Chrysa Prokopaki

Chrysa Prokopaki was born in Komotini and grew up in Athens, where she studied philology. Postgraduate study took her to Paris. She taught Modern Greek literature at Paris III and later taught literary translation in Athens at the French Institute’s translation centre and at EKEMEL, the European Translation Centre.

Her own poetry appeared in Αποστάσεις (Distances, 1973), Το αλωνάκι (The Little Threshing Floor, 1976) and Ο χλωρός παράδεισος (The Green Paradise, 1982). Alongside these books, she developed sustained research on Yannis Ritsos. Her study Η πορεία προς τη Γκραγκάντα ή οι περιπέτειες του οράματος (The Journey towards Graganda, or the Adventures of Vision) appeared in 1981. She selected and edited the Ανθολογία Γιάννη Ρίτσου (Yannis Ritsos Anthology), published in 2000.

Prokopaki also worked extensively on Stratis Tsirkas. With Catherine Lerouvre, she translated his trilogy Drifting Cities into French, published in 1971; her chronology Στα ίχνη του Στρατή Τσίρκα (In the Footsteps of Stratis Tsirkas) followed in 1985. Theatre translation brought another audience to her Greek, including Molière and Chekhov. Teaching, poetry and scholarship thus developed through repeated encounters with the demands of another writer’s language.

Prokopaki’s own poetry deserves attention beside her work on other authors. In the opening poem of The Green Paradise, overflowing boxes gather papers, a passport and lace. These objects are material things, but they also carry stories. The question of where to take them becomes a question about what can be preserved or passed to another person.

The poem moves through an accumulation of details. Worn paper and domestic handiwork occupy the same space as a document for crossing borders. Memory emerges through textures and arrangements rather than a simple account of events. The objects do not settle into a tidy museum: their abundance creates pressure, hesitation and an unresolved task.

Her literary scholarship follows different forms of close attention: interpretation, chronology, selection and editorial care. Her Ritsos anthology offers a route through a large poetic body of work, while her Tsirkas studies connect reading with historical context. Translation requires another kind of decision. In her Greek Molière, verse has to remain speakable on stage. The encounter between meaning, rhythm and an actor’s breath joins her literary work to performance.

Read the first poem of The Green Paradise on the Poets’ Circle website, then use the adapted Greek passage for a small packing exercise. List three objects with their articles: το διαβατήριο, τη φωτογραφία and τα χαρτιά. Replace each object with το, τη or τα in a new sentence about keeping or putting it somewhere. Say the full noun first, then the pronoun version, and check that a listener knows what it refers to. Draw one object and add an original sentence about a memory it holds. This links practical Greek pronouns to the poem’s attention to belongings and the stories they carry.

• She wrote three poetry collections published by Kedros.
• She translated both for French readers and for Greek stages.
• She taught literary translation at the French Institute’s centre and EKEMEL in Athens.