Born in Athens, Siarita Kouka has her origin in Mykonos. She is a conservator of maritime antiquities, and works for the Ministry of Culture.
Her work has been translated in English and presented at the poetry Center of San Francisco State University. Since 2004 she has co-organized with American poet Susan Gevirtz the annual translation and conversation meeting of the Paros Symposium (www.parossymposium.com) with Greek and Anglophone poets.
Books:
- Arrodo, poetry, Selas, Athens 1990
- I Danaki, poetry, Selas, Athens 1994
- Bentos, poetry, bilingual edition, English translation by John Sakkis, Selas, Athens, 2005
- The Swing, poetry, bilingual edition, English translation by Fani Karagouni – Angelos Sakkis – Susan Gevirtz – Steve Dickison – Thanassis Maskaleris and the author, Sokolis-Koulethakis, Athens 2011
They were beautiful
This company of women
All of them over eighty
At a little country church
They were among flowers
Mainly jasmine
One of them was playing
With a thread in her mouth
Very proud
Their aesthetics
In the courtyard
The swing was empty.
* Pride creates an aesthetic of luxurious simplicity self-evident in all of our upbringing, and the confusion of anachronism, a fixity that unsettles innovation.
7th
And the boys in the square
Were preparing the kindling
In the evening they would light fires
They keep the thinnest flame
The entire summer in their eyes
And their mothers will be drenching them with water
And their flame will not extinguish
And the poets will have to write.
* The dynamic of custom is in the repetition as well as in the need of the description of the repetition.
Poetry in this post: © Siarita Kouka
Published with the permission of Siarita Kouka