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translated by David Connolly and introduced by David Constantine (Arc Publications: Visible Poets no. 11, 2003, 110pp., £8.95) ISBN 1 900072 76 9

Yannis Kondos’s work grows out of thematic and stylistic shifts initiated by the so-called ‘generation of the 70s’ that saw Greek poets moving towards more metaphysical, personal spheres from where rapid social changes are often observed.

   Translated by David Connolly, Absurd Athlete, his tenth collection and recipient of the 1997 State Prize for Poetry, appears in Arc’s Visible Poets series, perhaps one of the healthiest platforms for a European poet to be eased towards English readership; extended translator’s prefaces help to recognize the critical and creative roles of mediating subjectivity, while introductions by some of our most prominent literary figures celebrate the otherness of foreign literature for the precious lifeblood it always has been. It all points to a shift in publishing mores for translated poetry, and, as such, one hopes it will find many imitators.

   Kondos’s poetry trails the diaspora of experience in hectic city
routines, lingering on commonplaces, going for the openings when life coincides with its reflection. His work is distinctly synaesthetic (‘I unfold popularity’ to be a popular writer, her influence on her successors has my patience. / It’s woollen and brownish / Time is striped.’) and the surreal quickenings he injects to his warm, colloquial language help to arrest the reality behind life’s absurdities, arriving time and again at the everyday recognitions that already are the stuff of poetry. It gives these poems an organic, decided feel as they leap, effortlessly almost, from the humdrum to the sublime:

   The sun pierces the cupboards and chests
   and the moth slips in. It makes furrows
   in the mind, in the blankets that cover you
   in winter. Winter’s in the storeroom
   waiting. Everything’s waiting for
   the earth to suck the trees’ saps,
   for the trees to sleep,
   for us to wake.
   For the moment, we’re hunting bugs and ideas.
   We don’t hunt our shadow,
   because it’s become a crowd watching us.
                                                                                 ‘Summertime’

   He is also not averse to fashioning narratives out of our little dramas, often embedding contemporary theatre and film (‘he never imagined he’d become / a character out of Samuel Beckett.’; ‘Summer, like in a play / by Tennessee Williams.’; ‘It could be a Bergman film’) into his stagings of modern alienation. The approach is strongly visual (indeed ‘film shorts’ could be a two-word review of this book) in making us see, yet the inner space witnessed relies on poetic insight: ‘It’s raining again and you kiss me indifferently / gazing over my shoulder / at the next days jostling / in the doorway’. Given the subject matter (tempus fugit, death is omnipresent, a sense of not being at one with oneself), Kondos’s penchant for irony both intensifies the effect of his often dark verse, yet at the same time lends it a nod of assent in the face of everyday anxieties. Along with his knack for telling a story, it also adds much to the enjoyment of this poetry.

   As for the translation, it is a beautiful match between the Visible Poets setting and Connolly’s own meticulous approach; his inventive and intelligent renderings bear out his reputation as one of the most
dependable translators a Greek writer could wish for and afford this
series one of its most rewarding volumes so far. And although publishing realities and our own need to catch up might more often necessitate the jet-lag of a volume of selected or collected poems of translated literature, it is refreshing, if not downright vital, to be confronted with translations of recent single collections that make it possible to follow modern world poetry closer to real time. In acquainting us with Greek poetry as it is happening now, books like Absurd Athlete can only be welcomed as steps in the right direction.