Sotirios Pastakas

Sotirios Pastakas

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was born in 1954 in Larissa, wherever he returned in 2012. He studied medicine in Rome and Psychiatry at Athens (Mental State Psychiatric Clinic). For thirty years he worked as a Psychiatrist in Athens. He published sixteen collections of poetry, a theatrical monologue, a book of essays and translations of Italian poets. In 2001 he co-founded the World Poetry Academy in the city of Verona, and in September of the same year received a scholarship from Hawthodern Castle, International Retreat for writers, near Edinburgh. He read poems in various International Poetic Festival (Sarajevo 2006 and 2011, San Francisco 2007, Rome 2010, Izmir 2012, Cairo 2013, Istanbul 2014, etc.) is a member of the Writers Society from 1994 and has set up various print and electronic journals. Beyond editor but is a radio producer and teacher experiential writing. He has been translated into twelve languages ​​and the “Trilogy” book (ed. Presence, 2012) was released in the US in 2015, entitled “Food Line”, translated by Jack Hirschman and Angelos Sakis. His first book of short stories “Dr Ψ and his patients,” released in 2015 by publishing Ink. In December 2015 he was awarded the Annibale Ruccello Award for Poetry in the Third Festival of Teatro Stabia. On February 5, 2016 was declared the winner in the competition Ritratti di Poesia.140 (poesia tweet), the Fondazione Roma. In the spring of 2016 released a personal anthology of poems (1986-2016) in Italian “corpo a corpo” from Multimedia publications “Casa della Poesia”, that win the NordSud International Prize for Poetry/Pescarabbruzzo foundation in 2016.

 

Sotirios Pastakas, for Pristina festival

 

*

No, I don’t come from Eleusis. Southern Italy.

Sandy returned from the Aegean rally in Nisyros.

I found Yannis in 37 and he bought me a mojito.

Mihos has reached the final stage

of his glorious grieving. Akanthos undertook

painting the first rung of the ladder.

X2, true to his nickname,

keeps chicks for only two weeks.

Fotis is sick of his mug and wants

to undergo face plastic surgery. Goumas

hasn’t set foot out of Chalandri. Nikos

informs us that the Secret Service

stopped monitoring his computer.

It always happens like-so.

 

The Furies have chased Irene out of Argos.

Dimitri, his bosses out of Zara.

Hector’s been kicked out of his house. Laskaris

never stopped asking for loans in June, July

and August. Kostas managed to double

his profits. And Spyros writes a poem every

day in Marseille, Glyfada and Olympia.

Yannis and Tasia celebrated 50 years of

marriage in Rovies. Mitsos voluntarily entered

Sinouri’s clinic for a month. Elena said she

was cutting down on wine, then changed her mind.

It always happens like-so.

 

Gheli returned from a plain Chalkidiki with the doctor

two years now still unmarried. Joanna escaped for a bit

from her kids and her husband and went alone

to Pylos. Katerina bought a small one-bedroom flat

on the top floor in New Smyrna and is blissful.

Maraki returned from her one-night stand

to a cold douche at dawn. Lina was afraid to carry

from Colombia a souvenir coca-leaf for everybody. Our wives had

sex with our friends and we with the wives of our friends.

Those of us who happened to still have children

sat down and patched things up. It always happens like-so.

Before the Revolution.

 

 

 

With barley-broth

and garlic

the pyramids were built.

Man needs

nothing more

in order to leave

monuments behind.

 

 

An apple-core.

Someone was sitting here

biting an apple.

Then he disappeared. The same day

that History recorded three

deaths in the center of Athens.

Someone else at another

spot left his cigarette butt

before he disappeared too.

History only records:

apple-cores, cadavers, ashes.

 

GREECE, A MOPED

 

Greece travels at forty MPH

like a moped along the coastal road.

The highest possible speed

coincides with the potential

of an enamoured look.

To record, to relish,

to recall the light’s slightest

deviations, the sea’s

rolling, and the wind‘s direction.

Greece and her hugging

pillion passenger shut

their eyes together.

She will never learn what

he meant to her, nor how very much

he owed her.

Thanks to low speed,

Greece is the only country

when at twilight

going to or returning from Sounion

may last a lifetime.

 

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