Phoebe Giannisi - Homerica
Phoebe Giannisi
Homerica
Translated from Greek by
BRIAN SNEEDEN
$16.00
Bilingual Edition
112 pages
December 5, 2017
ISBN 978-0-9992613-1-6
Distributed by Small Press Distribution (US) and Turnaround Publisher Services (UK & EU)
BIOS
Born in Athens in 1964, PHOEBE GIANNISI is one of Greece's foremost contemporary poets, and is the author of seven books of poetry, including Homerica (Kedros, 2009) and, most recently, Rhapsodia (Gutenberg, 2016). Giannisi is a co-editor of FRMK, a biannual journal of poetry, poetics, and visual arts, and she has translated Ancient Greek lyric poetry as well as poetry by Gerhard Falkner, Barbara Koehler, Gregor Laschen, Jesper Svenbro, and Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues. A 2016 Humanities Fellow of Columbia University, Giannisi is an associate professor of architecture and cultural studies at the University of Thessaly. Her work focuses on the borders between poetry and performance, theory and representation, and investigates the connections of poetics with body and place. She lives in Volos, Greece.
BRIAN SNEEDEN is a poet, literary translator, and editor. His collection of poems, Last City, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2018. His poetry has received the Iowa Review Award in Poetry, the Indiana Review 1/2K Prize, and has appeared in Harvard Review Online, Poetry Daily, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other publications. His translations have received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, the World Literature Today Translation Award for Poetry, the Constantinides Memorial Translation Prize, a PEN/Heim Translation Grant, and other recognitions. His translation of Phoebe Giannisi’s Homerica (2017) was selected by Anne Carson as a favorite book of 2017, and his translation of Giannisi’s collection Cicada was published by New Directions in 2022.
PRESS
Phoebe Giannisi
Homerica
Translated from Greek by
BRIAN SNEEDEN
The first English translation of Phoebe Giannisi—one of Greece’s foremost poetic voices—offers a contemporary Odyssey of loss, longing, motherhood, and metamorphosis, the poems re-weaving classical mythology with modern experience.
The mythic characters and scenes of Homerica never feel otherworldly—rather, they appear alongside the tugboat, the bicycle, the television, and the helicopter. Brian Sneeden’s masterful translation captures the Delphic rhythms of Giannisi’s oracular poems, which rarely travel in a straight line but rather glide across multiple threads of time, like a loom interweaving strands of the mythological past.
“Giannisi’s poetry is a wonderful combination of the classical and the underground avant-garde. Trained both in architecture and Ancient Greek, her poems tackle the problem of how to inhabit the spaces we live in—from the abandoned lot and the swimming pool to the page of the book. What a pleasure to have the full Homerica series in Brian Sneeden’s lyrical translation.” —Karen Van Dyck
“Sneeden is a meticulous translator and a poet in his own right. He brings Phoebe Giannisi’s work to life with immediacy and conviction.” —Edmund Keeley
“Phoebe Giannisi’s poetry collection Homerica is a reinvention of Greek lyric verse and its language.” —Shon Arieh-Lerer, World Literature Today
“A nuanced, clear set of poems that seamlessly articulate homeward journeys—wherever one’s home may be.” —Kirkus Reviews
“[An] unusually excellent translation.” —Anne Carson, The Paris Review
BIOS
Born in Athens in 1964, PHOEBE GIANNISI is one of Greece's foremost contemporary poets, and is the author of seven books of poetry, including Homerica (Kedros, 2009) and, most recently, Rhapsodia (Gutenberg, 2016). Giannisi is a co-editor of FRMK, a biannual journal of poetry, poetics, and visual arts, and she has translated Ancient Greek lyric poetry as well as poetry by Gerhard Falkner, Barbara Koehler, Gregor Laschen, Jesper Svenbro, and Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues. A 2016 Humanities Fellow of Columbia University, Giannisi is an associate professor of architecture and cultural studies at the University of Thessaly. Her work focuses on the borders between poetry and performance, theory and representation, and investigates the connections of poetics with body and place. She lives in Volos, Greece.
BRIAN SNEEDEN is a poet, literary translator, and editor. His collection of poems, Last City, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2018. His poetry has received the Iowa Review Award in Poetry, the Indiana Review 1/2K Prize, and has appeared in Harvard Review Online, Poetry Daily, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other publications. His translations have received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, the World Literature Today Translation Award for Poetry, the Constantinides Memorial Translation Prize, a PEN/Heim Translation Grant, and other recognitions. His translation of Phoebe Giannisi’s Homerica (2017) was selected by Anne Carson as a favorite book of 2017, and his translation of Giannisi’s collection Cicada was published by New Directions in 2022.
PRESS
Bilingual Edition
112 pages
December 5, 2017
ISBN 978-0-9992613-1-6
Distributed by Small Press Distribution (US) and Turnaround Publisher Services (UK & EU)
