Pavlos Andreou
- Cyprus -
Pavlos Andreou was born in 2000 in Larnaca. He is studying LLB Law at the University of Reading. "Teargas Ice-Cream" (Thraca 2022) is his first poetry collection.
Feeling our way around the collection of poems Eye-Misting Ice-Cream by Paul Andreou
The poetry collection Eye-Misting Ice-Cream by Paul Andreou, a young poet making his debut in Modern Greek literature, essentially amounts to a howl, performed in both major and minor scales. It breaks away from the well-trodden path of the modern trend within Cyprus’s poetic output. Instead, in a fruitful, creative way, the collection perceives the inherited traumatic circumstances through a misted mirror, according to the connotative allusion of the innovative, surrealistic title.
An exceptionally restless spirit and genuine representative of an engaged youth, Paul Andreou revolts, cries out, protests, hollers! He will not enjoy carefree children’s games while being ravaged by cries within and without. His is the bitter taste of a vortex of unfulfilled expectations that persists, whether he keeps his eyes shut or not:
Fake star
Eenie meenie miney moe
and you were pointing to me.
I close my eyes
to count years in hiding.
You went away and left me
seeking.
Ready or not here I come
you’ve passed by a cradle.
Out of breath
your steps are screeching.
Where are you hiding? I can’t find you.
The slide you scaled
was catching its breath on mountain ranges.
Let no one else disappear
I told myself.
Ready or not here I come
counting out once more.
Eenie meenie miney moe
you are such a compass
pointing to me always.
Andreou’s engagement with questions of poetics is particularly intriguing. Art is encapsulated by the poet as theatre of the absurd written by the hand of Ionesco, as though poetry with an identity disorder:
Homophobia
Through the security gate
of the airport
it crossed with caution –
a poem
with an identity disorder.
[…]
Art impacts favourably on the poetic subject, construed as Cavafian medicine that will “heal” the calluses caused by his “nail biting”. The plantogram is adamant about the remedy proposed to the poetic subject:
Nail clipper
From childhood’s soft nails
the night had owned the clippers
on purpose.
Therefore
I have devoted myself
to nail biting
incapable of clipping them
because of onychocryptosis.
The plantogram has recommended
I treated my callus
I may be healed
by the callous beauty of poetry.
By now I can judge
the lion from its claw.
For the poet, Art is construed as a space of artistic freedom that allows him to be himself, to articulate his unease, his concerns. He cannot stand still and watch his Art being ransacked by looters:
Sex Trafficking
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holding their breath.
The awesome sex slave
that signs the sheet
with blood for lipstick
will blow their minds.
Stallion-poet
reader-voyeur
pimp-publisher
throw your clothes on the floor.
Your dirty Poetry
observes for you
one moment of utter silence.
It then
bids you to go to hell.
In closing, the poetry of Paul Andreou is immersed in imagination, childlike innocence, critical involvement and sarcasm–self-deprecation. Weapons procured by surrealism are put to dexterous use in the hands of our poet, at times obscuring and other times illuminating his thoughts, whilst composing and deconstructing his poetic universe in a game of connotations and riddles. The processes of composition and decomposition become part of his yield of poems, indispensable components of his poetics.
Giorgos Christodoulou, philologist.
Poetry
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Fake star / Κάλπικο αστέρι
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Sex Trafficking / Sex Trafficking
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Oath / Όρκος
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Laces of death / Κορδόνια θανάτου
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Nail clipper / Νυχοκόπτης
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Inhuman memory / Απάνθρωπη μνήμη
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Cinderella / Σταχτοπούτα
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Appropriation / Οικειοποίηση
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Teargas Ice-cream / Παγωτό δακρυγόνο
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Hunger Games / Hunger Games
