Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Volume One, December 2020.
Natasha Remoundou was born and raised in Athens, Greece. She is an academic researcher lecturing in literature, drama, and critical theory and has held academic posts as an Assistant Professor at Qatar University, the National University of Ireland, Galway and the American College of Greece. She is also a volunteer English teacher for migrants/refugees campaigning to end Direct Provision. She holds a Ph.D. in Classics & English, a M.Sc. in English Literature:Writing & Cultural Politics, and a B.A. in English & American Literature. She has published chapters on Irish studies in edited volumes and journals and is currently writing her monograph on Irish theatre and rights. Her poems have appeared in Melodia magazine, The Anthology of Young Greek Poets, her poetry collection “The Dialect of Water” in Writing Home (Dedalus Press) and her essay in the Correspondences Anthology (The Stinging Fly). Her homes are Athens, Edinburgh, Doha, and Ireland since 2003. https://www.dedaluspress.com/product/writing-home-the-new-irish-poets/
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2019/1210/1098209-correspondences-the-anthology-giving-voice-to-direct-provision/
An Intervention
Look: across the provincial abattoir
a stray cat has paused, a solitary audience.
Through the glass window she studies
the spectacle of an anatomy lesson from a distance.
Hanging from steel hooks,
polished, severed, still dripping,
pig heads, limbs, guts, and a goat’s heart
leave their defeat on the counter.
Fresh in order, carved with care,
the price of flesh laid bare.
When the butcher’s knife was raised
over the lifeless muscle,
I saw the cat walking away with a sparrow
caught in her mouth.
© Natasha Remoundou