SMOKESTACK BOOKS

(P/B) ROMIOSINI
The word romiosini (ρωμιοσύνη) or 'Greekness' derives from the Byzantine idea that the Greeks are the true Romioi, the heirs of the Roman Empire. For hundreds of years under the Turkish occupation the flame of romiosini was kept alive in codes of honour, loyalty, bravery, love of the land, religious devotion and patriotism. For the Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos, the Greek Partisans of EAM/ELAS in the Second World War were the heroic heirs to the romiosini of the mountain klephtes, the medieval epic hero Digenis Akritas, and the revolutionaries...
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(P/B) EPITAPHIOS
On 10 May 1936 the 27-year old Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos saw a newspaper photograph of a woman weeping over the body of her son, a Thessaloniki tobacco-factory worker killed by police during a strike. Two days later the Communist Party newspaper Rizospastis published a long poem by Ritsos. Dedicated 'to the heroic workers of Thessaloniki' and drawing on the sixth-century Greek Orthodox Epitaphios Thrinos, the poem combines Mary's lament at Christ's tomb with popular Greek folk traditions of resurrection and Spring to create a universal lam...
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CRISIS
"Crisis burst in everywhere. Her hair wafts in our faces. Her heady perfume a smell of brothel, she gazes smug and intense. Yet crisis, I reflect, is an abstract concept. How could it vanquish the air, the mountains, the sea, the sun? How can all that expansive light around us possibly belong to the crisis?" For the last five years Greece has been at the epicentre of a brutal economic, political and social crisis. Recession, austerity, cuts to wages, pensions and public spending have led to political paralysis, general strikes, riots in A...
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