Monday, October 30, 2006
Public Reading: Keith Taylor and William Reader
“Battered Guitars: The Poetry and Prose of Kostas Karyotakis”

7pm, Shaman Drum Book Store
311 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48103

After poet Kostas Karyotakis (1896-1928) committed suicide at the age of 32, Greek literature was never the same. Now English-speaking readers will be able to see why. He was influenced by French Symbolists and became the leading figure of Modernist despair with a unique satiric edge. The formal precision, technical experimentation, and dark vision of his writings, combined with the deafening gunshot of his suicide, had enormous impact on succeeding generations of poets.

Karyotakis is the last major figure of the Greek modern canon not yet translated into English. The Modern Greek Program in the Department of Classical Studies is joining forces with the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK, to publish Battered Guitars: The Poetry and Prose of Kostas Karyotakis, which will appear at the end of 2006. Michigan faculty Keith Taylor, who coordinates the Undergraduate Program in Creative Writing in the English Department, learned Greek specifically for the purpose of translating Karyotakis. He has been working on this project for many years, together with his friend William Reader, a Religion Professor at Central Michigan University. Together, they won the 2004 Keeley and Sherrard Award from Poetry Greece magazine for two path-breaking Karyotakis translations.

The series Birmingham Modern Greek Translations has been publishing books of poetry and fiction under the editorship of Dimitris Tziovas, Professor of Modern Greek. With funding provided to the Modern Greek Program of Michigan by the Foundation for Modern Greek Studies, the series will be able to bring out in late 2006 the first book-length, English translation of Karyotakis. Both Michigan and Birmingham have had a long history of creative engagement with modern Greek culture. For example, modern Greek language courses at Michigan go as far back as the 1880s, and occur in other periods, like the 1940s and 1970s. Past Birmingham faculty include two great advocates of contemporary Hellenism, Nikolai Bakhtin, brother of literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, and George Thomson, who proposed that the study of Greek should begin with its modern form.

This transatlantic collaboration between an American and a British Modern Greek Program is a step toward reversing the grim reality that only approximately 5% of English-language literary books are translations from other languages because extremely few non-English writers command international attention and because American university presses, which used to support translations from less commonly taught languages, are cutting down and turning more commercial. Readers who have enjoyed the poetry of C.P. Cavafy, Nikos Kazantzakis, Angelos Sikelianos, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, and Yannis Ritsos will now be able to discover the missing link from the 1920s, the unique voice of Kostas Karyotakis.   ~Vassilis Lambropoulos

Join Keith Taylor and William Reader on Monday, October 30, as they read from “Battered Guitars: The Poetry and Prose of Kostas Karyotakis”