Shipwrecks/Shelters: Six Contemporary Greek Poets
edited and translated by Vana Manasiadis
Seraph Press Translation Series No. 1

                                      Greece is reconfiguring, checking 
the stores, wrecks, and reefs. Or, in other words, there are: 
surfaces and archaeology, permeation and transmutation/ 
(in)coherence/ Fates, the consequences of distant [decision-
making] organs. 

​​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. Manasiadis brings their fresh, urgent words from one homeland to another. 

This gorgeous bilingual chapbook is hand-bound with hemp thread and features cover art by Athenian graffiti artist Cacao Rocks.

Read sample pages from this book (PDF 82KB)

---

About the editor and translator

Vana Manasiadis is a poet, or maybe short [creative non-] fiction writer. She was born in Wellington, and raised in Aotearoa/New Zealand and in a place and time called Greece. She has spent 10 of the last 15 years in Athens or Crete, and now lives in Auckland. Her first collection of poetry, Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima was published by Seraph Press in 2009, and her writing was included in 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry (Vintage, 2010) and Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page (Godwit, 2014).

In editing and translating the poems in this book she has considered, among other things, Maurice Scève’s idea that ‘translation, like love or music, involves being apart together’.

---

​Buy Shipwrecks/Shelters: Six Contemporary Greek Poets

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.

$20 – including postage within NZ

$25 – including international postage

About the poets
Vassilis Amanatidis was born in 1970. He studied archeology and art history. Since 1999 he has published seven books of poetry including 7: ποίηση για Video Games  (7: poetry for video games, 2011), and μ_otherpoem: μόνο λόγος  (m_otherpoem: only reason, 2014), two collections of short stories, essays and poetry criticism, and he regularly gives public performances of his texts. He has curated a number of art exhibitions, participates regularly in international poetry festivals, and is founding editor of the monthly digital project λ_ink. He has translated Witold Gombrowicz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, E. E. Cummings, Anne Carson and others into Greek; and his own writing has been translated into 13 languages.

Theodoros Chiotis writes poetry and code poetry in Greek and English. He is the editor and translator of the anthology Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis (Penned in the Margins, 2015). His work has appeared in many print and online magazines and anthologies in Greece, the UK, Australia and elsewhere. He has translated contemporary British and American poets into Greek and classical Greek drama into English. His forthcoming collection, Θεωρία της Μηχανής (Theory of the machine), will be published in 2017. He lives in Athens and is the Project Manager of the Cavafy Archive at the Onassis Foundation.

Phoebe Giannisi’s poetry lies at the border between poetry, performance, theory and installation, and investigates the connections between voice, writing with the body, place and land. Her audiovisual poetry installation Tettix showed at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in 2012, and her poetic installation Aigai-o. The Songs at Aggeliki Chatzimichali Museum in 2015. Giannisi has translated ancient lyric poetry and work by Hélène Cixous, Gerhard Falkner, Andrew Maxwell, Barbara Kohler and others. She teaches at the University of Thessaly in Volos. Her poetry includes Αχινοί (Sea urchins, Mavro Mouseio, 1995); Ραμαζάνι (Ramadan, Mavro Mouseio, 1997); Θηλιές (Loops, Nefeli, 2005); Ομηρικά (Homerica, Kedros, 2009); Τέττιξ (Tettix, Gavrielides, 2012); Ραψωδία (Rhapsody, Gutenberg, 2016). Her website is phoebegiannisi.net.

Katerina Iliopoulou is a poet and translator who lives and works in Athens. She has published five books of poetry, the most recent of which was Μια φορά κάθε τοπίο και ολότελα (Everyplace once and completely) in 2015. Her poetry has been widely translated, and she has translated the work of Sylvia Plath, Mina Loy, Ted Hughes, Robert Hass and Walt Whitman into Greek. She regularly participates in international poetry festivals, is co-editor of greekpoetrynow.com, and editor-in-chief of [φρμκ] (frmk), a biannual journal on poetry, poetics and the visual arts. She can be found at www.iliopoulou.wordpress.com.

Lena Kallergi, born in 1978, is a poet and translator. She has published two books of poetry: Κήποι στην άμμο (Gardens on sand, Gavrielides, 2010) – which received the Maria Polydouri Award for New Poets – and Περισσεύει ένα πλοίο (One ship apart, Gavrielides, 2016); as well as two volumes of poetry in collaboration with the ‘Ομάδα Από Ποίηση’ (Poetry Team, Gavrielides, 2010 and 2012). She has translated poetry by Giacomo Leopardi, Luis Cernuda and others. She lives and works in Athens, Greece.

​Patricia Kolaiti was born in Athens and grew up in the island of Aegina. Her first poetry collection, Σελέστεια (Celesteia, Nefeli, 2007), was nominated for the 2008 Diavazo First Book Award, and O Λιθόπαις (The Lithopedion) and Η Eπιστροφή (The return) are forthcoming by Nefeli and [φρμκ] (frmk). Her poems have been translated into English, Italian, Bulgarian and Dutch, and appear in various literary journals, anthologies and online literary platforms. Patricia’s work systematically explores the interaction between the corporeal origin/materiality of the voice, and bodily action as kinetic form, and she performs experimental presentations of her poetry, interactive readings and ‘somatic events’. 

Title: Shipwrecks/Shelters: Six Contemporary Greek Poets / Ναυάγια/Καταφύγια: Έξι Σύγχρονοι Έλληνες Ποιητές  
Editor/translator: Vana Manasiadis
Authors: Lena Kallergi. Theodore Chiotis, Phoebe Giannisi, Patricia Kolaiti, Vassilis Amanatidis, Katerina Iliopoulou
Category: Poetry
ISBN: 978-0-9941345-3-0
Format: Paperback, 210 mm (tall) x 148 mm (wide), 36 pages
RRP:  $20
Publication Date:  November 2016
​
Trade price $10.67
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

Seraph Press on Facebook

---

Seraph Press on Twitter

---

Vana Manasiadis's website
​

Read Vana's 'Letter from Crete' on the Academy of NZ Literature site

Listen to Vana's Radio NZ interview about the political situation in Greece in 2011

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...