Giorgos Hantzis was born in Athens in 1972. He studied Philosophy (Universtiy of Athens whre he is now working on his PHD on aesthetics)) and English Literary Translation (European Center for the translation of Literature). He has written poetry criticism for the daily paper Eleftheros Tipos and the poetry journal Poiisi [Poetry] and Poiitiki [Poetics], for daily paper Εleftherotypia. He also publishes essays on poetics. From 2006-2009 he directed the Contemporary poetry readings seminar series in Athens at the Dasein cafe, during which greek poets discussed poetry theory and read their unpublished work. His poetry has been published in: Karaoke Poetry Bar, ed. Futura, Athens 2007, Noveltly Within or Beyond Language, Contemporary Anthology of young greek poets, ed.Gavriilidis Athens 2009. His has translated poems of the American poet A.R. Ammons. His first book of poetry Bella Boom appeared in 2011 (Publibook). He works as teacher. He is married and he has two kids.

Credo

The poetry I prefer to read and also the poetry I try to write have the common aspiration of keeping distance between the poetic temperament (the idiosyncrasy) and the poems themselves. In order not to be misunderstood I do not adopt the Nietzschean credo: “there is no doer behind a do”. On the other hand, I do study aspects of writing referring to poetry as a set of language games, as Wittgenstein would call the textual and verbal incidents that bear meaning.

Language games in poetry I write, aim to the other side of the holistic view that poets usually look for. Nevertheless, to be honest the fragmentation my poems induce look for reader’s ability to compose meaningful facts or acknowledgable intellect plans. To simplify, I read and write reflective sketches built with linguistic matter. Structure or what we call form matter because represent a made-for-the-occasion architect scaffold

No emotions, just plans. Of course sometimes plans and descriptions evoke feelings.