Inside a Greek Poet’s Work, a Reflection of Her Country’s Hard Times

Angelos Tzortzinis for The New York Times

 

KIKI DIMOULA, Greece’s feisty, 81-year-old national poet, was holding court on a recent afternoon, musing about her work and the fate of her country. Asked to describe the mood in Greece today, she did not mince words. “Darkness and chaos,” she said, drawing on a cigarette.

      

Ms. Dimoula may have a flair for the dramatic, but her words are always chosen carefully. Her poetry — spare, profound, unsentimental, effortlessly transforming the quotidian into the metaphysical, drawing on the powerful themes of time, fate and destiny, yet making them entirely her own — has earned her a near-cult following in Greece.

 

Continue reading at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/world/europe/work-of-greek-poet-kiki-dimoula-shows-reflection-of-countrys-hard-times.html