The man who came for dinner

Monday evening

21.30 Departure by bus for restaurant and reception by the head of the Prefecture of

Chania: Mrs. Aleka Markogiannaki

Magic setting with restaurant located on a small island vis a vis harbor of Chania

Left to right: Mrs. and Bapiste Marray, Jose Reina L. Palazon, Paula Meehan

Foreground: Andretti Schoorel and Richard Meheux and facing camera from left to right Phil Cooke, Sue Tilden, Dimitri Stathakos and Brendan Kennelly

Left to right: Emer Ronan and Anna Arvanitaki with other guests

Socrates Kabouropoulos and Hatto Fischer

Hatto Fischer and Maya Fischer talking to actress

Aleka Markogiannaki speaking with Eleni Iliopoulou and Hatto Fischer with Maya asleep

The man who came for dinner

Observations by Phil Cooke

In a meeting, organised by Hatto Fischer, we found ourselves conducting a roadshow of ‘workshops’ in Crete. The model for this was ‘creative regions’ by day and ‘poems and pints’ by night in the company of such luminaries as Irish bards Brendan Kennelly and Theo Dorgan, alongside, amongst others, a remarkable and operatic Bulgarian diva, all funded by their government international arts programmes. Line-ups for daytime and night-time events would be supplemented by local expertise, whether archaeological, ethnographical or urbanistic by day or poetic and choreographical by night. Raki, zaziki and various other delicious exotica were our daily recompense for providing this remarkable service from one end of Kriti to the other. Imagine our surprise and, for some, anxiety when being hosted by the Mayor of Chania at a proper dinner at the harbour, we found we were not alone but sharing the dinner with another and larger party. As we proceeded to eat and discuss who this other besuited party might be, since we had neither been introduced, informed nor expected to be sharing, some of our Greek friends made discreet inquiries about the identity of our co-participants. On hearing that it was a delegation from Serbia, at that time - 1995 - at war with its former Yugoslav neighbours, the poets in particular got up to leave. Ireland’s neutrality in relation to the Balkan wars meant they were jeopardising the good name of the government they were representing. A formal letter was written and protest registered prior to our mass walk-out. This caused a row, which reverberated at least until the following day, when I along with Hatto’s wife Anna, an employee of the Greek spatial planning division of the government were harangued by a member of that very government in mid-air as the two of us returned to Athens. We had discovered that arms were shipped secretly to Serbia through Crete, with Chania a port active in the trafficking, and the hosting was an official acknowledgement of the value of the trade for the port as well as an expression of solidarity between fellow Orthodox religious communities. Curious how the early exposure of peaceable notions like ‘innovative and creative networking and systems’ should involve us in such cloak-and-dagger interactions.

Source:

International Encyclopedia of Human Geography

http://www.dime-eu.org/files/active/0/Cooke_07_Louis.pdf

^ Top

« Dance of the Vulture | Tuesday in Chania: planners and poets »

Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

Navigation

The man who came for dinner