My new book - later this spring

My new book: THE LOULAKI BAR and other poems from Hydra will be published by Miskwabic Press, in Calumet Michigan. Miskwabic is the former Vertin Press, who did THE CLIFFS magazine. This book, with over 60 pages of poetry and art in color, will be out maybe next month. It's hard but you have to wait...

Greek flavors

 

Here's a poem from some year's ago. Many years ago.


GREEK FLAVORS


I don’t like the donkey taste,
my son said,

inventing a new excuse for
not eating an apple with
a few dark stains.

The Corinth Canal

Here's another old postcard, this one from Korinthos, The Corinth Canal. Probably the photo is taken sometime in the 70's, before the motorway and the new railroad bridge was built. It's fairly steep, eh...


Here an old poem.


THE CORINTH CANAL

The view from the edge of the Corinth Canal,
looking almost 100 meters straight down
from the bridge, was magnificent but very
scary.

We had traveled by car from Athens
and stopped on the bridge and twenty years
later I can still remember the horrifying
experience.

But when I saw a poster for a trip to the
Corinth Canal on board the ship Mantalena
I was interested, since this must be the way
to experience those frightening heights; from
the bottom of the canal looking up.

I asked Captain Dimitris about the trip and he
said it was actually a bus tour conducted by
the same company – you would go over the
canal by bus, he said, and the bus would stop
on the bridge so you could go out and have a
look down.

Sure…

Postcard from 1920

I found this old postcard, it's postmarked 1920 and for those of you who have been on Hydra and maybe even stayed with Spiros Kriezis in his pension, you can see his house there already in 1920. The large white house almost in the centre of the photo. Well, I think that house is a few hundred years old.

In front of Spiros' house are two large buildings down by the water, the left one is now the Melina Mercouri Hall, the island's exhibition hall.

The house that today is the Hydra Island Museum was not even built in 1920.

The characteristic mill on top of the hill - where now Maria and Lukas live - is not there in 1920, .

I can tell about other houses that are not in the postcard...

The Colossus of Poros

I wrote this little story seven years ago, after a trip to the island of Poros.


THE COLOSSUS OF POROS

My son William is six years old and
he loves Mr. Bean.

During our Christmas holidays in Greece we
took a day trip to the island of Poros.

We were walking around looking for the
supermarket and finally someone gave us the
right directions.

Close to the store they were repairing the road with
cement and part of the road was closed off by
red strips of plastic.

-Come this way, I said and
stepped deep down in fresh cement with
my size 12 runner shoes.

I felt like a fool but my son thought it
was really funny.

-Just like Mr. Bean, he said.

I managed to take a quick photo of
my footsteps, before the
road-workers filled them with cement.

William said he wants to have this
photo framed on the wall in his room.

It’s great to know that you can be a hero
for your son,
if you just try hard.

the language struggle

I'm glad I'm not trying to learn Greek, I have enough problems with my English.


ENGLISH TANAKA

He’s wearing the kind of heavy glasses
that Onassis once made famous.
I tell him, making a new English blunder,
that I have a pair at home in the kitchen
and “I have them for breakfast”.

Flying Demian

Do you see a guy swimming behind the hovercraft in the painting?

Well, the story is that the guy, let's call him Demian, visited us on the island and when we were about to take the 15 minute walk from Kamini to the next beach in Vlychos, he said it was almost as easy to swim there. Well, actually he said that he could swim there, no problem. Like he was the best swimmer on the island.

So when being questioned about this he chose to get in the water at the Kamini harbor and start to swim.

The rest of us walked to Vlychos and found a nice spot in the shade and started to look out for the great swimmer. But it really took some time; boats came, the Flying Dolphin came, waves rolled in from the boats - but no sign of Demian.

We started to worry but at last he turned up, he swam around the bend and showed up outside the cliffs. He was fairly exhausted and this was probably his longest swim ever. He lay in the shade the rest of the day.

My theory is that he swam out from Kamini, out behind the cliffs were we couldn't see him, had a smoke and listened for the next Flying Dolphin. When he heard the Dolphin, he swam out and waited and when the hydrofoil passed he grabbed hold of it at the back and got a ride over to Vlychos.

If you look at the painting again you see him there behind the hydrofoil, with his cigarette. That's how I remember this.