Poetics of a sea

Abstract

In this first session of Mediterranean: Prospect and Retrospect, Norbert Bugeja speaks to Stephanos Stephanides, a poet, essayist and memoirist, translator, ethnographer and documentary filmmaker. Born in Trikomo, Cyprus, Stephanides was taken to the United Kingdom by his father when he was eight years old. He lived in several countries before returning to Cyprus in 1992 as part of the founding faculty of the University of Cyprus, where he retired as Professor of English and Comparative Literature in 2017. Stephanides has held several writing fellowships and awards. Most recently, he was writing fellow at International Writers Program at the University of Iowa (2016), and in 2012 his film Poets in No Man’s Land won first prize for Video Poetry at the Nicosia International Film Festival. He has been judge for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (2000 and 2010), is a Fellow of the English Association and a Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana, awarded by the Republic of Italy. A bilingual, English-with-Greek translated selection of his poems and fragments of memoir, titled The Wind Under My Lips, will be published in Athens by Rodakio Publications in early 2018.