As one of Greece’s most bold and unwavering poets, there is a ruthlessness running through the work of Katerina Gogou. In ferocious, free-styling verse, she vividly identified the brutalities and loneliness around her, and, with the incendiary vibration of a radical cry, came up always on the side of anarchism. As sensitive to hypocrisy as she was to corruption, Gogou dreaded a poetics that stood aside from politics, in one of her poems confessing: “What I fear most / is becoming “a poet” . . . / Locking myself in the room / gazing at the sea / and forgetting . . .” So it is that she remained dedicated to the necessity of rebellion and freedom until her death in 1993.
In this following article by Dimitris Gkionis, translated from the Greek by Christina Chatzitheodorou, we are offered an insight of this powerful poet in the midst of her time, navigating rages, passions, injustices, and her own poetic urgency. A woman who believes in words as action, as weapon—this is what comes into view.
On October 13, 1980, this piece, featuring an interview between Dimitris Gkionis and the poet Katerina Gogou, was published in the newspaper Eleftherotypia. It has since then been re-published—along with other interviews of Gogou—in Katerina Gogou, Mou Moiazei o Anthropos m’enan Ilio, Pou Kaigetai apo Monos tou (The man reminds me of a sun that burns by itself, published by Kastaniotis Editions in 2018). In both her poetry and interviews, Gogou’s work had always reflected her unconventional, rebellious, and combative spirit—always rebelling against authority, no matter what form. A supporter of the radical movement, she spent most of her days in Exarcheia—the historical centre of radical left-wing/libertarian politics—and was in constant conflict with the establishment, eventually giving up a promising career in acting to write poetry instead.
Through her verse, Gogou denounced social inequality, condemned police violence, criticised the death penalty, and stood in solidarity with political prisoners. Her mind was never at rest, and neither was her pen. While some of her poetry has previously been translated in English, it is the interviews that have been able to directly capture Gogou’s reasoning behind her aesthetic interventions, providing a more holistic picture of her and her work. In these conversations, she explains why she writes what she writes, and her anger at a stagnant world that she wants to change: “I am writing to get rid of this rock (kotrona) that is weighing me down. If I didn’t write, my ears would buzz. Ιf I don’t take this action, if I don’t put words on this white paper to bring myself to life, I could do things that are horrible and unimaginable.”
At the time that this interview was released, Gogou had just appeared in Pavlos Taslos’ 1980 film, Paragkelia, which the interviewer mentions in his introduction. The movie was based on real events in Athens during the Regime of the Colonels (1967-1974), and narrated the story of Nikos Koemtzis, who knifed three men to death and injured another seven on February 25, 1973. Koemtzis grew up in post-Civil War Greece after the communist defeat in 1949, a time when the state authorities prosecuted and hunted down people who had supported and/or fought alongside the communists. His parents had participated in the National Liberation Front (Ethniko Apeleutherotiko Metopo) during the Occupation of Greece (1941-1944), and this resulted in the constant harassment and prosecution of his father by anti-communist state authorities. Koemtzis became a victim of police persecution himself due to his father’s beliefs, which influenced his stance towards the dictatorship. The violent event occurred when Nikos Koemtzis asked his younger brother to dance zempekiko—traditionally danced alone as a personal affair rather than in a group. Two policemen in civilian clothing were present at the nightclub, and soon began harassing his younger brother on stage. This, in turn, sparked Nikos’ reaction, who rushed to the stage and knifed the two policemen. The film was criticised due to its portrayal of Koemtzis as a victim of the regime, but was ardently defended by Gogou—the incident in which she “went to the Thessaloniki Film Festival and cried”, as Gkionis mentions in his questions to her.
