So today it's the 3rd Anniversary
of the Shark Fishing in Wales or Pysgota
Siarcod yng Nghymru in Welsh. Today is the day I’m
publishing my very first poetry collection, and today is the birthday of
American horror short story writer Edgar Allan Poe.
So what should I write? Well I’ll just start writing and we shall see.
With the owner of this page we have
many similarities, one of them is the mania for writing. I was in high school 14
years old of age when I tried to write a play, heavily imitating Shakespeare,
then a few years afterwards when I was 16 I wrote 3 more plays imitating
Shakespeare not so imitating this time. In my last year in high school when I
was 17 I had just begun writing my first poems, very absurd but they
entertained me a lot when I was bored in class. I put them all together in a
notebook that is now lost and I gave it the title “Blätter der Dichtung“ which
is German for Leaves of Poetry. In loving memory of that lost early collection
I gave my today's collection the name 'Leaves of Poetry' and this collection
contains 69 poems most of them in English some in Greek, Cypriot Greek and one
in Spanish.
I have to say I started writing in
English for the first time in Spring 2009 and I wrote a story in English for
the first time and I won the first prize in that year. This gave me the push
and impulse to write more, and then I started writing plays in English and
poems too, one or two of these are being anthologised in my collection. I
think I have to stop praising myself with what I did and what I do, it’s time
to say a few words about the reason I write, the reason that many writers
choose to write. I love literature and I want to express myself in the same or
similar way other writers do. Literature and especially poetry is like psychoanalysis.
The page on your desk is Herr Freud and you are the patient or rather visitor.
I say whatever I feel and I write it on the page. If I like it, I keep it if I
don’t, I keep it, but hidden. I might revise it but the essence is that I just
lifted a weight off my chest. Whenever I am angry or happy or worried I write
down a poem and the creature/poem I have
created as another Victor Frankenstein I see it as my child so I won’t leave it
alone and I won’t show it to anyone unless I am sure for it. Showing my
writings to others is like getting into an amphitheatre stark naked like a new
born baby exposing my naked flesh to everyone. That’s pretty hard for anyone to
do, and that’s the true with me. When someone asks me to read one of my poems it’s
like asking me, “Take off your clothes”.
I said I have to stop
praising myself but I still go on and on but I promise after giving you a brief
introduction on my collection I will move on and talk about how I met Red
Button, or David Williams or Dafydd
Williams.
So I am publishing today
my first poetry collection called Leaves of Poetry. This is my first poetry
collection. I have been writing poetry since high-school as I said earlier on but
these last two years, my poetry became more poetic and more appropriate for an
audience besides myself. Writing poetry and theatre are the two major forms
where my language is flowing easily, and where sometimes you don’t need to
revise it a lot of times, because most of the time it comes from the soul and
soul doesn’t need revision, only a few times, and these occasionally. This
poetry collection contains 59 poems in English, 6 poems in Cypriot Greek, 2 in
Greek and 1 in Spanish. This indicates my love of languages as well. Some of my
(English) poems are a collage of words from different languages all stitched
together making another multilingual creature.
I will just leave the description
of my poetry collection as it is and I will just add a short poem from it and
the picture of my cover.
[Look at the
sky]
Look at the sky
It’s blue again
Let’s go out
Let’s go out and play
Let’s go out while we have time
Let’s go out and play before it’s too late
Ð
Eight bells are chiming
A clear sound, the sign
For us to go out,
For us to stop what we are doing
For us to go out
For us to go out and play, while we are still young
Ð
The grandfather’s clock is chiming
Every chime is a step away
From proper dreams,
From fairyland
Each chime is the time that passes
We grow up but we still have time
Let’s go out and play
Kyriakos
Sorokkou Manchester 2014
Now it’s time to say a few words about how I met
David. He said that there was no need to praise him or mention him but I can’t
just write a guest article in someone else’s page praising myself like a vain
Dorian Grey. So I think I have to say a few words. It was in early October 2013 when
we first met and talked in the first session of the MA for Playwriting. He
asked me a lot of things about Cyprus and its history and culture and I was
answering every question delighted to speak about my tiny island country. And
so every week we had a meeting for the course and there we took a chance to
talk about Cyprus, teaching, theatre and writing. Then in early December David played the father of George one of the two characters in a play that I wrote in 2011
and revised in 2012. Through this active reading I saw my characters become
alive and I saw some flaws and we were all discussing them. So the following
days I started revising the play once again (Letters from a friend) Then I came
to Cyprus for Christmas holidays and
then I went back to England and we started having extra meetings for coffee
too, talking again about teaching literature, society and writing. We also
had a few culinary trips in Manchester (Afghan Cuisine) and Liverpool
(Caribbean Cuisine) and a few visits in galleries and museums. Then it was time
for me to leave but through the power of Facebook we kept the contact and we’re
waiting for our next physical (in person) meeting in a café or a kafeneion (Greek
Cypriot traditional coffee shop). I have nothing more to say than, Happy
anniversary to the Shark
Fishing in Wales and many good returns to his owner.
