Chimera
New Directions Publishing · Paperback · July 9, 2024
FINALIST FOR THE PEN AWARD FOR POETRY IN TRANSLATION In her third collection in English, Phoebe Giannisi lays out her vision for a chimeric poetics that blends field recordings, state archives, and ancient texts.
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- Who it’s for
- Field research on Vlach goat herding meets poems shaped by archives and ancient texts.
- Themes
- Human-animal relationships, Metamorphosis and utterance, Oral tradition and song
- Genres
- European Poetry, Nature Poetry
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FINALIST FOR THE PEN AWARD FOR POETRY IN TRANSLATION In her third collection in English, Phoebe Giannisi lays out her vision for a chimeric poetics that blends field recordings, state archives, and ancient texts. The center of Chimera engages with a three-year field research project on the goat-herding practices of the Vlachs, a nomadic people of Northern Greece and the Southern Balkans, who speak their own language.
Continue reading
In these poems, day-to-day activities such as shearing and shepherding mix with snippets of conversations, oral tradition, and song—locating a larger story in this ancient marriage between humans and animals. Through her poetry and fieldwork, this mytho-historical connection between metamorphosis and utterance takes form in what the Greek newspaper Kathimerini calls “a bold achievement….a studio wherein poems and other texts, other voices, become exhibited.”
Vlach Herding Poems
Field research on Vlach goat herding meets poems shaped by archives and ancient texts.
Come here for
- Vlach goat-herding practices, including shearing and shepherding
- Conversations, oral tradition, and song
Expect
- Day-to-day herding activities alongside snippets of conversation
- A poetics connecting metamorphosis, utterance, humans, and animals
Where it sits
| Nature Poetry | 77% |
|---|---|
| European Poetry | 61% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- European Poetry
- Nature Poetry
- Place Poetry
- Authors
- Phoebe Giannisi
- Publisher
- New Directions Publishing
- Published
- July 9, 2024
- Format
- Paperback
- Theme
- Human-animal relationships · Metamorphosis and utterance · Oral tradition and song
- Reading lane
- European Poetry