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Brendan Kennelly and Katerina Anghelaki Rooke      Myth of the City, Crete 1995

Poetry and Poiein kai Prattein


A poetic response differs from the position of not knowing insofar as human beings know in their feelings what is happening to somebody they love, to the family, to society and taking place at the moment in the world.

That differs from not knowing since emotional responses are always possible. They call it the 'gut feeling', while others would make out of these intuitive guesses learning hypothesis. Basically knowledge is like a platform which has to have some pillars to stand on. These pillars are human emotions. They uphold things even if the metaphor in view of the tremendous oil spill due to the explosion of an oil drilling platform may not seem appropriate at the moment. But then often things are inappropriate, not to be said at this time. Poets differ insofar as they sense many times things lying ahead or around the corner and even before the majority notice the same things, they have picked up already some small details such as the nails in a bomb going off when just children round the corner and the van explodes, as described by Brendan Kennelly when contemplating the relationship between 'poetry and violence'.

There have been many different poetic movements. In each specific country they create often the new generations of poets. Some like in Rumania congegrate in Sibiu where the atmosphere seems to be conduicive to writing good poetry even during the Ceausceau rulership. Eugene van Itterbeek, once general secretary of the 'Seven Sleepers' and who linked up with the 'Touch Stone' group of poets here in Athens, has gone to Sibiu where he continues his networking of poets and literary reflections as he has always done when still living in Leuven, Belgium and being close in contact to Van de Brande. It was his introduction which prompted the Fifth Seminar "Cultural Actions for Europe" here in Athens 1994 and which was followed up by the 'Myth of the City' conference in Crete 1995. Materials thereof can be found on this website under the category 'conferences'.

Thus, out of Touch Stone emerged Poiein kai Prattein. In due course there were organised many poetic actions first in Efia and Athens, then in Crete and Aegina while during the Olympics in Athens 2004 there were published on the website ten books under the title:  'Poetry Connection: Poets and the Olympic Truce'. Out of this followed on the one hand the linkage to Sam Hamill and the Poets against the War while on the other hand Poiein kai Prattein took a youth delegation to Torino and organised in collaboration with PEACE WAVES the youth festival to prepare possibilities to have the Olympic Truce and Human Rights being observed during the times of the Olympic Games. Out of this emerged the contact to Kids' Guernica with one poetic action being the participation of Katerina Anghelaki Rooke, Dostena Laverge, Socrates Kabouropoulos and Hatto Fischer in the Poetic Reading during the Kids' Guernica Exhibition in Kastelli, 2006.

In 2010 the poetic action concentrated on creating a Poetry Centre on Aegina with the enchanted house of Katerina Anghelaki Rooke the focus, archive and departure point for promoting the legacy of poetry. By 2011 Katerina's poem about 'Flow of Destiny' in which she describes water as being imperishable became the inspiration for the action on Rhodes (May 29 - June 4) with Haroula Hadijnicolaou curating the action to familiarize 15 people from different backgrounds to water /wetlands related issues to be faced as an open question of development.

For September 24th 2011, there is planned in conjunction with World Poetry Movement a special reading of 'a poetry of the other'.

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