Alexia Victoros
- Cyprus -
Alexia Victoros (2001) completed her bachelor's degree in Classical, Byzantine, and Modern Studies with distinction. She also holds a Diploma in Music Performance (ATCL) from Trinity College London. She pursued studies in Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics as a France Excellence Europa Scholar under Campus France. Currently, she is completing a master's degree in Comparative Literature at the University of Edinburgh, supported by the A.G. Leventis Foundation Scholarship.
She published her debut poetry collection, OUTIS, which explores the pragmatic essence of darkness. The book was awarded the Cyprus State Prize 2023 for Poetry. She also won first prize in the Global Francophonie Competition (2017 and 2019), organized by AMOPA and the University of Paris-Sorbonne.
Alexia has collaborated with the Embassy of Israel and Sapienza University of Rome and has participated in numerous international, Panhellenic, and Pancyprian literary events and competitions. Her poetry has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, and English, and she has also published philological and philosophical essays.
[…] This adventure that began with "Nobody" and ends with Odysseus, as well as the whole conflict between Odysseus and Polyphemus has been the subject of much debate in world literature and of much study on semiotics of names.
According to philosophy professor D. Liantinis: "This story on the island of Cyclops is the life of each of us. We begin our lives unsubstantiated, untested, non-existent, nameless. We begin our lives in ontological oblivion, and in the opaque fog of worry... Each of us begins with the name “Nobody”. But if we manage to get from “Nobody” to Ulysses, then we have defeated the dreaded Cyclops and the prison of his cave, and out of its darkness we have raised to the light the man with a name."
This, I believe, is the course of Alexia Viktoros’ poetry collection: “The first beginning”. It is the first act of poetry trying to find the essence of its being, the essence of itself, seeking a path from darkness to light, “in esse”, so that it can exist ontologically. This path also shows a commitment to evolution in general, and to poetic discourse in particular, to poetry that is "becoming" incessantly with inexhaustible scope for new works.
“Οὖτις” (First reading):
From the first reading you know you have in your hands a distinct poetic voice, not easy to digest and understand, but beautiful. It has, as Baudelaire says, “an element of strangeness, not intentional but subconscious, in which lies the beauty”.
It leaves you with a bittersweet taste of life, like a joyful sorrow from life's twists and turns with a sarcastic and self-deprecating tone. And at times the sense that you can almost hear an ironic laugh against situations, against death, against love, against a broken and corrupt world, sends a shiver down your spine. You hear laughter that maybe hides a pain, or a choked sob. And then maybe sarcasm is also a heartbreak against all this contradiction and disparity.
Moreover, upon first reading, , one can readily observe both direct and indirect influences, from ancient Greek mythology, for instance references to characters like Pentheus in "Erinyes of Roles" and Philomela in "Philomelas’ Daughters". The poems also reflect inspirations from movements like Romanticism, Expressionism and Surrealism as well as the works of renowned poets and poetesses, who Alexia Victoros chooses as her travel companions in her first poetic journey, such as Ivan Gol, Shakespeare, Maria Laina, M. Anagnostakis, Dionysios Solomos, G. Ritsos, Sappho Kostis Palamas and K.P. Cavafy. Through engaging with these poets and poetesses individually and independently the author embarks on a journey of her own.
In addition, the influence of domains like painting (evident in reference to Gustaf Courbet, in poem called "Sculpture") and opera (as seen in the poem "Human") further underscore the spectrum of her research, knowledge and interaction.
[…] The battle of the opposite, such as life/love and death or light and darkness is a compelling topic that sparks conversations, because although these issues have long been a matter and source of great melancholy and psychic pain, in the poetry collection “Οὖτις” they are approached alternatively. It is like a redemptive chest to chest encounter with death and anything deadly in a way that eliminates the fear of death. Ironically, sarcastically, even though according to laws of nature it (death) prevails, such a confrontation could interpret as a reinforcement of life, and its temporality.
One striking poem from the collection is "Death is Commercial ", in which death is experienced through joy:
“As an episode
-in closed box-
and not by
even a shred of bitterness,
even a crossing,
I was experiencing that those who die
rejoice,
while they whisper
obsessively
in the morning light:
"O thanatos ine emborikos,
death is commercial..."”
