Fani Papageorgiou - When You Said No, Did You Mean Never?

Published 2013. Paperback, 80pp, 8.5x5.5ins.
ISBN 978-1-84861-265-5 [Download a PDF sampler from this book here.]

Read David Orr's review in the New York Times Book Review here.

"Within these poems, lives are measured out in things — shoes, tigers, tears, eggs, ironed shirts, and many, many bones. Fani Papageorgiou is, in truth, a palaeo-poet, reconstructing loss, desire, and other unknowables from the word-shards that she has sought to unearth and collate. Andre Malraux wrote of 'The Imaginary Museum,' and its task of transfiguration. This book is a bequest to that place." —Anthony Lane

"Fani Papageorgiou gives us a poetry in which 'almost everything happens in language' yet what is crucial is precisely what's covered by that harsh little word 'almost,' and in which 'empty space is affected by gravity' — the empty space is that of the human heart. This kaleidoscopic sequence of searing fragments marks the arrival of an outstanding poet." —Barry Schwabsky

"So often we describe a new poet's work as 'like' that of another poet. Papageorgiou’s poetry is not like anything else; it has its own extraordinary voice, its own concerns, creates its own minutely observed world. Sometimes her work takes the form of an apothegm, sometimes a brief, intense elegy, sometimes a fairy-tale, an adventure or a single epiphany, but the complexities of being, feeling and exploring are drawn with an exhilarating brevity and lightness even when she confronts darkness and disappointment. Hers is poetry which makes the ordinary strange and haunting. Hybridity lies at the heart of her work and she joins up history, science and literature but perhaps above all Papageorgiou is bewitched by the possibilities of language and, in her turn, bewitches." —Elizabeth Speller

Reviews of this volume said — "an impressive and memorable book" — Tony Williams, Magma

"…as Papageorgiou’s curious, delightful book reminds us (and as Dionne Warwick once observed), a house is not a home; it’s always just a little unfamiliar, just slightly beyond our easy occupation. Which is precisely what draws us to the door, to the briefly lighted windows." —David Orr, New York Times Book Review

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