“AS THEY FALL, THE SENTENCE OPENS A PARACHUTE TO LAND SAFELY; THE VERSE REALIZES IT HAS WINGS TO FLY”

 MY SPEECH ON POETRY AT GIORGOS CHRISTODOULIDES SELECTED POEMS 1996-2022 BOOK LAUNCH

CYPRUS HIGH COMMISSION

LONDON, UK: 5 APRIL 2022

 

Good evening, dear friends.

I’ve always felt it’s better to let my poems speak for me, but this is a special occasion. I have seen poems of mine translated before, but it is the first time such a wide selection of my work comes out in a foreign language. In itself, this re-reading puts my poems, especially those written 20-25 years ago, to the test of time – and I don’t only mean the past, but also the future: if present-day poems can strike a chord with future readers, then I suppose that the poet is vindicated in a way: he is rescued along with his poems.

The door to this edition opened thanks to my editor, Haris Ioannides of Armida Publications, and to my gifted translator. I approach these Selected Poems first as a reader and only secondly as the poet who wrote them. I believe in the fluidity of art, in the potential of a work of art – whether it be a poem, a novel or a painting – to become reinterpreted, remodelled or enriched in the course of time. Yes, it may also be “relocated” in the sense of departing from its original intention, even more so when it sustains the complexities of translation. But there’s always movement in this process, there’s always  a sense of constant change that has kept humanity alive for so many centuries. I bring to mind the first Cypriot immigrants to the United Kingdom in the 1950s, their movement across, and I have this hope that their descendants will read this book as a way of picking up the threads of a long, shared story.

I strongly believe that everything comes to an end without ever ceasing to exist. It carries on in the form of a sparkle or a molecule of energy that enters the genes of the next generation of people and things. In fact, this is such a wonderful human ability: to assimilate the rupture caused by an ending, and to fashion it into a revived utterance. I write poetry in order to give voice to people and things whose voice was taken away from them; to acknowledge their silence as part of my own voice. I write because it enables me to make up a universe of shared symbols and codes, rearranged and metanorphosed in tune with my own worldview.

At this point, please allow me to read one of my  poems, where the merging of humans, trees and animals is lifted off the bleak setting to suggest a new form of survival: “The case of the word sempre in Lake Tampo”.

 

The case of the word sempre in lake Tampo

 

A cedar tree is crying on the shores of frozen lake Tampo,

looking forlornly at the lake and crying,

its branches dripping sobs.

Ripples emerge through the cracks of the lake.

The lake gives them back as volatile panting wails,

all the more to upset the cedar tree.

The lake weeps, ice screeches.

A cedar tree is crying on the shores of frozen lake Tampo

because it was once a man who lost his gender, his name;

because the lake was the woman he loved,

but the time had come for people to transform,

forfeiting their gender first,

to become trees, to become lakes --

the most hardened would become mountaintops,

those with the most suffocating melodies

would melt in the oceans,

and the thickest-skinned would become piles and mine walls,

and no one would ever meet anyone again,

and no one would ever be able to hurt anyone,

nor would they be able, during periods of great affliction,

to console each other

on the loss of gender, the leaking of form.

Just like now,

the cedar tree crying,

the lake yearning,

both helpless to come closer,

what with the adamant word sempre

between them.

 

I am a journalist by profession. I have been trained to report the truth as clearly and succinctly as possible. It is a useful profession, when performed with humility and sincerity. I am also a poet, fascinated with verbal illusions, the ability of words to transcend reality, to expand it. In between the two – journalist and poet, truth and illusion – I can hear the thud of words falling to the ground. But I have read and written poetry for many years, and I can tell you with certainty that the difference between a sentence and a verse is that, as they fall, the sentence opens a parachute to land safely; the verse realizes it has wings to fly.

Thank you all for being here, I am deeply grateful.

 

Giorgos Christodoulides