Easter at Olympia : Giorgos Gotis, Andrew Watson, Michalis Holevas

Performance in Late Antiquity and Byzantium Online Conference
April 19-24, 2021.
Poetry and Music in Performance
In this celebratory event, with which we conclude the opening day of the conference, we present the poetry of Giorgos Gotis. Gotis has published the novel, “More Veneto” (2013) and several poetic collections, of which the “Converging Winds” (2018), is the latest. He is the recipient of the prestigious Poetry Award from the Greek journal “Diavazo” for his collection “Chronography” and in 2017 he was honoured by the Academy of Athens.

The text presented tonight is translated and read by Andrew Watson, a Cambridge graduate who has received his mastrer’s in Modern Greek Literature from King’s College London in 2006. Andrew is a professional translator, who worked for many years as an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary. He has lived in Greece for long periods since 1985.

A musical accompaniment is provided by the theoretical physicist and musicologist Michael Holevas. Michalis Holevas is a Greek multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator performing on Tarhu, Ney, Saz and Yayli Tanbur. Since 2009, he is teaching at Codarts, Universtiy for the Arts, Rotterdam. He is the recipient of the Lingua Franca Ensemble, Soul of devotees’ special award and the Sharq Taronalari award of the International Festival, Uzbekistan 2015.

In this performance of music and poetry, Andrew Watson recites the poems “Easter at Olympia”. Musician and performer Michalis Cholevas sets the poetry of Gotis within the musical language of the Eastern Mediterranean, reflecting the tradition of Late Antiquity and Byzantium. In Gotis’ poetry we capture glimpses of ancient sculptures and monuments, as well as symbolic landmarks of Byzantine piety around death rituals.

This conjunction of words and music, foregrounds the underlying performative qualities of poetry and musical composition arising from the long unbroken tradition of lands where the civilization of the ancient world was transformed into the distinct cultural idiom of Byzantium.