DIMITRIS ALLOS |
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Panayotis Ioannidis was born in 1967 in Athens, where he now lives. He has published two books of poems: To sossivio [The lifesaver] (Kastaniotis Editions, 2008), Akalyptos [Uncovered] (Kastaniotis Editions, 2013). Apart from regularly appearing in various Greek literary journals since 1996, his poems have been presented at the Umeå Littfest (Sweden, 2014), during the "16 Young Greek Poets" events organised by the theatre company “Praxi” (1997), and received 2nd prize at the "1st Meeting of Young Artists (Vakalo Art School)" (1998). They have been translated into English, Swedish and Turkish. He has been translating English-language poetry since 1995: Robert Creeley, Elaine Feinstein, Thom Gunn, David Harsent, Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion, Fiona Sampson, Michael Symmons Roberts. He is poetry editor for the monthly “The books' journal”, and a 'core contributor' to the journal "for the investigation of the poetic phenomenon", “Farmako” [Drug]. Since 2011, he has been curating a series of monthly poetry readings, “Me ta loyia (yinete)” [Words (can) do it], where Greek poets of different generations read their own poems, or foreign-language poetry is read in the original as well as in its Greek translation. He teaches poetry as creative writing to adults and schoolchildren. His interest in the interface of poetry and the visual arts has resulted in various works, several of which were in collaboration with visual artists: e.g. at "blind date #12" (2006), and the 2nd Athens Biennial (2009). springstreefellers.blogspot.com
“Not one word too many, not one line untuned. And yet (or: for this precisely) the reader's emotion abounds.”
Maria Topali (poet and critic), 2013
“Ioannidis seems generally to construct [his] poems around a wager of silencing: on how not to betray the story by narrating it. At its core, [the poem] preserves the care of one who observes and salvages even the most humble and imperceptible events, those whose nature is such that they cannot be contained by the verbal net. [...] By shading, speaking suggestively or entirely silencing, Ioannidis accentuates these chosen fragments, embeds tension and enigma within careful linguistic structures, that are, at times, an iceberg's tip, and, at others, a fine web round a large prey, that is only implied.”
Katerina Iliopoulou (poet and critic), 2014
“The keyword in his literary course is “abstraction”. At the opposite end of the, nowadays so popular, lengthy post-modern narratives, P.I.'s poetry is modern like Henry Moore's sculpture. [...] Abstraction in P.I.'s work, as in Stamos' or Mark Rothko's, is not accidental but organic. It helps create a hybrid species, at once “poem” and riddle or algorithm, bearing conceptual and linguistic consequences.” Socrates Kabouropoulos (formerly a consultant with the National Book Centre, Greece), 2014
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