Celebrating Erotokritos Year 2019

From Neos Kosmos

C.20 - an international journal, issue no.2. The Writer as Expatriate. Beverley Farmer, Maria Strani-Potts and other writers on Greece.

Issue 2 contents

Read here, my essay: "Insiders and outsiders: Beverley Farmer, Maria Strani-Potts and other expatriate or “displaced” writers".

How did diverse writers about Greece approach interpersonal relationships, the tensions of family and community life, whilst preserving their individual sense of identity and belonging? What were the joys and resentments which preoccupied these very different women, two of them Australian, one American, one British and one Greek?

Works discussed:

Gillian Bouras, Aphrodite and the Others, 2010.

Linda Fagioli-Katsiotas, The Nifi, A True Story, 2015.

Beverley Farmer, A Body of Water, A Year’s Notebook, 1990.

Beverley Farmer, Collected Stories, 1996.

Beverley Farmer, The Bone House, Essays, 2005.

Beverley Farmer, The House in the Light, 1995.

Theresa Nicholas, Suntouched, A Dark Comedy on a Greek Island, 2011.

Maria Strani-Potts, The Cat of Portovecchio: Corfu Tales, 2007.

Maria Strani-Potts, When the Sun Goes Down, Island Stories, 2013.

Maria Strani-Potts, To Poulima tis Panoraias,2007.

Anna Weale, Passage to Paxos, 1981.


A version of this essay/paper was given at the Writers, Dreamers, Drifters and the Aegean conference on Hydra, 25-26 September, 2018.
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Portrait of Humanity, Photography Competition

I was thinking of entering an image for Portrait of Humanity, but I couldn't decide which single image to submit, so I have put some here instead.

Rave On!

                                                      Lyme Regis (Story Sequence, 1-7)

West Bay (Single Image, 8)

Greek Government to subsidize newspapers (€6.7 million)? Ανακαλείται το πρόγραμμα

Gov’t subsidize newspapers with €6.7million, from Keep Talking Greece


UPDATE from KTG: "After the outcry on social media, government spokesman Stelios Petsas said late on Saturday that the ministerial decision is being withdrawn and called on political parties for a meeting next week to submit their ideas for improvement".

Kathimerini, 14.12.2019, Ανακαλείται το πρόγραμμα ενίσχυσης κυκλοφορίας των εφημερίδων πανελλήνιας κυκλοφορίας

"The Joint Ministerial Decision on the granting of beneficiaries to the relevant program for the support of companies issuing Greek national newspapers, as announced by government spokesman Stelios Petsas, is revoked on 12.12.2019...Representatives of the political parties on press issues are called on Monday, December 16, 2019 at 11:30 am. to the General Secretariat for Communication and Information, in order to express their proposals, if they so wish." - Google Translation.


Kathimerini,  14.12.2019- ΣΥΡΙΖΑ: Κριτική στην κυβέρνηση για τον τρόπο ενίσχυσης των πανελλαδικών εφημερίδων

(Criticisms of changes to the original Joint Ministerial Decision on the Pan-Hellenic Newspaper Support Programme - Κοινή Υπουργική Απόφαση για το Πρόγραμμα ενίσχυσης των εφημερίδων πανελλαδικής κυκλοφορίας).


See also (ResearchGate), abstract, Greece: Press Subsidies in Turmoil*, 2013, Stylianos Papathanassopoulos, Full Professor at the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens:

"In this chapter, I will critically analyze the Greek subsidy scheme for newspapers. I will argue that state aid for the press has been heavily influenced by the troubled Greek patronage politics. I will organize this chapter in two parts. The first part deals with the structure of the Greek media system, which has been heavily affected by the interplay between the political elite and the press. Second, I will point out that press subsidies have not been governed by a clear legal frame-work. Instead, I argue that press subsidies in Greece have been used as state instruments of appeasement and silencing the print media. I build on the suggestion that state–media relations in Greece are an asymmetric relationship and could best be described through the concept of clientelism, as I attempt to explain in the next section of this chapter. Finally, I will conclude that press subsidies in Greece are in a state of continuous turmoil. This is due to the financial crisis and the austerity package put in place which exerts huge pressure on the existing practices of the press support provisions".

* “Greece: Press Subsidies in Turmoil” in P.C. Murschetz (ed.), State Aid for Newspapers, Media Business and Innovation; Theories, Cases, Actions, New York: Springer, 2013, p. 237-521

https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783642356902.

See also, draft of Media Policy and Independent Journalism in Greece P. Iosifidis and D. Boucas

 

How the Greek cartoonist Makris sees Brexit, eKathimerini

Greta Thunberg apologizes for comment. Sätt dem mot väggen (Put them against the wall) - lost in translation, Swedish to English

Sätt dem mot väggen! Ställa dem mot väggen! Put them against the wall!

Swedish saying, different meaning and sense from the English translation.


From Euronews

"Thunberg told the crowd in Turin that world leaders were running away from their responsibilities to fight climate change."We have to make sure that they cannot do that," she said. "We will make sure they, that we put them against the wall, and that they will have to do their job and to protect our futures."The expression "putting someone against the wall" in Swedish describes a situation when someone is forced to address difficult questions or a difficult situation".

From The Independent

“World leaders are still trying to run away from their responsibilities but we have to make sure they cannot do that... We will make sure that we put them against the wall and they will have to do their job to protect our futures”.

May, by Karel Hynek Mácha (llustrations Jan Zrzavý, translation Edith Pargeter)

Čechové jsou národ dobrý!

One of the most famous Czech poems, in English translation by Edith Pargeter

William Harkins' translation

James Naughton's translation


An extract from the translation by Hugh Hamilton McGoverne (May. Rendered in English verse by Hugh Hamilton McGoverne. Together with selected prose, letters, occasional pieces and a portrait, 1949)