Mirror for You: Collected Poems (1967-1999)

Mirror for You collects nearly all of the poetry and poetic prose written by the Greek urban folklorist Elias Petropoulos (1928-2003). Featuring new translations by John Taylor, it is the first time that Petropoulos's poetry has been made available in English. As the author of some seventy books on topics ranging from prisons, brothels, graveyards, hats, moustaches and Turkish coffee to rebetic songs, folk architecture, homosexual slang and the plight of Greek Jews during the Second World War, Petropoulos was also and perhaps above all a poet. He wrote his first long poetic sequence, Funeral Oration, when he was thirty-nine years old, just after the imposition of a military dictatorship (1967-1974) during which he was imprisoned three times for his controversial writings. In the following decades, most of which were spent in exile in Paris, Petropoulos produced more poetry, often in spurts of highly concentrated energy. At turns melancholic, erotic and caustic, these poems form an uncomfortable self-portrait of the man behind the vast and groundbreaking oeuvre.