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Destiny also flows - Katerina Anghelaki Rooke
At dawn the sea turns green like a meadow
and you can see how the imperishable water
views the grass
how it conceives the partiality of the root
the bondage of the fruit.
A forest hour of the liquid element
a leafy moment for the water
and the beloved is planted in the mind
like a weeping concept.
I understand the basic principle
of that which while standing still hits me
while being absolute, flows:
instantaneously the fleeting
face of love is created;
it is in eternal blue
that the rooster snuffs it.
And always the same grief:
Nature asks us with constant blossoming
to confirm the copies of the invisible
while violently pushes us outside form.
My eyes then flow like fountains
as if they had never ceased to flow over him
and as adorned with drops
I emerge from my sorrows,
I don’t forget that under his nameless
skin it is he alone who moves.
From the Collection of Poems 1986 - 96
(Translated by the author)
Katerina Anghelaki Rooke
Anghelaki-Rooke, Katerina
Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke was born in 1939 in Athens, Greece. Since her father was a good friend of Kazantzakis, who was her godfather, she had already at an early age inspiration for poetry.
At the age of seventeen she published her first poem. With that debut she entered the new generation of young poets in Greece.
Her talent for language was also noticeable in her childhood days when she learned to speak Russian from her nanny. Later in her life, she would translate Russian writers and poets, including Pushkin into Greek.
She studied foreign languages, literature and translation at the universities of Athens, Nice (France) and Geneva (Switzerland), where she graduated in 1962. She has received Ford Foundation Grants (1972 and 1975), and was invited to the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.
She became a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer in the United States (1980-1981), during which time she lectured on Modern Greek Poetry and Nikos Kazantzakis at Harvard.
She has given countless public readings of her poetry in English and in Greek in the United States, Mexico, and Europe. In 1985 she received Greek National Poetry Award.
Her relationship with Poiein kai Prattein started when she joined a group of poets called 'Touch Stone' (forerunner of Poiein kai Prattein) and who went on to organize poetry workshops in Athens 1992, Evia 1993, and in Kamilari, Crete 1993 and 1994.
Her voice is recorded in ‘Poets seeking a Voice in Europe’ composed and created by the singer Savina Yannatou
In 1995 she participated in the 'Myth of the City' conference held in Crete 1995. It brought together 15 poets and 15 planners, architects, philosophers to talk about living conditions in cities.
She contributed to Poiein kai Prattein's publication of 'Poetry Connect: Poets and the Olympic Truce' when the Olympic Games were held in Athens 2004. She joined as well the Kids' Guernica exhibition organised in Kastelli, Crete in 2006 to read her pensive poem called 'War Diary' to give a poetic reflection about war.
Her life is linked with both Athens and Aegina.
Her poetry approaches a kind of natural philosophy that gives an understanding of life; equally her poetic, indeed booming voice can draw anyone's attention to her understanding of life, namely that “life has more imagination than we people have.”
HF 28.5.2011
For more information about Katerina see http://poieinkaiprattein.org/poetry/katerina-anghelaki-rooke/
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