Reimagining the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds for Modern Times

Kyklos Paros, in collaboration with the Fluxus Museum, invites you to a fascinating evening dedicated to Anne Carson, Nobel Laureate, poet, thinker and rule-breaker, whose extraordinary work has transformed the way we experience ancient Greek and Roman literature.

Through conversations with Haris Vavlianos, Carson’s translator, Charlie Wilkins, Canadian writer, and Jeffrey Carson, Parian poet, and through poetry, readings and Anne Carson’s own voice, we invite you to discover the enigma of a poet and thinker who has made the ancient world speak in a startlingly new language.

Why do we call Anne Carson a rule-breaker?

Because Carson refuses to accept the traditional boundaries of literature. For her, poetry can become prose, an essay can become a poem, a poetry reading can become theatre, a translation can become a new work of art, and an ancient myth can become a contemporary love story.

In her book Autobiography of Red, a monster from Greek mythology becomes a sensitive young man struggling with love and identity. In Eros the Bittersweet, ancient Greek ideas about desire become a profound exploration of the contradictions of human love.

Carson is also a thinker. She questions the way we see things, asking questions about language, memory, truth and the way we understand ourselves. She challenges not only how we write, but also how we read and think.

And she does all this with an unusual mixture of scholarship, imagination, humour and irreverence.

For those of us living in Greece, there is something especially fascinating about her work. Carson takes a cultural inheritance that is all around us — the poetry, philosophy, mythology and tragedies of ancient Greece — and reveals how surprisingly alive and relevant it remains. She does not want us to stay in the past; she endeavours to create something new from the old.

Through conversations, interviews, readings and Carson’s own voice, we invite you to discover a writer who has made the ancient world speak in a startlingly new language.

A poet who thinks like a philosopher, a scholar who writes like an artist, and a rule-breaker who creates new possibilities for literature.