Inspirations

Yannis Antiochos is a poet and translator. He was born in Athens in 1969. He grew up and lives in Piraeus. He holds an MBA and an MSc from the Medical School of the University of Athens, specialising in Intensive Care Units. He has published three books of poetry and has translated works by Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Anna Akhmatova. He has contributed to various literary journals, publishing poems, essays and translations (ANTI, Index, Poetry, Dekata, Delear, Mandragoras, Poetix) He was included in the anthology Karaoke Poetry Bar with his poems in Greek and translated into English, and in the bilingual anthology published by the HELLENICA organisation, featuring English translations by Mr Goumas. An anthology containing three of his poems in the series “A generation defying itself” will soon be published in the USA, and will also feature a recommendation for the EKEBI e-magazine regarding the book “IN HIS LANGUAGE”.

-

OBSCURUS The weather vane spins round The whole planet explodes Submerged in the ashes a dark full moon look, it beckons to us, ruined on this final night One plunges the knife the other feels the pain and knows that the world does not forget and that the mistake bears witness He raises his index finger like a pistol killing false love Tonight the poet dies for the truth of a lifetime he leans slowly, his eyes dim a breeze blows and closes them On the earth he lies dead his dark love

Yannis Antiochos’s seventh book marks a turning point in his mastery of language. A physical composition in which poetic time folds in on itself, causing the poetic subject to vanish. This is a work of transition to a different compositional framework following his last work, Dissolution (2017). The book He, the lower sky is the funeral procession of the timeless, identity-less, substance-less Person, in whose name the poet’s most recent works were submitted, a life in the grave raged by freedom in the face of every conscious vision of every world. The poet’s ascension, the swan song of the body, for all those things which, though we do not see them, we perceive their rhythm. In the lower heaven, the poet is its crack. The light it emits assures him that everything moves within a great stillness. The great immovable is time—this crash.” "...what Antiochos achieves is unique and sublime in our literature. From the ashes of his Dissolution springs a new voice, one that is wholly submissive to and respectful of both European and Greek tradition. Everything is assimilated to articulate a grand work of unique art.” Gerasimos Dendrinos, Fractalart.gr "...A key feature of Yannis Antiochos’s poetry is its power to leave a lasting impression on the reader. Amidst its darkness, it persuades him to read it, evokes intense (and sometimes uncomfortable) emotions, invites him to reflect, and ultimately draws him back time and again." Christina Linardaki, literature.gr "…Antiochos’s integrity lies in the fact that he delivers to his audience what he is duty-bound to deliver as a poet who has now published enough books so that, on the one hand, he does not procrastinate in a supposed search for a personal style and, on the other, he does not ramble on by imitating himself in tried-and-tested forms. There is development, and there is also method." Angeliki Korre,

In my language the same things weigh heavily now people and birds I am running out In his new book of poetry, Yannis Antiochos brings together and revisits poems from his eight collections; from his first book, published in 2003, to *He, the Lower Sky*, which was awarded the 2020 State Prize for Poetry. The collection also includes unpublished poems written in recent years. This concise volume bears witness to the subtle thread that has defined his poetic journey over the last 20 years.

Following his award-winning *He, the Lower Sky*, Yannis Antiochos returns with a work that refracts the world as a post-war landscape. A realm not literal, but existential, historical, spiritual and thus linguistic. Poetry that offers no solace but functions as a black box of human finitude. Scenes of war, fragments of memory, digital traces, theological fissures, bodies in disarray. A dense archive of fragments that moves on the fringes of language and faith. A poetics of the end that seeks not understanding but inclusion in the bewilderment of the present.