Photo credit: Christopher Andreou | Interview by Zoë Brigley
“Given [the constraint of short form], I like to utilise materials that, in conjunction with the short text, offer additional meaning to ultimately make the poems multi-layered, esoteric and more nuanced”
Unbodied
[image description: against a white background, a piece of sacking is hung on a rod. It has blue and green stamps on it, and red and green stripes. The following words – the poem, ‘Unbodied’ – have been sewn on in blocky black capitals:]
AS PULP, AS SEEDS ROASTED IN THE BARE SUN, MUTE, UNBODIED, AS CREMAINS, WE WILL BE LONGING FOR RAIN
I am very intrigued by work where the tangible world of objects and poetry meet, and I can see from your Instagram account that this is something that intrigues you too. How did you get interested in this? Are there any poets/artists who inspire you?
Thank you, Zöe. I was always interested in language and materials and I started experimenting with poetry and visual art in my early twenties. Coming from Rhodes, besides the canonical and post-war Greek poetry that I encountered at school, I didn’t have a clue about contemporary poetry or what form poems should take. My early experiments with language were mostly calligrams and my first published poem in a magazine was in the shape of a sun (shoutout to Streetcake Magazine for giving me my first shot!). Then, in May 2018, I was asked to perform some of my visual poems at the Peckham Pelican and this posed a challenge for me: how do I perform page-based visual poems? I, then, went on to transform some of the page poems into three-dimensional objects which I passed to the audience during and after the performance. I enjoyed seeing the audience engaging with the objects and asking questions. This experience introduced me to sculptural poetics, and I’ve been hooked ever since! What intrigues me about poetry in this mode is the sensorial dimension encompassed in these objects – I like the texture of things. I gain continuous sustenance from Cecilia Vicuña, Eva Hesse, Maggie O’Sullivan, Joseph Beuys, Werner Herzog, Peter Larkin, Mirella Bentivoglio, Kate Siklosi, and many others.
Could you tell us a bit about the inspiration for this specific piece?
Rhythmically and linguistically, the poem is a response to Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s poetry collection, Of Sea (Penned in the Margins, 2021), which offers a spiritual and reflective approach to language. In her poem ‘Barrel Jellyfish’, she writes:
As rusks, as plants growing in marshy ground, as wind. We be longing to peril, in press of pressing on.
I like to think of my practice as a hive poetics – I see my practice as part of a continuum that is entangled with, and in conversation to other poets – I feel like us poets are pollinating each other’s work, whether that’s consciously or subconsciously. Through this poem I wanted to pay tribute to Burnett and feed from the linguistic fluidity of her collection, Of Sea.
In addition to Burnett’s reverberation in terms of language, the poem uses the process of coffee production as an axis to discuss the effects of global warming upon humans and nonhumans: in the same way that the pulp and fruit skin are removed from coffee cherries for the obtainment of coffee seeds (commonly known as green coffee beans) which are dried and roasted, the human body and nature are stripped of our basic rights to development, access to clean water and nutrients, and a more adaptable climate all around. The banner’s core material, a jute sack of Colombian coffee beans, carries history in itself – it has been ripped from the side for the obtainment of the coffee beans. This textile tear posits meaning through the sensorial force encompassed in the act of ripping, particularly in the context of global warming in which humans and nature’s survival can be jeopardised and ‘torn’ as a result of exploitative practices. This violent sensorial dimension also links the sack to the sense of exploitation that reverberates in Latin American coffee production itself.
In a way, what you present here is a very short poem, and these are hard to write. They have to have some kind of substance to avoid being throw-away, but you manage it. Do you enjoy working with short forms?
Yes, I really enjoy working with short forms – I find the process of compacting an idea in a short space very exciting. Protest banners, which have inspired this and other recent work of mine, mostly have minimal text and aim to portray an impactful message that is ultimately memorable in a quick glance: this often involves puns, rhyme and relevant illustrations or images and bright font colours. Given this constraint, I like to utilise materials that, in conjunction with the short text, offer additional meaning to ultimately make the poems multi-layered, esoteric and more nuanced.
