Eighteen established writers, one from each city/region, were commissioned to write a chapter in a response to their Arts & Society theme within the context of their city.
Just as Ulysses is innovative in its form and language, so the writers were chosen with a view to reflecting a breadth of genres, styles and innovations. All the (new) chapters from the 18 cities/regions will be brought together in a book to be published in the Autumn 2024: ULYSSES European Odyssey.
Yiannis Doukas wrote the Athens chapter.
Writer’s Statement
I worked on epic poetry for my Ph.D. in Classics at the University of Galway, situated on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. At one point I resided within walking distance from the house where Nora Barnacle—later to become Joyce’s wife and the model for Molly Bloom—was born and raised, so it would come as no surprise that the Odyssey, Ulysses, and the cultural and literary itineraries between them resonate strongly with me.
Living back in my birthplace and hometown of Athens since then, I often find myself pondering over the concepts of youth, citizenship and democracy which form the rationale of the city’s participation in this European Odyssey. My Athens, however, is not the ideal invoked by Buck Mulligan in the first chapter of Ulysses. Youth people find themselves threatened and frustrated, faced with suffocating precariousness; citizenship has been corroded beyond recognition, replaced by the identity of the social media user as a guinea pig; and democracy is rapidly degenerating into an illiberal form of government. In my contribution, I address these issues in the form of a poetic narrative. My Athens, however, can also be found to exist beyond the dystopian realities of lived experience. And my Ireland is not the place from where Joyce sought and managed to escape. Between memory and imagination, my text can also be unavoidably read as a personal and literary tribute paid to the lands, landscapes, and landmarks of my life.
Writer’s Biography
Yiannis Doukas was born in Athens in 1981. He studied Greek Philology, Classics and Digital Humanities. He earned his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Galway, where he worked on intertextuality in Late Greek Epic and its digital representation. So far he has published three books of poetry: At Inner Borders (Polis, 2011, Diavazo journal Debut Poetry Collection Award), The Stendhal Syndrome (Polis, 2013, G. Athanas Award of the Academy of Athens) and thebes memphis (Polis, 2020).
He has also written the lyrics for two songs by Thanos Mikroutsikos, included on his final album, In the Fog of the Times (2017). His work has been featured in numerous anthologies, such as Austerity Measures (edited by Karen Van Dyck, Penguin, 2016), and has been translated into Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian and Spanish.