Category: Reading Greece

📖 POEM OF THE WEEK: "The Carnival" by Miltos Sachtouris

Miltos Sachtouris (1919-2015) was one of the most important representatives of the Surrealist movement in post-World War II Greek #poetry.

Included in his poetry collection With Face to the Wall, “The Carnival” is another poem with war as its central theme. The festive atmosphere of a #carnival is transformed into a grotesque nightmare of a war scene. One can discern elements of the festivity, a wandering little hobby-horse, children holding their kites, the falling confetti, the carnival moon. However, the portrait is very bleak, the ‘hobby-horse wander[s]’ in the deserted streets where ‘not a soul breathe[s]’, the children climbing up the sky are dead, the confetti is glass ‘bleeding the heart’ and the moon is ‘stabbed’ and thrown into the sea.

The key to what is happening is to be found in the lines: “only columns of soldiers passed right-left/ right-left with frozen teeth”, which reveals that in the guise of a carnival, the poet is actually presenting a horrifying image of war. He juxtaposes the images of children in a joyous festivity to the images of violence and death in order to show the insanity of war.

Read more 👉https://www.greeknewsagenda.gr/poem-of-the-month-the-carnival-by-miltos-sachtouris/

🥁OPEN CALL FOR LITTLE BOOKSTORES!

Εβδομάδα Μικρών Βιβλιοπωλείων - Little Bookstores Week, the big celebration of little bookstores returns for the forth year during the last week of May (26-30 May 2025).

Little bookstores can fill in their application and participate together with little bookstores throughout the country in a week...without frontiers!

📍 Application form: https://forms.gle/8xbEKcim2uXckQqv7

🎨 Miranda Sofroniou

#littlebookstoresweek #miavdomadastamikra