I would like to thank Dimitris Posantzis from Kastaniotis Editions for allowing me to translate this piece—or at least attempt to. Gogou, even in her interviews, talked like a poet; one can only try to translate the psyche behind such a voice, but there is no true duplicate. Nizar Qabbani had noted regarding the translation of his poetry: “All those who have translated me murdered me, although they didn’t intend to.” Hopefully, I have not done the same to Gogou here. While ‘transferring’ the mind of such a poetic individual into another language is not an easy task to do, I tried to do so with the aim of translating her imagination, her uncompromising poetry—which was both personal and political, and her raging lyrics that condemned the pain and misery around her. In the following conversation, Gogou reminds us that even if we didn’t end up changing the system, at the very least, the system didn’t manage to change us—and that’s a win, isn’t it?
—Christina Chatzitheodorou
Ιn an era as anti-poetic as ours, wherein our interest in poetry is limited to Cavafy, Varnalis, and Kavadias among the dead, and Ritsos, Elytis, Vrettakos, Anagnostakis, Livaditis, Christodoulou, and Katsaros—to mention a few among the living—and where the authors of the hundreds of poetry collections appearing every year are more than happy if they are read by their relatives and friends or, at the very least, mentioned in the margins of newspapers, it has become a real challenge to publish the works of a new poet in successive editions.
I mean new to the world of poetry, since Katerina Gogou—because it is her we are talking about—had already established a name for herself as an actress in theatre and cinema before appearing in poetry two years ago, and it is an occupation she maintains up to this day. It was recently reported that this winter, she will act alongside (Elli) Lambeti, and she also appeared in the latest award-winning film of Pavlos Tasiou’s: Paragkelia (Order)—which she promoted with a personal appearance in Thessaloniki.
To this day, eight editions of her first collection of poems, Tria Klik Aristera (Three Clicks Left), have been published since its original debut in 1978, and four editions of Idionymo (Idionymon) have already appeared since it came out four months ago.
So who reads her, and what do they make of her?
It would be useful to say from the beginning that this is not poetry in the strictest sense of the word. In fact, somewhere at the end of her second book, Gogu herself tells us: “What I am most afraid of is becoming a poet.” She has her reasons behind this, and she explains them, and she is convincing—as convincing as the sincerity by which she speaks to us in her two books. It’s by a simple, invaluable, straightforward method, without any fear of words, that she draws an image of the bitter experiences of her generation while launching a harsh “J’accuse” against everybody, with a rage and passion that she does not try to hide.
The aesthetic quality of her work is open to independent judgment. In the meeting I had with her, I tried to draw a conclusion with information from her own insights, and from what her books gave me.
Dimitris Gkionis (DG): Let’s see how your story with poetry began.
Katerina Gogou (KG): Firstly, I have to tell you that I find it difficult to speak—that’s why I write. I’ve been writing and reading since I was very little, like a lot of people.
DG: When did you start writing your first book, and out of what necessity did it emerge?
KG: Three years before the book was published, I started writing for the sake of it, for myself. Out of indignation at evil, and out of a love for people and for life. I was feeling a muteness (mouggamara). Communication from nowhere, from nothing. my jaws were aching from not speaking. And when I started writing, I thought I was going to break the pen. Such passion I had for what I wanted to say. I don’t know how others write. I lived and wrote.
DG: And how did you then decide to put this work into a book?
KG: At a certain point, I wanted to break the isolation—not the personal isolation but the isolation of all those like me—without saying that I am elevating myself (tin psonisa) to play the saint or the leader. So I gathered the works up and took it to two people I thought weren’t such sell-outs, and gave them the text to read. They seemed to like it. I figured they’d probably think of me like: “Look at her thinking, look at her writing, and she even writes well.” Go ahead. Get them out, they said, and I did.
DG: Did you think they would have the impact they did?
KG: I wasn’t thinking about it. I was determined not to bail (na tin kopaniso), no matter what.
DG: How do you explain their popularity?
KG: It is, I think, because they came out at a time when others were thinking the same things, but no one was coming out to say them.
DG: Did you get a chance to articulate that?
KG: Uh, yes. There are some letters that reached my house, some words from ordinary people, mostly young people. I don’t want to read you the letters now, so don’t say I’ve become all cocky.
