The world today has the temperature of a wound—one that refuses to close. Poetry remains in this space, not to heal it quickly, but to listen to it. In times shaped by violence, indifference, and exhaustion, poetry becomes a way back to love: to language, to the body, to essential life.
This work reflects on aesthetics as a form of freedom—the quiet revolution of simplicity, beauty, and spiritual clarity against the brutal codes of everyday discourse. Our world suffers from a deep lack of such sensibility, whether in politics, architecture, or speech.
At its core, the text is an exploration of pain: not only as suffering, but as a force that shapes memory, resistance, and transformation. It asks what it means to remain human, unconventional, and awake inside collapsing systems—and how much darkness and light we must exchange in order to live more freely.
We dreamed, we dream, and we will dream.
The project is part of the subthemes Writing After – Catastrophe, Memory, and the Archive of Loss, Symbiotic Futures – Ecopoetics in the Age of Extinction, Disrupted Realities – Poetry and the Politics of Truth, Hybrid Selves – Gender, Identity, and Posthuman Intimacies, The Poetics of Care – Intimacy, Tenderness, Repair.
Author
Christos Koukis
Christos Koukis is a Greek poet, translator, festival director/organizer and editor. He lives and works in Athens, Greece. He has published five poetry books in Greece («After beauty» 2010, «The Great Paradox of the Sun» 2013, «Diary for Lovers» 2014, «Modern Guilt» 2018, «Outsider» 2022). He has published poetry books in France («Journal intime d’un amoureux», L’ Haramattan Publications 2016), India («Modern guilt» by Paperwall Publishing House 2019), Serbia («Velicanstven paradoks lepote» Smederevo Publications 2016) and Honduras («El Camino dificil», Colección Poetas en Los Confines 2024). His poems are included in Greek and international poetry anthologies such as « Poets in the Shadow» Gavrielides publications, « Poetry Dialogues» Govostis Publications, « Kleine tiere zum schlachten, Neue gedichte aus Griechenland» editions Parassitenpresse».
He has participated in many international poetry festivals in Europe, America and Asia (Colombia, Honduras, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, India, China, Thailand, Egypt, Ukraine, UK, Iraq, Mexico, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Latvia, etc.) and his poems have been translated into eighteen (18) languages. He is visiting schools and prisons to teach and spread poetry and literature.
He worked as a curator and organizer of the art exhibition “HOMO SAPIENS IN LOVE” in 2011 in Athens, Greece. Since 2013 he worked for 4 years as an editor of online poetry journal Poeticanet.gr and his mission was the research, the filming and the editing for the interviews of all important Greek living poets (interviews are being hosted by the Greek Ministry of Education). Since 2014 and for 3 years he worked as a co-editor of the urban magazine Beausillage, responsible for the main weekly column on arts. In 2015 poems from his poetry books were selected by Professor Jacques Bouchard for his lectures of spring semester 2015 at the Centre d'études néo-helléniques de l’Université de Montréal, Montreal Canada.
He collaborated in 2016 in Oaxaca, Mexico for an international video-poetry Festival with several of his poems. The same year, he presented in a conference at the University of Lisbon the lecture « Da Poesia Neo-Helenica 1905-2016». In 2017 he co-curated the international project «The place of the thing» in Documenta 14 Athens as a poet (writing, reading, translating). He participated in the 6th Creative writing Conference with the lecture «Creative writing of the international poetry festivals», 2024 and in the 1st International Performance Poetry Biennial Symposium-Festival.
He won the National First Appearance Poetry Award, 31st Hellenic Symposium on Poetry, Patras Greece 2011.
He was the director and the organizer of the Crete International Poetry Festival, 2019-2022. Additionally, the director and co-organizer of the Serres International Poetry Festival, 2023-2024. He was the co-director and co-organizer of the Greek-Slovenian International Translation Poetry Festival, 2024-2025 and the International Poetry Translation workshop Greece-Turkey, Izmir 2020.
Nowadays he is working as a counselor of the International poetry festivals in Larnaca, Cyprus and Kiato, Greece.
He is the coordinator for Greece of the WPD Festival Dia Mundial de la Poesía and the World Poetry Movement. He translated the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish into Greek, «Every time I approach a storm» Eirini Publications, 2025 and the Palestinian poet Murad Al Sudani into Greek, « Murad’s stone» Eirini Publications, 2025. He is the editor and translator of the international project-book «Poetry as an act of resistance», 2025-2026.
