When you become a poem – Vangelis Th. Kakatsakis

Description

The product of a struggle with words and rhythm, but above all, an overt testimony of the soul that places it in the judgment of the reader, is the poetry collection of Vangelis Th. Kakatsaki “When you become a poem”, which was published in early 2013 by the “Cultural Society of Crete – Compass of the City” and includes poems written in the last 25 years.

The poet’s punctuation mark is the question mark, as an experience, as a thought and as a vision, which strives to come to light, to become a poem. “When you become a poem,/ a small question mark/ of the present concern, /I will cease to have company/ tonight’s vigil,” he says in his first poem.

In the first section of the collection (24 poems) the poet moves basically in his “private” space. He reveals his innermost thoughts, testifies his feelings for loved ones and reconstructs pieces of his life, especially that of his childhood. “Many evenings,/ just before I close my eyes,/ I grab my soul by the hand/ -“strata stratoula”, I tell her-/ and take her for a walk/ in the children’s lairs,” he writes…

In the second section (32 poems) the poet comes out “On the way”. He follows some of the paths of history, goes to the “market of the metaprates” where “the infamous are priced”, to comment on some of the human behaviors and camps in the squares of the games for a better tomorrow. Where fingers clench into fists and gnaw at the sky. “Not to drill holes,/ but to shake him/ to the core!” This does not mean, however, that it does not contemplate the inherent beauty of life and that it is not sometimes lost in a reverberation…

Staticity and complacency have no place in Vangelis Kakatsakis’ poetry – as in life. A “kite” that frees itself from its string its worries, thoughts and reflections. A kite that ultimately does not belong to him and that is why, according to his statement, he loves him more…

Vangelis Kakatsakis was born in Nippos, Chania, to farming parents in 1948. He is a graduate of the Marasleio Pedagogical Academy, studied at the Panteion School (today’s Panteion University) and was trained in Education Sciences. He worked for 36 years as a teacher. He has been actively involved, for about 20 years, with trade unionism and continues to deal with culture and tradition for 40 years. He has been a collaborator, since the mid-10 years of 1970, of the newspaper “Haniotika Nea”. In addition to his other publications (poems, short stories, epiphyllides, chronographs, articles, studies, etc.) two of his other collections of poetry have been published in books: “The Horses of Time” (1973) and “KAZOVAR” (ed. “Filippotis”, 1987).