DG: It must have helped that you were also known as an actress.
KG: Maybe. But I must tell you that I am ashamed of my name as an actress, at least in the way it has been handed down to me. I wish I hadn’t done many of the things I have done, but that doesn’t mean I am throwing away my work, because I have lived by it—albeit only metaphorically.
DG: Why do you put your photo on the covers of the books?
KG: It’s not a way of showing off for me. It’s just a way of signing what I write, plain and simple. I don’t fancy pink pastel little covers.
DG: Apart from the need to say what you wish to say, are you also concerned with the aesthetic result?
KG: I am, but I’m much more concerned with what I want to say. I write fast, but not with ease. There are some words—lights that I search for at night and can’t find. I know what I want to say because it has, by now, become concrete in me. What is torturing me is language, because we have also ruined our language.
DG: “The time will come that things will change,” you say somewhere at the end of your second book. I wonder how much this optimism actually represents you, since it’s the only window [of optimism] I’ve seen in your writing.
KG: What I’ve written is tortured (paidemena), and I believe in it. The fans of suicide culture blame me for these verses, but I consider them [a tribute to] life.
DG: Do you find it easy to reveal your political identity? The one that doesn’t come out of your books: are you a communist, a former communist, an anarchist, a xountiki (supporter of the junta)—which one is it?
KG: I am what comes out of my books. I’m against lazy people. I claim that everything I write is a ‘yes’ to life. I don’t take a knife and twist it on people. What else can I tell you?
DG: Somewhere male oppression is lurking. Are you a feminist?
KG: I want to be a rebel.
DG: What do you mean?
KG: I don’t believe in isolated movements. I believe that everything is intertwined, and nothing stands separately. I want to be in everything.
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“You see how I do not do well in the spoken language?” She said to me towards the end of our conversation. And to provide some balance, as she said, she asked me to include within this interview a piece she had written. It was two densely typed pages, an “accusation” against everything and everyone, in which even us journalists, “the cogs in the band machine,” as she calls us, were not spared.
I refused, not to censor her, but frankly, for two reasons: lack of space and the structure of this interview.
She fell into melancholy and wondered what the point of a presentation of her without this text was. I wanted to at least comment on it:
DG: It is a text all about denial. I don’t think the ending “I love life” is enough. What do you have to offer in return; what is your vision? What is your vision? Who do you hang out with? How do you live when everything stinks? You even went to the Thessaloniki Festival and cried. What else did you expect to happen?
KG: I went because I am a conscious person. Because I believe that feeling is the foam of knowledge, of experienced [knowledge], therefore of truth. The people who worked on the film and defended it are just like me—tortured, in other words. I have said that we are being set up from everywhere. Every move we make is made while we are buried up to our necks. So I end up finding myself defending a xountiki committee against a few critics who have seized the posts of the so-called democratic newspapers, and are determining our fate.
DG: Do you actually believe they determine it?
KG: Yes, don’t you see how people just listen to them and run to watch the movies they tell them to, and go nuts?
DG: Now, will you answer my other question? What do you have to counter-suggest? What is your vision?
KG: Since they won’t let us create life, we’re going to ruin what’s existing, and the new will follow. That’s all I have to say.
Dimitris Gkionis is a journalist born in 1939, reporting on arts and culture, From 1964 to 1967, he wrote for the paper Δημοκρατική Αλλαγή (Democratic Change), and from 1967 to 1973, due to the junta, he contributed to Greek-language publications from France and Canada. He was co-editor of the magazine Τετράδιο (Notebook) and a writer for Αυγή (Dawn). Since 1975, he has been a regular reporter for Ελευθεροτυπία.
Christina Chatzitheodorou is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow, focusing on women’s participation in left-wing resistance movements during the Second World War. Originally from Greece, she speaks Greek, English, French, Italian, Spanish, a bit of Portuguese, and Turkish—and learning Arabic. Along with her PhD, she is currently working on a visual archive focusing on Greek solidarity to Palestine.
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