Poetry Travels with Anna Blasiak and Lisa Kalloo: ROYAL PEACOCK by Veroniki Dalakoura, translated by John Taylor


     Here is what happened the other day: I was staggering down awful stairs, my weight had doubled. My fellow citizens, indifferent to the drama that was taking place before their eyes in plain daylight, which make my dilemma all the more tragic, led me to the sea.
     Go into the water, royal peacock—could be heard from everywhere—and delight in the departure of the cranes. As the symbol of a wretched species becoming extinct, I waded into the water and then swam to the coast. I enjoyed the anxiety of everyone who was applauding. I shook my feathers and, giving out a terrible yelping, managed to be heard by the bastards on the other shore.

By Veroniki Dalakoura

Translated by John Taylor

Poem from Veroniki Dalakoura’s Bird Shadows. Selected Poetry and Poetic Prose 1967-2020, Dialogos, 2024.

Born in Athens in 1952, Veroniki Dalakoura is considered one of the leading poets of her generation. Her writing shows the influence of surrealism and her books often combine verse poems, prose poems, hybrid forms, and longer narratives in provocative ways. Besides the volumes of poetry from which this selection has been made, she is also the author of prose works: The End-Game (Nefeli, 1988), Hodler’s Painting (Agra, 2001), and One Afternoon, the Fog (Koukkida, 2018). Holder’s Painting and 26 Poems were finalists respectively for the National Prize in Prose and the National Prize in Poetry. Dalakoura is active as a literary critic, reviewing books in the leading Greek newspapers and journals, and has translated Spanish, English-language, and especially classic French writers and poets into Greek: Rimbaud, Flaubert, Stendhal, Balzac, Baudelaire, Desnos. Her educational background is in law (University of Athens), history, and geography, specifically as it concerns Greek refugees from the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922. In 1984, she wrote her doctoral thesis at the University of Montpellier. She continues to do research in this latter field. John Taylor’s essay about Dalakoura, “Eros and Other Spiritual Adventures,” is included in his book Into the Heart of European Poetry (Transaction Publishers, 2008). Dalakoura lives in Athens.

John Taylor was born in Des Moines in 1952. He has lived in France since 1977. As a translator from three languages (French, Italian, Greek) and as a critic who has written books of essays about contemporary poets from all the European countries, he has long been one of the bridges between European literature and English-speaking countries. In 2020, Cycladic Press published his memoir about working with Elias Petropoulos in Paris: Harsh out of Tenderness: The Greek Poet and Urban Folklorist Elias Petropoulos. In 2023, the same press issued his translation of Petropoulos’s Mirror for You: Collected Poems (1967-1999). Taylor has also translated the short stories of Elias Papadimitrakopoulos and the poetic prose of Manolis Xexakis. Alongside his versions of Greek authors, he is a noted translator of key French, Swiss, and Italian poets, including Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Dupin, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Louis Calaferte, Georges Perros, Catherine Colomb, José-Flore Tappy, Pierre Voélin, Lorenzo Calogero, Alfredo de Palchi, and Franca Mancinelli. He is the author of several volumes of short prose and poetry, most recently Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees (The Bitter Oleander Press), illustrated by the French artist Caroline François-Rubino, a “double book” co-authored with the Swiss poet Pierre Chappuis, A Notebook of Clouds & A Notebook of Ridges (The Fortnightly Review Press), and Transizioni (LYRIKS Editore), issued bilingually in Italy and illustrated by the Greek artist Alekos Fassianos.

Poetry Travels with Anna Blasiak and Lisa Kalloo: ROYAL PEACOCK by Veroniki Dalakoura, translated by John Taylor

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