Live Encounters Greek Poets & Writers September 2026
Ventriloquist Days, poems by Dinos Siotis.
Translated from Greek by Aristi Trendel.
Ventriloquist Days
The sky collapses, and with it collapse
the night and counterpoint; the garden fades into
the hush of the stars, everything bleeds,
dragging from funeral to funeral and from tent
to tent without paper garlands; the forces
hidden within people
sleep, idly staring at the mute soprano
of the circus, in vain I open a hole in my memory:
the ventriloquist days follow me
2024
(Unpublished)
Prophets
I am glad to hear the prophets every morning
crying out their wares in the marketplace,
even if no one listens to them; I am glad they are
there and dare, with their
sober words, to question the political system, for
they know that a weak voice can stand out
among the countless voices of the crowd, and this
voice, clothed in lightning, they prophesy,
will blaze in the planetary firmament
2024
(Unpublished)
© Dinos Siotis
Dinos Siotis (Tinos, 1944) studied Law in Athens and Comparative Literature in San Francisco. He has published 35 books of poetry and prose, of which three are in English, one in Spanish and one in French. He has also published sixteen literary and/or political magazines in Greece and North America, the most recent ones being (de)kata and Poetix. He served as a Press Counsellor in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Ottawa. Several of his poems and articles have been translated into European languages, Arabic and Chinese. In 2007 he was awarded the State Prize for Poetry, for his collection of poems Autobiography of a Target.