Poetry and Life of Katerina Anghelaki Rooke

A tribute to Katerina Anghelaki Rooke

But why do I go rumbling on,

Security or not,

Heaven of a port out of sight,

Rough the water, even rougher

The skin after I forgot to shave,

But she told me not to do that again

For love is love and the skin a skin

Easily ruffled more than water,

If a rough beard crosses her face

For a kiss or two; since then,

I have been pondering,

If I should step in front of the mirror

And shave myself a clean face,

As clean it can be in front of a broken mirror,

For then it must work, this art work of mine,

Smooth the face like a sculpture of marmor

Done by an unknown artist or even Michelangelo,

Yet there is another voice, that of Katerina,

Who sings and laughs and dreams daily

Of her trees and dogs and man from England,

As if the birds rush in to make love all the time,

All the time while she is sitting at the table

To make one translation after the other.

So close are miracles in her life

That she becomes a soul

For an entire crowd, her voice resounding

Off walls in dining rooms,

For virtually she is the one who gets up

To read for another poet his or her poem in Greek,

In order to make him or her to feel at home.

Safely, astute, the pergament paper rolled open,

Read that, not that, I am not stupid, we know

What we are doing, we are doing something very important

Only that no one really notices it,

And then there is a dream

Like that of the bell to chime only once

Out of time, for the sake of happiness,

Having nothing to do with burials, church services

Or some other reason

For life is by gone in a moment and only the flash of light

Fills the weeping eyes with hope.

Hatto Fischer

Athens 24.9.95

A brief introduction

Understanding Katerina’s poetry is like encountering a natural philosophy.

As to her position inside and outside Greece, she knows how difficult it is "to be a Greek and yet not be perceived as a Nationalist."

Aside from knowing how to communicate with anybody, including the most gruffy taxi driver, she addresses all people frankly and straight forward.

She is a professional translator from English, Russian and French into Greek.

With regards to holding other poets in high esteem, she would remark while we all search for immortality, and of course such a thing does not exist, she would disguishes nevertheless those immortals like Elytis from the rest, or “us mortals”.

Always she is humble, short, to the point and if the other complies to her demand, then she gives a strong feed back: “now you are talking”.

She comes from a generation of promising young poets. Unfortunately most of them have died in the meantime. Already at the age of seventeen she wrote a poem which Katzanzakis acclaimed immediately as being worthy to be published.

Throughout her life, poetry has never been far from her. Always there is a writing pad or her diary near her, on the table, whether now in her apartment in Athens or else in her enchanted house on Aegina.

Writing poetry is for her like entering a room. Once in it she looks around and checks which items - in reality the poems she writes while in that room - she shall take with her when about to leave that room. Such a room can be filled with human pain. She feels this pain as it is the source of a very specific inspiration. As a matter of fact, all good poetry stems in her opinion from such felt pain.

When her husband Rodney Rooke died, she felt as if he had taken with him her poetry. She could no longer write poetry. Only lately, at the beginning of 2011, has she entered a new room and has started to write new poems.

Rodney Rooke had been more than just a helping hand. Having studied classical philology at Cambridge, he was to her an encylopedia. He let her find the exact words she needed. Consequently Katerina has been living all her married life in both the Greek and English world.

Her linguistic competences are underlined by her profession as being a translator not only from English into Greek, but as well from French and Russian. The latter language she picked up from her nanny, a young Russian woman who was brought by her father back from Russia who had visited together with Katzanzakis this land of the deep soul. She loves the Russian language. Having studied translation in Geneva, she has undertaken such works as that of Pushkin, but equally of young Russian writers who she adores. One her most recent translations from English into Greek has been on the other hand of Nobel prize winner Seamus Heaney. But aside from these professional works, whenever Katerina participates in countless workshops, conferences she is always ready to translate the poems of other poets into Greek, as was the case during the "Myth of the City" conference held in Crete 1995.

********
Aegina

Katerina loves her island of Aegina where lives in an enchanted house designated to become a centre for translation (and for dreamers). She would always welcome anyone with her strong voice and ask immediately: “How are you!”

Hatto Fischer

Biography
Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke was born in 1939.

Due to having been born just before Penicellin was invented and because of the war forcing the closure of the hospital were she was born, she suffered since birth from something similar to Polio. Later she went to Geneva to undergo operations on her legs and then on to London where her left hand was treated. Since then she has been handicapped, physically speaking, but that has never stopped her either in spirit and or in mind to plunge into life.

Her father was a good friend of Kazantzakis who became her god father and encouraged her to publish her first poem at the age of sixteen. Unfortunately Katerina never saw him again after she was forced to leave Greece for her operations. But they did correspond when she was abroad.

She studied in Geneva languages to become a professional translator from French, English and Russian into Greek.

In 1985 she was awarded the National Prize for Poetry.

She has taught as well at Harvard as a visiting scholar.

Her poems have been translated into many languages, including Swedish.

Momentarily she has started to work on the journals she has kept over the years. They shall reveal an amazing life path of a modern poetess.

A recent report about Katerina Anghelaki Rooke was published at

http://www.lifo.gr/mag/features/3603

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