Yannis Efthymiadis: Homeland, an image of ourselves through the ‘other’.

Read below the interview given by Yannis Efthymiadis to Poli Kremnioti for the newspaper *Avgi*, on the occasion of his new poetry collection *Patreida*. “‘The revolution will come from deep darkness,’ declares Yannis Efthymiadis in his latest poetry collection, ‘Patreida’. Introspective yet thoroughly political, this poetry redefines the poet’s relationship with the concept of homeland, which is now approached on the basis of a re-engagement with humanity as both the individual self and a collective entity. ‘I shall say that for me, homeland is all that I love and all that I have seen,’ writes the poet in the first of the four sections into which the poetic composition is structured."In this work, I attempt to capture the image of a homeland as we have all experienced it over the last few decades, through our collective memory and through the loving relationships between people.Through this endeavour, I consciously began to redefine its meaning, to disconnect it from the narrow concept of place and to link it to people, to the lived experience of both those born here and those who found themselves in this place, and made it their homeland. Thus, the concept of homeland transcends its narrow geographical boundaries and is redefined within a much broader context, now as an image of ourselves through the other,” notes Yannis Efthymiadis.In the first section of the same name, the poet’s gaze turns to the people and things that make up the homeland; in the second – ‘The Week of the Depths”—highlights the grim reality of our world as reflected in the years of deep crisis in our country and globally.The third section is an elegy, “not, however, in the sense of a lament of resignation, but of realisation—that pivotal moment, in other words, that makes you realise you must react,” says Yannis Efthymiadis. In the final section – ‘the revolution will come from deep darkness’ – the poet urges action not out of over-optimism, but out of awareness. As he puts it, ‘poetry owes nothing, but poets owe a great deal’. In a time of transition, within a fluid international environment and a globalised context where boundaries are blurring and identities are shifting, Yannis Efthymiadis draws on the poetic tradition of his homeland, playing with rhyme and metre to highlight the internal structure and rhythm that run through the composition. ‘Rhythm is an element closely interwoven with our contemporary poetic tradition. I returned to the source because the deeper one digs, the more universally one speaks. Our times frighten me, because personal and collective identity has been lost; whether as an act, an expectation or a vision, fundamental codes of values have been distorted and counterfeited, which disorients us and leads us to chase illusory dreams. The omnipotence of money has marginalised our humanity, our aesthetics, our ethics; it has disrupted the hierarchy of values in our lives.”“Is this an issue that concerns poetry internationally?” we ask him. “The issues highlighted by our times concern poets, creators and artists all over the world. I think we are all in a period of searching and redefining; we are trying to pick up the thread where we left off when the post-war social vision collapsed. The reconnection with form and a more structured mode is a phenomenon that poets across the world are seeking today, so that they may build a new poetic reality on a firmer foundation. It is also a healthy reaction to the chaotic freedom to which the over-interpretation of postmodernism has led.” In this sense, the political dimension of poetry comes to the fore. "Poetry, from its very inception, is a deeply political phenomenon; it contains within it conflict and revolution, first and foremost against ourselves, against any certainty, whether we have defined it ourselves or it occurs without our knowledge.We always speak politically in poetry, even in its most lyrical outbursts, if one considers that poetic discourse comes to challenge the narrow economic and technical framework of the era. Perhaps, and indeed most likely, poetry cannot provide the solutions, but it can give us the strength to find them."Perhaps this is why Yannis Efthymiadis concludes his elegy with the firm assertion: ‘in arid times, the root grows deeper...’.