Guest at FM 104.4 with Alexia Amvrasi

Katerina Anghelaki Rooke in
“Talk of the Town: Alexia Amvrasi” 17.1.2007
FM 104,4 Municipal Radio Athens

Katerina with Alexia Amvrasi outside FM 104.4 HF 11.3.2009

Katerina Anghelaki Rooke returned to FM 104,4 with Alexia Amvrasi on 11.3.2009 to talk about what can be done in Athens similar to "Printemps des Poetes" in France and now in Berlin as organised by Catherin Launay in Berlin. Alexia Amvrasi is keen to support every effort to bring out of everyone the poetry they have in them. For that are not needed well known poets but they can orientate themselves onhand of what Katerina Anghelaki Rooke has been doing, namely encourage young poets to write and to publish. There is a lot of good poetry out there in Athens and elsewhere.

During the conversation Katerina Anghelaki Rooke said poetry can be used to get to know oneself better. She thinks that "one should learn to use poetry like a tool in order to dig deeper into the self".

To Katerina Anghelaki Rooke poetry is a part of her life. Ever since she can remember, she has been writing poems. It is a way of life. When writing, she starts by entering a room where she looks around what poems she can take with her before leaving.

She experienced, however, the death of her husband as a terrible blow to her ability to write poetry for it seemed to her as if he had taken her poetry with him.

Then she read her poem during the show 'Athens for Real' with Alexia Amvrasi listening intensively. The poem is called: 'The Transcription of a Nightmare'. This poem can be linked to an essay Katerina Anghelaki Rooke wrote about the difference between 'silence and silences' for to hear a poem there must prevail a real silence, a silence which does not frightening but allows to hear the soul even if just a whisper:

THE TRANSCRIPTION OF A NIGHTMARE

For a nightmare to become a poem

The silence must be undisturbed by creakings

Of the soul, the heart or other organs

Of the inorganic chemistry of existence.

The silence may be occupied by colors

But striking clashes are forbidden:

Black with rose

Or with the much-sung blue of eyes.

Perhaps a bit of earthy brown

The bronze of a whithered leaf

Or white with brownish spots from a dog's neck.

Once the night mare has reached its full height

It must undergo a series of operations.
With great dexterity every trace

Of reasonable doubt must be removed

And then without anesthesia

Something of inborn human kindness

Must be transplanted there.

The most difficult surgery

Is to cut it away from fear.

This you achieve by immersing

The bad dream unremittingly

In the holiness of nature.

And the poem springs up;

Leaf by tiny leaf

Blossom by blossom

Quite frail at first, trembling

It rises from the black earth that nourished it

And dares.

It dares to dream

The antidote of agony

The word.

(Taken from the book 'The scattered papers of Penelope', London: Anvil Press Poetry, 2008)

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Guest at FM 104.4 with Alexia Amvrasi