The anthology Austerity Measures samples this living tradition, bearing witness not only to the hard lives being led in Greece and the Balkans today, but also to what poetry does best: offer new ways to imagine what can be radically different realities. From the lyrical dream fragments of Anna Griva to the apocalyptic neorealism of Stathis Antoniou to Thomas Tsalapatis’s wry postmodern prose poems, nothing here is as one might expect, even from the Greek poetry of the recent past. Not many statues; not much myth, at least in the classical sense; no patriotism; not even the very intense light or references to the sea we know from the Nobel laureates George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis. Read on at: www.theguardian.com