With the relentless struggle of life and death closes the poem “Upbringing”, which ends with the diptych:
“Someone is waiting for me to rise.
Someone is waiting to bury me.”
Life and death succeed one another.
In the poem “Survival” having reached a state of serenity and equanimity, the faces survive with a kiss on the eyes:
“Your blood, numb,
digs into mine
one last step of yours. I am calm.
It does not agitate us...
Death agitates no one.
I'm smiling faintly at you.
You kiss my eyes two minutes apart
and we survive.”
Eassay written by Galatia Trimithiotou
[…] The relationship of the reader to Alexia's poetry is definitely/clearly personal, similar to that of someone who stands in awe of a ritual. Her poetry is ritualistic. It follows the rules of a ritualistic act of an initiate who undertakes to discover first herself and then to initiate others into the human cause. This initiation is performed in silence as all initiations are, because when someone reads her poetry, they are silent, and they listen to the silence.
[…] The poetess remembers and reminds us of words, but not as we know them. It is she who gives them the meaning they do not bear, so that we might learn them with the meaning which they are capable of taking on, since she has asked for that permission on our behalf. She makes us partakers of the inaccessible with which she is on familiar terms. She presents it to us without exhausting our patience, in texts that succeed in containing it, because Alexia surrenders herself to it (poetry) with her sensitivity. If we resolutely betray our everyday verbal sense, we will exclaim with her by reading her poetry:
“It's a good life. Life is beautiful.”
Thus poetically, ritually, death is also relativized:
“O thanatos ine emborikos, death is commercial.”
[…] Certainly, no poet is free of the responsibility we attribute to them when they attempt to reintroduce to us words, we thought we knew. No poet, of course, would accept such an exception. They know the misconceptions they create. They even claim them as misunderstandings!
[…] The price that the poetess can pay is not low. She is reinventing herself in her surround - which expands or shrinks with the spread of her books.
“I feel the breath at my feet rising up and cursing passersby.”
She writes for the surround but also against the surround, to win poetry and in poetry, and to distribute the profits - where else? - to the surrounds.
[…] Poetry loses us in our attempt to find ourselves - with poetry. How could it be otherwise? Poetry presents in our mirror the reflection we do not know of the self we are looking for. When we find it spelt out in bits of our erotic ego, as happens often in poetry, our self becomes more estranged, at least in our own eyes. Our surrounds may be illuminated by our own discoveries, but our own mirror dimmens:
“Love is the slavery of the absurd, which, you instantly wish were brief, drugged, and filial, like the feeling of your sentiment.”
As we all know, or could all remember, wishes to escape love are rarely enough. Of course, as again we can all think - women best - and as Alexia teaches us, the best cure for love - if we happen to get stuck - is self-criticism. With rebuttal, love sticks around longer:
“I didn't meet anyone who needed me in the summers. Don't resist anyone in the summers. Forget me, no one else. So, I'll be at the peak of a helpful desire of yours, that of isolation in my defense.”
Eassay written by Ioannis Christodoulou
Poetry
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FORESIGHT, OR (PARA)NOIA / ΠΡΟΝΟΗΤΙΚΟΤΗΤΑ Ή (ΠΑΡΑ)ΦΡΟΣΥΝΗ
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NOSTALGIA / ΝΟΣΤΑΛΓΙΑ
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Another Hope / ΑΛΛΗ ΕΛΠΙΔΑ
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SIMILARITY / ΟΜΟΙΟΤΗΤΑ
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SURVIVAL / ΕΠΙΒΙΩΣΗ
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THE MAN / Ο AΝΤΡΑΣ
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I WOULD DIE BETTER THAN YOU / ΘΑ ΠΕΘΑΙΝΑ ΚΑΛΥΤΕΡΑ ΑΠΟ ’ΣΕΝΑ
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ERINYES OF ROLES / ΕΡΙΝΥΕΣ ΑΠΟ ΡΟΛΟΥΣ
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UPBRINGING / ΑΝΑΤΡΟΦΗ
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Kneeling / Γονάτισμα
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The life of the lovers / Η ζωή των εραστών
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The Kiss Before the Kiss / (Untitled)
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Chemistry / Χημεία
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Whispers of Absolute / (Untitled)
