Daphne Nikita was born in Nicosia. Studied at the University of Kent at Canterbury (BA with honours in Visual and Performed Arts) and at Goldsmiths College, University of London (MA in History of Art). Since March 2001, she has been the director of the Centre of Contemporary Art “DIATOPOS” in Nicosia. She has written several texts on the work of Contemporary Cypriot artists in books, exhibition catalogues and for the everyday press. Since 1998 she is the producer (research and presentation) of the program “Cultural Mosaic” of the Third Program of the Cyprus Broadcasting Cooperation. She has published three poetry collections.
In June 1999 she represented Cyprus in the section of Poetry, of the Biennale of Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean, in Rome. She participated in the 53rd Venice Biennale(June 2009), in the project “Making Words”, curated by Daniel Birnbaum and Evgeny Bunimovich, organized by Stella Art Foundation , Moscow International Poetry Biennale, La Casa delle Parole and ArtBOX.gr, which took place in the framework of the exhibition “Making Worlds” curated by Daniel Birnbaum. In September 2009 she also participated in the 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale with a performance in collaboration with the choreographer Alexandra Waierstall.
Her poems have been published in various literary reviews and anthologies. She has been frequently collaborating with e-poema (www.e-poema.eu), the poetry and essay on-line magazine. She is a member of the Moscow Poetry Club of the Stella Art Foundation.
Along the Grand Canal
with the thousand merchants
buying and selling glass marks
there, where starts
the magic bridge
of south sea
grey gondoliers,
sits stooped and
bristled up
the guardian of the fissured
city
with a feather in his hand
he scoops out non-stop
the famous
king’s
stone tiles.
The quick paces of passers-by
echo like trumps of anger
leaving behind them tiny
dead feathers and dust.
Daphne Nikita
© Translation by Yannis Goumas
FEAR IN THE WATER
I stand
on your sharpest edge
with love and fear
dripping
on the long
fingers
Below
salt and water
and the knife
sticking out and
sticking in again
forcefully
fiercely
wilfully
non-stop
in your liquid depths
until
sundown.
Daphne Nikita
© Translation by Yannis Goumas
From Betty’s adventure and other poems,
(..Poema..) editions, Athens 2009
BOUNDLESS BLUE
At the top of the snow-covered mountainside
a witch and I
are mixing herbs
looking from the precipice
at the boundless blue
of Yves Klein.*
*Yves Klein(1928-62). French artist
Daphne Nikita
© Translation by Yannis Goumas
From Bottles of the Same Perfume,
En Tipis Publishing, Nicosia 1999
Published with the permission of Daphne Nikita