On Friday the 29 April, the will be hosting an encounter with author Stephanos Stephanides, a prominent voice in the poetry and scholarship of the Mediterranean region. Stephanides will be reading from his recent work, parts of his bilingual collection of prose and poetry The Wind Under my Lips (Athens: To Rodakio, 2018), as well as various other writings. He will be talking about his wealth of experience over a lifetime of living across and in-between worlds and countries, a path of writing and scholarship that has nurtured Stephanides’s complex and distinct understanding of the Mediterranean itself. Stephanides will be sharing these insights, together with his own reading of and perspectives on the Mediterranean, with the audience on the evening. ‘The Sea Remembers Me’ will take place at the Ħursun Farmhouse, the Mediterranean Institute’s historic premises on the University of Malta’s Msida Campus. The event commences at 19:00. A Q&A session and a drinks reception will follow on from the event.
Stephanos Stephanides is a poet, essayist, memoirist, translator, ethnographer, documentary filmmaker, and former Professor of Comparative literature at the University of Cyprus. He was born in Cyprus and was taken to the UK by his father when he was eight. He returned to Cyprus in 1992 as part of the founding faculty of the University of Cyprus. He completed his PhD at Cardiff University. He has lived in Spain, Portugal, Greece, the USA and Guyana, where he developed a deep interest in Caribbean culture, and Indian diasporic communities.
Selections of his poetry have been published in more than twelve languages. He has held residential writing and research fellowships at the University of Warwick, the Bogliasco Foundation, Italy; JNIAS at JNU, India, and is a writing fellow of the IWP of the University of Iowa. He was awarded first prize for poetry from the American Anthropological Association, 1988, and first prize for video poetry for his film Poets in No Man’s Land (2012) at the Nicosia International Film Festival. He was a judge for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (2000, 2010) and for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2022). He is Emeritus Fellow of the English Association, and has been decorated as Cavaliere by the Republic of Italy. Representative publications include Translating Kali’s Feast: the Goddess in Indo-Caribbean Ritual and Fiction (2000), Blue Moon in Rajasthan and other poems (2005), and The Wind Under My Lips (2018). His ethnographic films include Hail Mother Kali (1988) and Kali in the Americas (2003).
Entrance to the reading is free and open to the general public. Students and postgraduate researchers are particularly encouraged to attend. Masks must be worn throughout the event and a valid COVID-vaccination certificate will be requested at the door. Seating for this event is very limited. Kindly email the event Convenor, Dr Norbert Bugeja for further information about the session, and Ms Isabelle Abela in order to reserve a seat.
