Phoebe Giannisi: April 20, 2023

Eleni Stecopoulos provides an introdution to Phoebe Giannisi and her cross-disciplinary work rooted in the practice of contemporary Greek poetry confronted with the complex of inheriting the legacy of ancient Greek poetry, mythology, and philosophy by contemporary Greeks.

Note: Stecopoulos's introduction begins in medias res, with her opening missing from the recording. 

Phoebe Giannisi reads from a longer poem, “The Music of the Sea,” arranged in numbered sections. She presents a video titled “Thetis-Chimera,” depicting in addition to other moving images a flock of goats with the poet moving and voicing among them, with the poem on-screen in English, which she accompanies with an in-person recitation of the original poem in Greek, spoken and sung. 

Eleni Stecopolous asks Phoebe Giannisi about music and singing, featured in Giannisi’s performance. Giannisi tells of her family’s listening to musical recordings during the time she was growing up, when such music was prohibited by the military dictatorship, and describes the types of poetry that used music, which influenced her. At an audience question, Giannisi and Stecopolous together discuss the imagery of Thetis as creator, and Metis as trickster. Giannisi tells a story of Socrates, in which he covers his head when he wants to say something that is not true, regarding the significance of the woven fabric she held in front of her face during part of the recitation that accompanied her video.

At an audience question, Giannisi speaks to a burgeoning poetic scene among young people presently in Greece. She discusses her use of Ancient Greek symbols and clarifies that she does not want to be identified with a nationalist conception of Greece as some rebirth of the Ancient Greek people, and speaks of diversity in Greece, the right to circulate, contemporary nomadic shepherds, and of Franz Duval, primatologist studying animal emotion.

At an audience question about her use of numbers in “Music of the Sea,” Giannisi discusses assemblage, lexicological elements, and momentum. On reqest, Giannisi reads, in Greek, the text of “Penelope — I Am Addicted to You” (Homerica), with Stecopolous reading the English translation.