
Most recently Yale University Press published The Brazen Plagiarist: Selected Poems which were backed up with a strong international campaign and press coverage.

Her poetry deals with absence, oblivion and loss seen through a kaleidoscope of linguistic exaggeration. The use of common words in a non-traditional way creates an emotional layer by questioning the very meaning of these words. The element of surprise, in every verse, provides the space for realizing the untold.

Wild guess: Greece’s 3rd poetry Nobel Prize! 

The Plural (from “The Little of the World” poem collection, 1971, here translated in English by Cecille Inglessis Margellos and Rika Lesser for “The Brazen Plagiarist”).


THE PLURAL

Love:
noun, substantive,
extremely substantive,
singular in number;
gender not feminine, not masculine,
gender defenseless.
Plural the number
of defenseless loves.

Fear:
substantive,
singular to start with
plural afterward:
fears.
Fears of
everything from now on.

Memory:
noun, proper name for sorrows,
singular in number,
singular only,
and indeclinable.
Memory, memory, memory.

Night:
substantive,
gender feminine,
number singular.
Plural in number
the nights.
The nights from now on.


Here’s the poem performed by Thanos Anestopoulos

The Plural


Here's the poem I Passed by Kyriakos Sfetsas from the album Land of Absences, 2011

I Passed


And finally The Kiss by Stamatis Kraounakis

The Kiss