2022 Poetry

Hers (excerpt)

Laina, Maria; Van Dyck, Karen

During the dictatorship (1967–74), Maria Laina and a group of other young poets spearheaded a new kind of elliptical poetry in Greece that grappled with the confusion and censorship of the times by imagining alternative sexualities. In the context of women poets of the previous generation (Kiki Dimoula, Eleni Vakalo) as well as her own contemporaries who view the white space as “a room of her own” (Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Jenny Mastoraki), Laina stands out for her autoerotic aesthetic.