Athena Papadaki

"I respect silence-it comes from the cosmos."

Athena Papadaki was born in 1945 in Athens. She studied politics and works as a journalist. Not quite the Madonna of the Pressure Cooker, Papadaki writes in the tradition of Elytis and Ritsos—using a particularly Greek form of surrealism, centered on the concrete realities of daily life.

"I believe in all that burns in vain.

Transient and speechless

I see mammals blazing

in the festivity of milk.

I'm precious,

I guarantee nothing but ash."

Papadaki's work includes: Archangel of Concrete, Earth Once Again, So Pale Almost White, Shop-window Lioness, Sleepless Woman of the Skies, and In the Balcony's Realm.

"I must sing of those

who taught me deprivation."

Athena Papadaki lives in Athens.