Alexis Lykiard
Alexis Lykiard | |
---|---|
Born | Constantinos Alexis Lykiardopoulos 1940 (age 83–84) Athens, Greece |
Nationality | British |
Occupation(s) | Novelist, poet, translator |
Website | www |
Alexis Lykiard (born 1940) is a British writer of
According to David Woolley of Poetry Wales:
As poet, novelist and translator, Alexis Lykiard has won many admirers over the years, but the early novels apart, his work has not received the popular attention it deserves. He has created a body of work that is erudite and witty but never obscure ... Lykiard's language is vivid, breathtaking in its sheer physicality, while still suggesting more ...[2]
Early life and education
He was born Constantinos Alexis Lykiardopoulos
In 1957, at the age of 17, he won the first Open English Scholarship ever awarded by King's College, Cambridge, graduating with a First-class Honours degree in 1962.[6] While at Cambridge University, he was editor of the university magazine Granta (originally called The Granta).[7]
Writings
Fiction
Lykiard's debut novel The Summer Ghosts, written when he was a teenager, was a best-seller in the 1960s, dealing explicitly with sex in the era following the
Poetry
His numerous collections of poems have been widely praised, and include Milesian Fables, 1976 ("... an epigrammatic quality – fresh and honest transmissions of experience" – Gavin Ewart; "Very good indeed, entertaining, well-made, and with lovely modulations of mood form grave and tender to the witty and ironic" – Vernon Scannell), Cat Kin, 1994 ("Contagiously cat-like in all its dexterous twists" – Ted Hughes); Living Jazz, 1990 ("Thank you for loving enough and living enough to write Living Jazz" – Maya Angelou) and Skeleton Keys, 2003, of which Angus Calder wrote: "His argument with the world is brilliantly waged. Readers will learn a lot while they are moved by it."[6] The suite of poems that makes up Skeleton Keys explores the troubled era in Greece into which Lykiard was born, reassessing his personal ties with that history – involving family secrets and lies, public and private betrayal and heroism – "to underline how truth and lies are relative at last".[9][12][13]
Lykiard's 40-year collection, Selected Poems 1956–96, received appreciative critical accolades, with
His recent poetry publications have focused on the haiku, and Andy Croft reviewing 2017's Haiku High and Low, which he described as "a new batch of satirical epigrams", said: "Alexis Lykiard as always gives the traditional Japanese lyrical form a witty and satisfying punch."[14] Of his latest publication, Winter Crossings: Poems 2012–2020 Merryn Williams said that "this poet obviously does not mean to go gently into the night. Let's all hope that if we live to be eighty we can write like that. Shoestring can be proud of its newest books."[15]
Non-fiction
Lykiard has in addition written non-fiction, including two books that draw on his friendship with
The richness of Lykiard's book depends on it offering more than just a memoir....He is alert to the sharpness of Rhys's inner voice, her psychological acuity and the torpor of her stories in contrast to the exactness of her prose; he, like Rhys, is drawn to careless lives. As well as being a meditation on the nature and business of writing, Jean Rhys Revisited is a piece of literary archaeology and a book of enthusiasms (Hamsun, Gissing, George Moore) that performs a useful act of referral. It is also a considered work about old age and beyond – Lykiard writes movingly about Rhys's fear of her approaching death – written by a man who was young when he knew Rhys, and is now approaching his own old age.[17]
As translator
Lykiard is a respected translator from French of avant-garde classics, including the complete works of
Lykiard's translation of
Bibliography
Fiction
- 1964: The Summer Ghosts (Blond)
- 1966: Zones (Blond)
- 1967: A Sleeping Partner (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
- 1970: Strange Alphabet: A Novel of Modern Greece (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
- 1973: The Stump (Hart-Davis, MacGibbon)
- 1974: Instrument of Pleasure (Panther Original)
- 1976: Last Throes (Panther Original)
- 1977: The Drive North (Allison & Busby)
- 1982: Scrubbers (ISBN 978-0352313430)
Poetry
- 1963: Journey of the Alchemist (Sebastian Carter)
- 1967: Paros Poems: An Island Sequence (Athens: Aiphroe)
- 1969: Robe of Skin (Allison & Busby; ISBN 978-0850310092)
