Book Presentation: March 26, 2025 – Shifting Horizons and Crossing Borders: Thinking with Stephanos Stephanides (Brill, 2024)

I will be very happy to see you at the following event, dear friends.

You are warmly invited to the presentation of the edited volume – Shifting Horizons and Crossing Borders: Thinking with Stephanos Stephanides (ed. Angelos Evangelou, Brill, 2024) – which captures key moments in the critical and creative dialogue of literary scholars, poets and artists with poet, author, documentary film-maker and literary scholar Stephanos Stephanides. This will be a live event only.

All are welcome and no registration is needed.

Shifting Horizons and Crossing Borders: Thinking with Stephanos Stephanides
(Brill, 2024)

Publisher link

Edited by Angelos Evangelou

Wednesday, March 26, 2025
19:00-20:30 EET
A.G. Leventis Gallery, Nicosia, Cyprus

“This is a kaleidoscopic scholarly and poetic treatment of the work of one of the most eloquent and versatile figures of contemporary culture” – Djelal Kadir

“A bold and moving collection” – Karen Emmerich

“Each chapter is a thoughtful address to Stephanides’ call for a democratic poetics from below” – Mina Karavanta

Contributors

Angelos Evangelou | Helen Goethals | Julia Tsiakiris | Norbert Bugeja | Katia Pizzi | Petra Tournay-Theodotou | Christopher Merrill | Alev Adil | Susan Bassnett | GJV Prasad | Sara Greaves | Despina Pirketti | Christine Pagnoulle | Jacqueline Jondot | Stavros Stavrou Karayanni | Irini Savvides | Geoffrey V. Davis | Keki Daruwalla | Gürgenç Korkmazel | Amit Ranjan | David Dabydeen | Anandana Kapur | Maria Loizidou

Programme

Introductions

  • Prof. Tasos Christofides (Rector, University of Cyprus)
  • Dr. Angelos Evangelou (Greece)

Main Speakers

  • Dr. Nesrin Degirmencioglu (Cyprus)
  • Dr. Marilena Zackheos (Cyprus)

Remarks from International Contributors

  • Dr. Jacqueline Jondot (France)
  • Dr. Norbert Bugeja (Malta)

Respondent

  • Prof. Stephanos Stephanides

Discussion

Reception

Hosted by the Stephanides family and Domes Sergiou Winery

The book will be available to purchase at the event.

Thanks for their support and collaboration to the University of Cyprus, the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Domes Sergiou Winery.

Logos:

  • University of Cyprus
  • Institute of Languages, Cultures, and Societies
  • School of Advanced Study, University of London
  • Domes Sergiou Winery

Documentary: Hail Mother Kali (Guyana, 1988, 60 minutes)

In the late 1970s, I left the Mediterranean in times that happened to be unpropitious for Cyprus, the island of my birth. Destiny came like a gravitational wave and took me to the northeast shores of South America, where I taught literature at the University of Guyana.

During the six years I lived there, I became involved in Shakti worship brought to the sugar plantations of Berbice from the Tamil region of India, in the form of the village Goddess Mariamman. The tradition was taken there in the 19th century by Indian indentured labourers also known as ‘bound coolies’. In Indo-Caribbean culture, this ritual practice is most often referred to as Kalimai Puja.

In the community of her devotees, I found my soul mates. In 1988, I made the documentary film Hail Mother Kali as a tribute to the tradition, and my desire to keep the historical and cultural memory alive. The film was made at Blairmont Kali Temple and the surrounding areas, documenting the annual three-day Kargam Puja.

Soul mates always turn up when you least expect them, and in unlikely places, as if emerging from deep memory, or as accidents of fate that take you on a journey that forever unfolds with multiple turns and directions. The embrace of the community never left me.

I am in the process of completing a new essay film called Remembering Mariamman to be released in 2025. The film uses audiovisual material gathered over the last forty-five years and the script takes the form of personal memoir. For the celebration of the 45th Anniversary of Kargam Puja at Blairmont Kali Temple in February 2025, I am sharing the first documentary on YouTube.

Book Launch- Shifting Horizons and Crossing Borders: Thinking with Stephanos Stephanides ed. Angelos Evangelou (Brill, 2024)

Invitation by Julia Tsiakiris:
εν αρχή ήν ο άνθρωπος ο Στέφανος Στεφανίδης

ακολούθησε το βιβλίο The Wind under my Lips / Ο άνεμος κάτω απ’ τα χείλη μου [2018, Το Ροδακιό], μια μονοκοντυλιά από ποιήματα και πεζά που σκιαγραφεί την πορεία την πνευματική και τη βιοτική ενός πολίτη του κόσμου αθεράπευτα νοσταλγικού για τη γενέθλια γή, το Τρίκωμο Καρπασίας, με το αγγλικό πρωτότυπο και την αντάξια ελληνική μετάφραση της Δέσποινας Πυρκεττή

και μετά, ένα θαυμάσιο αφιέρωμα στον συγγραφέα σκηνοθέτη ντοκυμαντέρ και λόγιο Στέφανο Στεφανίδη με καταγωγή από την Κύπρο, μόρφωση στην Αγγλία και δράση ανά τον πλανήτη κυκλοφόρησε φέτος το καλοκαίρι από τις άριστες εκδόσεις Brill στην νεροκρατούμενη ολλανδική πόλη Leiden τουτέστιν πόλη του Κλειδιού https://brill.com/display/title/69651

και τώρα, σχετικά με τον αφιερωματικό τόμο και το έργο του Stephanos Stephanides απόψε θα γίνει διαδικτυακή παρουσίαση

ONLINE LAUNCH | Friday, November 22, 2024 @ 18:00-20:00 EEST

Shifting Horizons and Crossing Borders: Thinking with Stephanos Stephanides (Brill, 2024)

Edited by Angelos Evangelou

Speakers:

Angelos Evangelou | Helen Goethals | Norbert Bugeja | Christopher Merrill | Alev Adil | Susan Bassnett | Sara Greaves | Despina Pirketti | Christine Pagnoulle | Stavros Stavrou Karayanni | Amit Ranjan | Stephanos Stephanides

Discussion will follow.

The book captures key moments in the critical and creative dialogue of literary scholars, poets and artists with poet, author, documentary film-maker and literary scholar Stephanos Stephanides. Employing a polyphonic and cross-disciplinary perspective, the twenty-three essays and creative pieces flow together in cycles of continuities and discontinuities, emulating Stephanides’s fluid and transgressive universe. Drawing on the broad topic of borders and crossings, Shifting Horizons and Crossing Borders offers critical material on themes such as space and place, dislocation and migration, journeys and bridges, movement and fluidity, the aesthetics and the politics of the sea, time, nostalgia and (trans)cultural memory, identity and poetics, translation and translatability, home and homecoming. An invaluable reference for anyone interested in the crosscurrents between the poetic, the cultural and the political.