The Grief Almanac : A Sequel

New poetry from Vana Manasiadis . Manasiadis was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and she divides her time between Greece and New Zealand. She co-editor of the Seraph Press Poetry in Translation Series

Helen Rickerby of Seraph Press says: Vana has invented her own forms and layouts for the poems on the page, which are nothing like anything I've ever seen before. There are several long sequences which have seemingly unrelated threads presented in parallel - sometimes on facing pages, and sometimes in the top and bottom halves of the same page. For example, in one sequence one thread is a narrative of the days after the death of the poet's mother, while the other thread is a series of ekphrastic poems about various artworks and texts.

It may be hard at first for some readers to know quite how to read them together, but the effect I have found is that they show how interconnected and paralleled everything is; how we read everything through the lens of our experiences and griefs, and how healing art can be in our lives.

Featured in the 30 April 2019 New Zealand newsletter.
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