ANTIGONE KEFALA, Absenta / Absence

Antigone Kefala, Absenţă / Absence, bilingual edition

Omonia’s poetry collection has been added in 2010 a new title from Australia; that might appear unusual to readers used to this publishing house putting out books originating exclusively in the Hellenic space. In fact, the new book falls in the same line, as author Antigone Kefala hails from the Greek community of Braila, the home tome of famous Romanian writer Panait Istrati. In 1947 she emigrated with her family to Greece, then to New Zealand and eventually settled in Australia, where she made a name as a writer. She studied in Romania, Greece and New Zealand, held administrative positions in the university system and was for many years a member of the Australia Council for the Arts.

Antigone Kefala successfully tackled several literary genres: poetry, prose, essays and memoirs. Since 1973 she has been steadily writing poetry, her poems, like all her writings, being valued for their austerity, elegance and intensity, for its wealth of cultural and existential echoes, for its universal spirit and the distinctive note it brings in Australian culture. Translated into several languages (mostly in Europe), her poetry has won her broad international recognition.

Absenţă / Absence is a bilingual poetry anthology, accompanied by a moving essay where Antigone Kefala approaches the milestones of her cultural biography. Asked whether she thinks of herself as an emigrant or an Australian writer, she says she is both, the two situations not being exclusive of each other.

Kefala’s poems were translated by well known poet Ioana Ieronim, whose foreword is actually an enthusiastic essay – The Journey Begins in a Dream. In turn, in her own foreword to the Romanian edition, Antigone Kefala, who still speaks amazingly good Romanian, says that “the translation of the poems is subtle and forceful and its tone brings them very close to their English original.” The book with Antigone Kefala’s poems transposed into Romanian by Ioana Ieronim thus mediates a special dialogue between two outstanding representatives of the feminine lyrical universe.
Having left Romania at the age of 12 and having never returned, Antigone Kefala, who has vivid memories of her native country and the years she spent here, is now coming back through this selection of her most beautiful poems.