[ voiceover : sappho ]
[voiceover : sappho]
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.