Τετάρτη 3 Ιουνίου 2020

Kiki Dimoula




Kiki Dimoula                                                        ΚΙΚΗ ΔΗΜΟΥΛΑ

Born January 6, 1931, Athens            Died 22 February 2020, Athens




Section 12, Number 114

Entry by guest writer Tania Theodorou

No end ever arrives empty-handed

The wealth of poetry and the unique oeuvre Kiki Dimoula left behind after her death in 2020 is proof of that. Although one of the most famous of contemporary Greek poets, she nevertheless described herself as “stubbornly ordinary”.





I remember my first encounter with her poetry. I was already in my thirties - so not that long ago - on a summer visit back to Greece. My father came home with a thin book of poems and placed it next to my coffee cup. It was her collection We Moved Next Door. (Μεταφερθήκαμε παραπλεύρως (2007).

Once I opened that slim volume and began reading, I became a devotee. 



Reading her is almost a physical sensation, - like entering a portal into a secret world. Her words unlock thoughts and emotions yet, at the same time, render them somehow indistinguishable from each other. Necessity, fear, memory, the night: in her poetic construct, they all struggle for meaning, jostling with each other to find their place. And yet, at the same time, her poetry is remarkably self-contained. She is meticulous, avoiding anything redundant. There are no loose ends. 

Poet Pantelis Boucalas in The Fruit of Lyrical Melancholy, had this to say about her characteristic style:
We may naively believe that her work is limited to the euphoria that springs from her miraculous wordplays, her almost demonic capacity for miracles, but that would lead us to try to limit her work to form only.

It is true that her poetry often turns grammar into a subversive element which confounds at first but ultimately assists in a transubstantiating process. 

For me, she belongs to that category of poets which includes Cavafy, Stephen Spender or Emily Dickinson - poets who lived outwardly ‘normal’ lives and yet whose inner sensibilities were palpable and unique. It’s like a superpower that comes from suppressing something, - a certain specificity or self-sufficiency in expression.

Kiki Dimoula said: “Only what is futile is self-sufficient”. And that is part of the magic: her constant probing and evocation of the futility that characterizes our finitude.





Her Life

Basiliki (Kiki) Radou (Βασιλική Ράδου) was born in Athens on June 6, 1931 to a family with Peloponnesian roots. After she completed her education, she worked for The Bank of Greece and remained there for 25 years until she retired in 1974.

Her first poetry collection was published in 1952 when she was 21 one years old. 

In 1952, she married fellow poet Athos Dimoulas (Άθως Δημουλάς: 1921-1986), who had published his first poems only the year before. Athos was a mechanical engineer who had studied in Athens, Belgium, England, and France. 

Although different ages, they began their careers as poets together. They would have two children, Dimitri and Elsi.


The Young Matron

After his death, his loss weighed heavily and this is reflected in many of her poems. One that made a big impression on me is “The Caution”.

The Caution
(my own translation)

When you are setting the table
before taking your seat
check thoroughly
the chair across from you
if it’s sturdy, or does it creak? 
Perhaps the notches became loose,
perhaps the joints have worn out
or the frame is enfeebled by
                 a worm
because the person who doesn't sit there
gets heavier by the day.


For eight years she was editor of Kyklos, the literary magazine published by the bank, where much of her own writing was featured.
She won several national literary prizes for her poetry throughout the years and in 2001, she was given an award by the Academy of Athens for her life’s work. She was only the third woman to receive this honour. She became a member of the Academy in 2002.  In 2009 she received the European prize for literature, and her work was translated into French, English, Spanish, Polish, Italian and several other languages.

Many of her ardent fans believe that she should have been Greece’s third Nobel laureate.



She died on February 2020 at the age of 88. When late in life, she was asked by an interviewer why she still smoked so heavily, her reply was, because life is so brief. 

Her Burial in the First Cemetery:



Athenians traditionally say goodbye to their cultural heroes with praise as well as regret. Her funeral was no exception.

Her Poetry

The setting of her poems is predominantly an urban landscape; the main backdrop with few exceptions is Athens, an Athens that forms the edifice for time and loss and oblivion to hang from and to reveal an emotional condition.

In her poems you can find patterns, returning themes; Rain sets the mood. It’s a symbol for loss and melancholy, but it also seems to herald a catharsis of sorts.






Woman Suspended
 (translation by Tania and Linda Theodorou)

It’s raining.
A woman stands out in the rain
alone, adrift on a balcony.
And the rain is like compassion
and that woman is like a fissure in the glassy rain.
Her gaze traverses the rain,
heavy, tormented footsteps
filling the rainy street. She watches...
and keeps changing her position
as if something larger than herself,
something insurmountable, has established itself
in front of what she is looking at.
She slants her body, taking on the angle of the rain
-  like a thick raindrop -
but the insurmountable is always there in front of her.
And the rain is like remorse.
She watches...
She throws her hands outside of the railing,
catches raindrops.
the need for something tangible is clear.
She watches...
And suddenly,
as if someone had gestured “no”
she moves -  to go inside.
Inside where?
Suspended, exposed in the rain
and alone
adrift on a rudderless balcony.

Other recurrent themes include photography that tricks both time and memory and the ever-present sea, that most Greek of all things. As for God: she’s quite angry with God, directing taunts and accusations in equal measure. And then there is death, her favourite. She once referred to herself as a porter of melancholy.

She was brilliant with words, obviously, and had a miraculous way of transforming simplicity into complexity:

If anything needs love it is reality, for it is reality that lacks it the most - I doubt that it was ever loved.

When asked to describe what a poem is, she said:

 Imagine hearing birdsong in a desert. As improbable as a bird suspended over a desert might be, I am obliged to build a tree for it to perch on.


Below, are a few branches of that ‘golden bough’:

Easter in the Oven
The goat kept on bleating hoarsely.
I angrily opened the oven; what’s all the noise I asked?
The guests can hear you.
Your oven’s not hot, it bleated.
Do something; otherwise your raw cruelty
will go hungry, and at a festive time too.
I put my hand inside. It was true.
The head, the legs, the neck,
the grass, the pasture, the crags,
the slaughter  - all cold.

Desktop Calendar
(My own translation)

Midnight.

Your cause of death was an instantaneous “today”.
My beloved day.

You have displayed an exemplary death;
you did not even endeavour to prolong it

by pleading
or by dedicating poems to it

neither with entreaties about the youthful love
that was in your charge, and you would leave behind.

I look at you now as you lie on your back
on the blank smooth page of the almanac

You lay your head on the pillow inscribed with your monogram
January 18th, two thousand and ten.

How peaceful you look, how youthful,
that rosy colour caused by the ascent towards your demise still on your cheeks.

One can see nothing of the horrors you went through 
crossing the eons to get here.

You look like an adolescent untouched love
now prostrate;
may the page of the coming day that covers you be light.

Obscenity

(The Canonical is irreverent)

Sunset have you lost your mind?
Take off that red frock
Shame
You can’t wear that to your funeral.



I am adding the titles of some of her longer poems which are so worth looking up:

I have gone through
Unexpectations
Dust
Black tie 


The Grave


Section 12, Number 114

Take the long walk from the cemetery entrance to pay homage to this wonderful woman.


The Map

Footnotes
Relevant Sources





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