DECEMBER 10th - 13th 2020
We would like to inform you that due to the implementation of a new lockdown in our country and the increase in the number of coronavirus cases, the organizing and scientific committee of the “Jean Moréas International Awards” and the Patras International Poetry Festival postpones the date of the event on December, 10-13 of 2020.
Digital Event
The Patras World Poetry Festival 2020 this year is entitled "National Poets" and plans to host 60 poets from 15 different countries around the world.
This year the festival be held online and virtually, as far as COVID-19 impact affects significantly the implementation of this event.
In the four-day online event there will be 6 meetings lasting up to 3 hours, where the guest poets will be presented with readings in 2 languages, via live connection. The events will be attended by invited representatives of institutions and the jury, while the program will include speeches, presentations, tributes, music, etc.
In addition, the following activities will take place within the schedule of the Festival events:
The 3rd Patras World Poetry Festival 2020 is organized by the Poetry Fountation “Grafeion Poiiseos”, the literary website Culture Book (culturebook.gr) and the multicultural center Epikentro Plus History & Arts, while every year it is under the auspices of the Ministries of Culture and the Ministry of Tourism*. Supporters of the event are the Greek Library of London, the Cultural Center “Kostis Palamas”, the University of Western Macedonia, the Hellenic Open University and many other important institutions, as claimed under the Aegis of the President of the Hellenic Republic.
Awarding of Poetry Awards "Jean Moréas" for the year 2019
This annual event will be held digitally at one session of the PWPF Poetry Event 2020, with a presentation of the award-winning poets and recitations by them. This is the annual event during which the "Jean Moréas" Prizes are awarded for Greek poetic art and Greek poetic production in its entire range. They are recognizable nationwide and concern the poetry collections that were published throughout the previous calendar year from the year of the award. They refer both to young poets and newcomers and to those who are recognized with their poetic work along time.
The event is highly appreciated by the Greek literary and artistic circle of readers. In this year's event, in addition to the institutionalized awards, a very important foreign poet will be honored, who with his/her lifelong work honors the literature outside Greece.The Award Committee is composed of Greek University professors, as well as very important poets and poetry critics who will evaluate the work of the honorees.
Sincerely,
On behalf of the organizing committee.
Kotopoulos H. Triantafyllos, President of the “Patras World Poetry Festival”
Skiathas D. Antonis, President of the Poetry Fountation “Grafeion Poiiseos”
Alaniadi Maria, Event Manager of the “Patras World Poetry Festival”
Yiannis Patilis, GREECE
Birds
Attempt Against Silence
The Poems
Birds
The sky cracks in places
Like plaster sometimes in whole pieces
Which lose their luster as they fall
Become opaque, soft, and warm
They grow fur and down and feathers
And on their brown color now
They mirror dirt
This is the sky from up close
This is how it comes closer
Everyone now can reach it
(Even those blessed children
With the sling-shots)
Because it exhausts you high up
Eternal and unfractured
Without love's caresses to wear you down
Something you cannot stand and break
In places, crack and strip in whole pieces
Which lose their luster as they fall
They grow fur and down and feathers
(Because nobody kills you without a motive)
And they fall
They fall
Upon this earth where constantly the sky
Comes to die.
(Translation into English: Stathis Gourgouris)
*
Έτσι είναι από κοντά ο ουρανός
Έτσι έρχεται κοντά μας
Τώρα όλοι τον φτάνουν
(Ακόμη κι αυτά τα ευλογημένα τα παιδία
Με τις σφεντόνες)
Γιατί είναι κούραση ψηλά
Αιώνιος κι αρράγιστος
Δίχως αγάπης χάδια που να φθείρουν
Κάτι που δεν αντέχεται και σπας
Μεριές μεριές ραγίζεις και σου φεύγουνε κομμάτια
Που όσο πέφτουν χάνουν τη λαμπράδα τους
Βγάζοντας χνούδια πούπουλα φτερά
(Γιατί και δίχως κίνητρα κανείς δεν σε σκοτώνει)
Και πέφτουν
Πέφτουν
Στη γη αυτή που ολοένα ο ουρανός
Έρχεται και πεθαίνει.
* * *
Attempt Against Silence
Since the vortex of colours
Is white, is silence
The great contortion of all that's spoken
No one will be able to analyze
Silence, no spectroscope
A desert inside everyone
Thick dust that time's slow wind
Cannot exhaust
Raising the small clouds of idle talk
In various shapes (sometimes poetic)
Which change shape again since
Dust will never settle
Because time —the one who blows—
Is Madness (and nothing
Stops Madness). The fools we are
Continuing to talk of silence
As if a grain of sand could talk
Of the desert
(Which settles inside everyone).
(Translation into English: Stathis Gourgouris)
*
Απόπειρα κατά της σιωπής
Καθώς η δίνη των χρωμάτων
Είναι το άσπρο είναι η σιωπή
Όλων των λόγων η μεγάλη συστροφή
Κανείς δεν θα μπορέσει ν' αναλύσει
Τη σιωπή φασματοσκόπιο κανένα
Μια έρημος μες στον καθένα
Σκόνη πηχτή που δεν την εξαντλεί
Το σιγανό του χρόνου αεράκι
Καθώς σηκώνει σύννεφα μικρά την φλυαρία
Σε σχήματα πολλά (ενίοτε ποιητικά)
Που πάλι αλλάζουν σχήματα καθώς
Δεν κατακάθεται ποτέ ο κουρνιαχτός
Γιατί ο χρόνος —που φυσά—
Είναι η Τρέλλα (και τίποτα
Δεν σταματά την Τρέλλα) Ανόητοι κι εμείς
Τον λόγο συνεχίζουμε περί σιωπής
Σαν να μπορούσε ο κόκκος άμμου να μιλήσει
Για την έρημο
(Που κατακάθεται μες στον καθένα).
(Από την ποιητική συλλογή Γραφέως Κάτοπτρον [Ύψιλον, 1989])
The Poet
Yiannis Patilis (Athens, 1947). Poet, critic, editor and publisher of Planodion (1986-2012), a journal of literature and the politics of culture, and of a Greek online review for the short short story named Bonsai Stories. He published nine volumes of poetry, two volumes of collected poems. Also six volumes with essays and a hybrid essay-narrative. Many poems translated into various languages, notably English: Camel of Darkness. Selected Poems (translated by Stathis Gourgouris, Quarterly Review of Literature, Princeton 1997) and Spanish: Lo Roto Es Más Persistente (translated by Antonio José Moreno Jurado, Renacimiento, 2018). See more in WiKi: Yiannis Patilis & Planodion.
*
Γιάννης Πατίλης (Αθήνα, 1947). Σπούδασε Νομικά και Νεοελληνική Φιλολογία στο Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών. Εργάστηκε ως φιλόλογος στη Μέση Εκπαίδευση. Δημοσίευσε εννέα συλλογές ποιημάτων και δύο συγκεντρωτικές. Επίσης έξι τόμους με δοκιμιακή του εργασία καθώς και ένα υβριδικό δοκιμιακό-αφήγημα. Υπήρξε εκδότης του περιοδικού Πλανόδιον (1986-2012). ΤονΑπρίλιο του 2010 ιδρυσε τον ιστότοπο για το μικρό διήγημα Ιστορίες Μπονζάι τον οποίο συνδιευθύνει με την Ηρώ Νικοπούλου.