In her first major collection for a decade, Judith Kazantzis proves herself again to be the constant sister of invention and imagination. Meditating on the deaths of her parents and of her brother, and on the arrival of a new grandchild, she reconfigures Greek myth from a Feminist perspective to address today’s inequalities.
The poems range across the violent geography of Palestine and Iraq to the bright landscapes of the American Southwest, from the sensual utopia of ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ to the dark inner continents of bereavement and grief. Sister Invention combines irony and wit, dramatic brilliance and profound quiet in order to explore what it means to be a sister and a daughter, a mother and a grandmother.
Judith Kazantzis was born in 1940. She has divided much of her adult life between London and Key West, Florida. She currently lives in East Sussex with her husband the novelist Irving Weinman. Judith Kazantzis has published nine previous books of poetry, including Selected Poems 1977-1992, The Odysseus Poems and Just after Midnight. She is a recipient of the prestigious Cholmondeley Award.