The Grief Almanac: A Sequel
by Vana Manasiadis

tell me the truth: the energy goes somewhere
 
This bold hybrid of poetry, memoir, letter, essay and ekphrasis shows what alchemy can happen when pushing at the boundaries of what poetry is. Using strikingly unique forms and melding Greek with English, prose with poetry, and the past and present with fantasy and myth, The Grief Almanac: A Sequel defies conventions as it steers us over multiple terrains.
 
The grief of the title is the grief of memory, inevitability, and in particular the grief of, and for, a lost mother, but the result goes beyond eulogy. Wry revisions, elegy, and a kind of poetic archiving, point to co-existence and interconnectedness and culminate instead in a guidebook, a legend and expansive lament.
 
Ambitious and mesmerising, The Grief Almanac: A Sequel is a work that aims squarely for both head and heart.
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The Grief Almanac is rich, brilliant, with a kind of texturing that feels to me like complex symphonic music. This is not a collection of poems in any conventional sense. It is a sustained work of immense, far reaching intellect. With the two languages at her disposal and the full force of a great mind and heart, Manasiadis lifts her mother up into the light. We see the mother and we see the daughter and the primal truth that lies at the heart of those tragedies and myths that have endured for centuries because they are profoundly true.
— Fiona Farrell

Read sample pages from this book (PDF 72KB)

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About the author

Vana Manasiadis is a Greek-New Zealand poet, translator and creative writing teacher who has been moving between Aotearoa and Greece, and is now living in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. Her first collection, Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima, was published by Seraph Press in 2009. She is the co-editor of the Seraph Press Translation Series, and was the editor and translator of Ναυάγια/Καταφύγια: Shipwrecks/Shelters: Six Contemporary Greek Poets (2016) and co-editor, with Maraea Rakuraku, of Tātai Whetū: Seven Māori Women Poets in Translation. 

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​Buy The Grief Almanac: A Sequel

Pay by credit card or PayPal. Postage free within New Zealand. If you want to pay by direct credit, email [email protected] and we'll sort you out.

$30 – including postage within NZ

$40 – including international postage

Title: The Grief Almanac: A Sequel
Author: Vana Manasiadis
Category: Poetry
ISBN: 978-0-9951082-3-3
Format: 256 mm (tall) x 158 mm (wide), 110 pages
RRP:  $30
Trade price: $15.65
Publication Date: May 2019

Orders are ordinarily firm sale, but sale or return terms are available on request.
Contact Helen Rickerby, managing editor, Seraph Press, PO Box 25239, Wellington 6146, New Zealand
email: [email protected]
phone: (04) 385 7119

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Vana Manasiadis's website

Also by Vana Manasiadis

Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima, by Vana Manasiadis
Part family exploration, part personal narrative, this haunting and delicate debut collection weaves the mythic into the everyday. More...
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Shipwrecks/Shelters: Six Contemporary Greek Poets, edited and translated by Vana Manasiadis ​
Greece is in crisis, but its poetry is in good heart. Greek/Kiwi poet Vana Manasiadis gathers and translates six poems by six of Greece's most exciting contemporary poets: Lena Kallergi, Theodore Chiotis, Phoebe Giannisi, Patricia Kolaiti, Vassilis Amanatidis, Katerina Iliopoulou. More...

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Tātai Whetū: Seven Māori Women Poets in Translation, edited by Maraea Rakuraku and Vana Manasiadis
The fourth book in the Seraph Press Translation celebrates Māori writing and the Māori language. This pioneering bilingual collection features a poem each by seven Māori women writers, originally written in English, and a translation in the Māori language. More ...