Poetry
2008 • 7” x 10” • 150 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-56689-219-3
Coffee House Press
PURCHASE:
Coffee House Press
Bookshop.org
AN EXQUISITE EXPLORATION OF MOTHERHOOD AND THE ELASTIC NATURE OF TIME.
Lauded by Michael Ondaatje as an “unforgettable” writer and praised by the Washington Post for her ability to capture “the subtlest shades of the emotional palette,” Eleni Sikelianos now charts the curvature of growth and time, encompassing the bewilderment and delight of a new parent, while mapping the shape of our troubled world. Observing that “what is alive in the body clock is also ticking,” her poems and sketches illustrate the infinite possibilities unfurling as minutes give shape to hours, the body gives shape to a child, and events give shape to history.
Body Clock
REVIEWS
“Tracing ‘the story of how we fell from timelessness to time’ is Sikelianos’s project in these lyrical flights. A master of contingency, she weaves intricate nets of association that connect newborns to watermelons to polar bears. And at the base of it all is the body, the human body, but also the bodies of minutes and hours, which she sketches as she times them, creating marvelous portraits of the otherwise invisible. This book is a tour-de-force of sound and hope, a brainy unraveling of enigma to reveal the enigmas underneath.” —Cole Swensen
“One enjoys standing at the sink with Sikelianos. Noticing, perhaps beauty, perhaps decay.” —California Journal of Poetics
“Part planetary book of confinement, part cosmic baby book, she fills this vivid account with the mindfulness, playfulness, and lyric intensity of a poet in the center of her bloom.” —C.D. Wright
L'Horloge au corps
in French translation by Béatrice Trotignon
2022 • 15 x 20 cm • 166 pp.
ISBN: 978-2-84809-359-8
éditions joca seria
REVIEWS
Un être vivant qui se développe à l’intérieur d’un autre, le temps d’une grossesse, a onspiré à Eleni Sikelianos un ouvrage ambitieux, partant de la similitude des deux horloges de la mère et de l’enfant qui se déclenchent et s’harmonisent, elle étend cette expérience à l’univers, au temps, à l’espace et au langage en une émouvante proposition poétique. —Alain, Nicolas, l’Humanité