Poet, translator, editor Kompotis Panagiotis

Haya said

“Haya said” is a poetic dialogue written in Greek between my mother (a Muslim immigrant who came to Greece in the ’80s from Chechnya), two Syrian refugees (a female and a male rapper), and a Greek newscaster. With this work, I intend to demonstrate that poets –especially those of us whose voice is heard beyond the borders of Greece– can use poetry to address the recent economic and social crisis in Greece and Europe, and speak about the struggle of immigrants and refugees from the Middle and Near East who try to make their way to northern Europe. Drawing on the Greek political poetry traditions of the anti-junta movement of the ’60s and ’70s as well as on hip hop and the language of young second-generation immigrants living in Athens, I intend to create a polyvocal poetic work that speaks about immigration, trauma and the impoverishment of life in Greece, but also about the promise of a new life and the hope of a better future. I will spend the first two weeks of the residency doing research on immigration, and the Syrian civil war and I will dedicate the following six weeks to writing.