Live Encounters Greek Poets & Writers September 2026
Lilia, poems by Konstantinos Loukopoulos.
Translated from Greek by Aristi Trendel.
Lilia
Tallinn
I guard my boundaries
since I have been
and remain
as a lineage of rivers
and as a deer among carnivores
a lion cub with a mane of linden
Unter den Linden
yet let me at least become a pretext
of ambiguity
and may my image someday turn blurred
an evening of probing
in which I absorb
your geography
and the plain rooms
drip at my feet
earth
and iron
their doors open
and at the stations
we keep descending
to Tallinn where the inward fire
of your loins burned
full of the weight of filtration
the weight of approach
and the weight of embrace
yet our flesh is a lottery
that ful-fills itself
in the final digit
and our load is a packet of data
that becomes a silent quantum
death stirs
a windless wave
whose frost
lies in wait to dress us
tightly
tonight there are no dreams
let my soul be
the only winter landscape
and let it endure me
Pays Bas, Enastron 2025.
Bandage
BANDAGE: a piece of fabric or surgical gauze. White gauze pads that turn deep red are meticulously counted so that,
after the operation ends, none are accidentally left behind inside the patient’s body and cause sepsis. The patient is overwhelmingly treated as an object; yet, as he regains consciousness and begins to pity himself, he is irrevocably cast
as a humble subject as well, while he senses that he will soon become a “lost body.”
BANDAGE becomes a kind of search when truth presents itself as a gushing wound. As questions accumulate, a person grows old within them like an enormous ball swelling, riddled with holes. Then each hole begins to make you dizzy with its high-pitched chatter and won’t let you concentrate. And what can a flimsy band-aid do for you every now and then?
nineteen Vignettes on Language and Silence, AΩ Publishing, 2025.
© Konstantinos Loukopoulos
Konstantinos Ch. Loukopoulos (Elefsina, Greece, 1965) studied Physics at the University of Crete and History and Philosophy of Science at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His poetry, prose, and literary criticism have been translated into German, Italian, and English. His work has appeared in print and online journals, collective volumes, and anthologies, including Modern Poetry in Translation. In 2017, he collaborated with the Mikis Theodorakis Orchestra on the music-theatre production Epitaph in Elefsina, presented at the Aeschyleia Festival. His published books include the poetry collections Epitaph in Elefsina (2018; revised edition, 2020), Dreams After the Festival (2020), Generics (2021), Nineteen Vignettes on Language and Silence (2024), and Low Countries – Pays Bas (2025); the prose collection Cities in Winter (2018); and the novel Family Root 70 (2023). He maintains the literary blog Eleusis: A Humble Dwelling Place of Immortality: https://loukopk.wordpress.com.