The poetics of mourning or loss: a study in Angeliki Sidira’s poetry

ABSTRACT

This study aims to present lament in contemporary Greek poetry as it emerges through Angeliki Sidira’s poems. The poetics of mourning allows poets to highlight a multitude of other themes around death (existential anguish, illness and therapy, social anguish and protest). Angeliki Sidira is the main contemporary Greek representative of the subgenre, connecting lamentation and rage through a feminine perspective and domestic poetry. Her poetry opposes the traditional image of a woman in poetry and replaces her at home as a mother, wife and daughter. Sidira’s poetry expands the way in which the dynamics of the feminine can be understood, through the pain of loss and its place in the home; it offers new ways of reading the relationship between emotional life and the broader social and political contexts that have shaped gender perceptions. Poetics of mourning or loss abandon the elegiac praise of the dead highlighting memory and pain. The autobiography of a female writer is an act of liberation, as it reveals political aspects through personal experience and social gender roles.

KEYWORDS:

• Modern Greek poetry
• domestic poetry
• anti-elegy
• poetics of mourning
• poetry of loss

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. All the poems are translated by Dimos Chloptsioudis.

2. Of course, this choice is directly linked to avoiding contamination from the dead body. Burial is such a strong custom in Greece that even today, a few years after cremation was allowed, the latter is adopted by a small minority. According to Kennedy the pastoral origin of elegy involves a dialectical relationship between town and individual. The appeal to the dead to return poses the constant presence of the latter in the city for its continuation.

3. We made a comparative reference to Dickinson and Plath both because they occupy a central place in the image of death in global female poetry and because Angeliki Sidira was significantly influenced by both female poets.

4. Kiki Dimoula (1931–2020) incorporates many elements of domestic poetry in her verses. Her poetry ‘smells’ of kitchen, home care and dust on furniture. She uses domestic poetry as a metonym of feminine marginalisation in the home and emphasises the feeling of entrapment of women in domestic tasks.

5. Athina Papadaki (born 1945) utilises domestic poetry as a metaphor for delineating female identity and sensitising the alienation of the female subject. She uses an anti-poetical material drawn from the household and highlights the performative femininity and women’s dramatic march towards emancipation. She also praises them for the joy of motherhood leaving spikes for the social violence they receive.

6. The Epitaph of Yannis Ritsos is a magnificent poem-document, about one of the most turbulent periods of modern Greek history (a striker was murdered by the police in 1936). This work from its first publication has been the subject of many and fruitful critical readings. In Greek letters is also known Thucydides’ Pericles’s Epitaph, Pericles’s speech in the annual public funeral for the war dead, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dimos Chloptsioudis

Dimos Chloptsioudis is a Greek language and literature teacher, MEd/PhD cand. in Creative Writing and Criticism. He writes essays and poetry reviews that have been published on websites and in literary magazines. He has been teaching Creative Writing to students and adults for ten (10) years. He has published four (4) collections. His poems have been translated into English, Spanish and French. He is a member of the Society of Writers of Thessaloniki. He was president and member of the committee of critics in student poetry competitions in Greece and Cyprus. He participated in the International Poetry Festivals of Patras and Larnaca and is a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Serres Poetry Festival. He has been teaching Creative Writing to students and adults for 10 years.

Triantafyllos H. Kotopoulos

Triantafyllos H. Kotopoulos is a Professor in Creative Writing & Modern Greek Literature (University of Western Macedonia - Greece) and the Scientific Director of two Postgraduate Programmes in Creative Writing. He has published eight (8) scientific books. More than one hundred and fifty (150) of his articles have been published in collective volumes, Greek and foreign scientific journals, and international conference proceedings. He has coordinated four (4) international “Creative Writing” conferences. He is the instigator and presenter of television programmes on the art of writing (“Digamma” - ERT3 18 episodes and “Clear Writing” - ERT2-12 episodes). His work includes five (5) poetry collections and a collection of short stories. He wrote the lyrics, and his poems have been versivied in Clear Writing and The unseen CD (Metronomos 2016 and 2020). He is the scientific director of the “World Poetry Festival of Patras” and of the website “Culture Book”, as well as chairman of the committee for the “Jean Moréas” poetry prize