Mantis: Poet Yiorgos Chouliaras

Speaker(s): Yiorgos Chouliaras

Yiorgos Chouliaras is a Greek poet, essayist, and author of the alphabetical “anti-memoir” Dictionary of Memories whose poetry in English translation has been published and reviewed in major literary periodicals – including Agenda, Grand Street, Harvard Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, and World Literature Today – and in international anthologies such as New European Poets. His work has also been translated into Bulgarian, Croatian, French, Spanish, Turkish, and other languages. He is the author of six volumes of poetry in Greek, including Roads of Ink, and of numerous essays on literature and cultural history, in English as well as Greek, while poets he has translated include Wallace Stevens. He was a co-founder of the influential Greek literary reviews Tram and Hartis and an editor of literary and scholarly publications in the United States. He has served on the Board of the Hellenic Authors’ Society, the Poets Circle, the Ottawa International Writers Festival, and the Modern Greek Studies Association. Born in Thessaloniki and educated at Reed College and at The Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, he studied and worked in Oregon, New York City, Ottawa, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Dublin, before returning to Athens.
 
Mantis is supported by the DLCL and the English Department at Stanford and is edited and managed by graduate students. Founded by graduate students with guidance from faculty mentors in 2000, the journal has consistently maintained an emphasis on new poets and an internationally diverse content. The journal emerged from a collective desire to facilitate conversation among the array of writers engaged in the practice of poetry and poetics, or literary criticism of poetry. Submissions of poetry, literature reviews and translations come from a variety of writers including Stanford students, practicing professors and professional poets from around the globe. Recent editions have featured translations of canonical works such as those of Aime Cesaire and Paul Celan, English translations and critical pieces by academics and professionals. Entries by new poets or poets who haven't yet been published infuse each issue with a dose of fresh talent and style.