- 1972: Eight Love Songs (Transgravity; ISBN 0-85682-005-9)
- 1972: Greek Images (Second Aeon Publications)
- 1973: Lifelines (Arc Publications)
- 1976: Milesian Fables (Arc; ISBN 978-0902771505)
- 1976: A Morden Tower Reading (with ISBN 0-905760-00-X)
- 1985: Cat Kin I (Rivelin Grapheme Press; ISBN 0-947612-08-4)
- 1985: Out of Exile (Selected Poems 1968–85) (Arc; ISBN 0-902771-77-9)
- 1990: Living Jazz (Tenormen Press; ISBN 0-9514903-0-3)
- 1990: Safe Levels (Stride; ISBN 0-946699-84-4)
- 1991: A Lowdown Ecstasy (with Christopher Cook; Spacex Literature)
- 1992: Food for the Dragon (with Christopher Cook, John Daniel, Tony Lopez)
- 1993: Beautiful Is Enough (Westwords)
- 1994: Cat Kin (rev/expanded edn; ISBN 1-85619-463-9)
- 1995: Omnibus Occasions (Headlock Press)
- 1996: Selected Poems 1956–96 (ISBN 3-7052-0960-4)
- 2003: Skeleton Keys (Redbeck Press; ISBN 1-904338-04-6)
- 2007: Judging By Disappearances: Poems 1996–2006 (Bluechrome; ISBN 978-1-906061-24-1)
- 2008: Unholy Empires (Anarchios Press; ISBN 978-0-9558738-0-5)
- 2009: Haiku Of Five Decades (Anarchios Press; ISBN 978-0-9558738-1-2)
- 2009: Travelling Light – Thirty Haiku (Anarchios Press, Limited Edition – 100 signed copies)
- 2010: Haiku at Seventy (Anarchios Press; ISBN 978-0-9558738-2-9)
- 2012: Getting On – Poems 2000 – 2012 (Shoestring Press; ISBN 978-1-907356-46-9)
- 2013: Old Dogs and No Tricks – Forty plus haiku (Anarchios Press Limited Edition, 100 signed copies)
- 2014: Divers Haiku – Forty odd haiku (Anarchios Press Limited Edition, 100 signed copies)
- 2015: Schooled For Life (Shoestring Press, ISBN 978-1-910323-41-0)
- 2017: Haiku High and Low (Anarchios Press Limited edition 100 copies signed)
- 2018: Time's Whirligig (Anarchios Press Limited edition 100 copies signed)
- 2020: Feet First: Haiku at Eighty (Anarchios Press Limited edition 100 copies signed)
- 2020: Winter Crossings: Poems 2012–2020 (Shoestring Press, ISBN 978-1-912524-62-4)
Non-fiction
- 1993: The Cool Eye (texts of two interviews with ISBN 1 873012 49 7)
- 2000: Jean Rhys Revisited (Stride Publications; ISBN 1-900152-68-1)
- 2006: Jean Rhys: Afterwords (Shoestring Press; ISBN 978-1904886341)
Selected translations
- 1970: Lautréamont's Maldoror (Allison & Busby)
- 1977: Lautréamont's Poésies (Allison & Busby)
- 1989: ISBN 978-0947757199)
- 1994: Maldoror & the Complete Works – Comte de Lautréamont (Exact Change)
- 1995: Guillaume Apollinaire, Flesh Unlimited (Creation Books)
- 2003: ISBN 978-1840680157)
- 2011: ISBN 978-1-4478-4656-7)
- 2019: Antonin Artaud, Heliogabalus or, the Crowned Anarchist (Infinity Land Press, ISBN 978-1916009110)
References
- ^ "Living Jazz", Official website.
- ^ a b "Selected Poems 1956–96" page, official website.
- ^ Biographical notes on Skeleton Keys page, author's website.
- ^ a b "My Greek Background", Alexis Lykiard website.
- ^ Biography at Getting On page, alexislykiard.com.
- ^ a b Biographical note for Getting On: Poems 2000 – 2012, Author's website.
- ^ Alexis Lykiard, "Granta days" Archived 26 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Nthposition, September 2009.
- ^ "Romantic Fiction & Drama For Valentine's", South Central MediaScene 2012.
- ^ a b "Skeleton Keys" page, Alexis Lykiard website.
- ^ Alexis Lykiard, "Taking the Poetry Road", The Penniless Press.
- ^ "Scrubbers", Alexis Lykiard website.
- ^ "Alexis Lykiard", Corfu Blues.
- ^ Catherine Isolde Eisner, "A Prisoner of My Father’s Name: Alexis Lykiard’s Skeleton Keys", 17 April 2014.
- ^ Andy Croft, "Original lines on the working-class experience | 21st century poetry", 29 July 2017.
- ^ "London Grip Poetry Review – Clare Brant & Alexis Lykiard". London Grip. 24 November 2020.
- ^ "Jean Rhys Revisited" page at Alexis Lykiard website.
- ^ Chris Petit, "A woman scorned" (review of Jean Rhys Revisited), The Guardian, 24 June 2000.
- ^ Alexis Lykiard, "Mac Orlan", The Penniless Press.
- ^ "Maldoror Englished", Journal of Les Amis d'Isidore Ducasse, 2001. Reprinted on Alexis Lykiard website.
- ^ a b "Comte de Lautréamont", Olive Classe (ed.), Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English: A-L, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000, p. 818.
- ^ "Lautréamont – Maldoror & the Complete Works" page at Exact Change.
External links
- Official website.
- Alan Morrison, "Lykiard's Peak" (review of ''Getting On – Poems 2000 – 2012), The Recusant, 2013.