Poet Becky Sakellariou

This episode of our podcast series, Borders Unbound, was recorded live at the Engagement Lab at Emerson College on March 18, 2019. The event was co- coordinated and co-hosted by Vassiliki Rapti, founder of Citizen TALES Commons, and Ilana Freedman, from Harvard University. In this podcast, Becky speaks about her journey from being a monolingual English speaker to becoming bilingual in Greek and English; the role Greek has played in her living and art; how words determine and color our lives, hearts and minds; how poetry needs delicate and cautious attention in the translation process; the challenges of translating her poetry from English to Greek, and the joys of collaborating with her translators. Born and raised in New England, Becky Dennison Sakellariou lived and worked in Greece for many years. She says, “The influence of this part of the world on me is enormous, politically, visually, socially, etc. Many of my poems are a mixture of my heritages, my worlds.” Becky has worked with translator Alexandra Petrou on Greek renderings of her work, and has also worked extensively with translator María Laïná, an award-winning poet who lives and works in Athens.   Her collection Undressing the Earth contains poems that respond to and reflect the recent refugee and political situation in Europe, particularly in Greece. _______ This podcast series, “Borders Unbound: The Poetry of the Hellenic Diaspora and Beyond,” was produced by Citizen TALES Commons, and is the recipient of a 2022 Modern Greek Studies Association Innovation Fund Grant. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Modern Greek Studies Association and the members of the Citizen TALES Diaspora Studies Consortium: the Hellenic American Project at Queens College (part of the City University of New York); the Institute for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Emmanuel College in Boston; and Citizen TALES Commons, a multidisciplinary collective of translators, artists, ludics learners, explorers, and storytellers, founded and directed by Vassiliki Rapti.

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