VOICEOVER—
The VOICEOVER— Poems initially began as part of my ongoing multimodal poetry project, [Ruins.In.Progress.] — though they have since evolved in both scope/subject matter & level of collaboration. This series of persona poems allows me to channel the voices of ancient / mythological / historic women whose experiences in their own stories are all too often eclipsed by the male figures who have enacted harm upon them. As a genderqueer / gender resistant person, channeling these women allows me, for a moment, to re-enter & wrangle with that lineage of harm. The poems also stem from a personal frustration that Greek culture is largely reduced to its ancient-ness. To that end, the women in these poems shed their chitons for leather jackets, sneak away to listen to The Slits & cruise heavy metal shows in Brooklyn, perch on rocky wasted shores & give advice via Lucinda Williams lyrics.
The past is present, even now.
After the poems are written, I then invite my femme-identifying / non-binary friends to lend their voices to an audio recording of the poem, which is then transformed into a piece of sound-art in collaboration with long-time co-conspirator Justin LoBasso—a musician, poet, composer & audio artist based in Brooklyn. The VOICEOVER— Poems, then, exist as a polyphony of voices, more of a Chorus than individual address. Pieces will be posted here below with links to where they first appeared (if applicable).
Originally published via 433 online.
This poem was written upon my discovery that, in ancient Greek pottery & paintings, Sirens were depicted as both female & male. Somewhere in the time-soup, the feminine won out & now we have the Sirens we’re familiar with today—aquatic seductressess luring sailors (always men) to their doom with a sweet culling song. But I began to wonder about the Sirens’ other sibling—born male & yet incongruous with their sisters. A failure, even, in the deathly chorus.
My friend & multi-media artist / poet Joe Nasta (ze/zir) lent me zir voice to a recording of this poem which was then engineered into a sound-art piece by Justin LoBasso using myriad found sounds. You can listen & read along at the link below.
*** The Polaroid paired with this piece is one of a series of 8 taken in the Summer of 2019 as documentation of Douglas Rogerson’s domestic installation, Through & Through.***
Originally published via Interim online, Vol. 36, Issue 3.
The idea for this poem took root once I learned from my dad that he had found a piece of poetry written by my mother’s mother after she passed. I had no clue she wrote, let alone poetry. This was a woman who lived through Nazi occupation of Lesvos an orphan alone with her younger sister, malnourished & without formal education. Still, she remains the wisest & most intuitive person I’ve known. Her poem is called “The Good Lord” & is written her own unique scrawl & dialect, which made the task of translation difficult for my dad (a native Athenian). The scan he sent me of the poem was damaged too, because of streaks in the scanner, which made me think of the tears across the Sapphic Fragments, how both these women came from the same land at different times, how all any of us have left of them both are these scraps & phrases. But we do have them.
On a visit home one winter I recorded my parents reading the poem in Greek together, as well as my mother reading my father’s translation in English. I also salvaged the only two voicemails left of Yiayia on the family housephone. These I then compounded with a mixture of found sound & fabricated sonic textures to accompany the poem. You can listen & read along at the link below.
*** The photo above is the first damaged scan of my Yiayia’s poem, “The Good Lord,” sent to me by my father.***