"It might seem an overstatement to say that Kiki Dimoula has no precedent in a poetic past as rich as the Greek one. However, this is not an exaggeration". So says Eurydice Trichon-Milsani, but she also says: "Dimoula remains a totally unique case in Greek letters and this, curiously, without marking a break". This is how she is seen because of her style, her transgression of language in which she pushes the expressiveness of words to the limit, even if she has to go beyond syntactical and morphological rules. This is precisely what makes her inimitable. Nevertheless, Dimoula does indeed draw from that poetic past and is heiress to that extensive lyrical tradition, in the hands of women since antiquity. And, although in her own time she seems isolated, she has been preceded and followed by many other poets: Myrtiótissa, Zoi Karelli, Maria Polyduri, Melpo Axioti, Rita Burni-Papá, Melissanthi, Eleni Bakaló, Oiga Botsi, Mando Arabandinú, Lydia Stefanu, María Kendru-Agathopulu, Naná Isaía, Katerina Anguelaki-Rooke, María Kyrtzaki, María Lainá, Athiná Papadaki, Rea Galanaki, Yenny Mastoraki, Dimitra Christodulu… and many other names of brilliant women poets spanning all times and places in Greece.
Vassiliki Radou
(Kiki Dimoula)
Athens 19-06-1931 ‖ Athens 22-02-2020
Period of activity: From 1948 until 2019
Geographical classification: Europe > Greece
Socio-cultural movements
Late modern period / Contemporary period > Literary and cultural movements since the end of the 19th century > Post-war literature > Existential literature
Groups by dedication
Writers > in > (Modern) Greek
Writers > Poets
Context of feminine creation
Review
Literary critics include her in the second post-war generation, but she rejects labels and epithets. She has been compared to Emily Dickinson and called "the greatest Greek poet since Sappho" (Nikos Dimou), but she has an unclassifiable voice of her own. Her poetry reflects an apparently everyday and simple world, but her use of language is innovative and daring, original and fearless, with a syntax that seems to break with any academic norm and a thematic universe of her own. For this reason, despite having been translated into several languages, it is very difficult to maintain her style in other languages and, as a result, her poetry loses some of its brilliance, which perhaps explains why she is largely unknown.
Activities
Justifications
Biography
Born and lived in Athens (1931-2020). She married the well-known civil engineer and poet Athos Dimoula, with whom she had a son and a daughter, and who encouraged her to embark on a literary career. She herself says: "Higher education: my long life together with the poet Athos Dimoula. Without him, I am sure that I would have settled for a pleasant and ignorant laziness, in which I am perhaps wisely still living". However, as a poet she acquired a style of her own, transgressing grammatical and syntactical rules, which made her unique, despite comparisons with Emily Dickinson. Not for nothing is she considered 'the greatest Greek poet since Sappho' (Nikos Dimou).
She worked as a clerk at the Bank of Greece for 25 years, following family tradition, when she finished high school. In 2002, she was elected a full member of the Athens Academy, one of only three women to have been admitted to date.
In 1964 she received an honourable mention from the Group of Twelve for her collection Επί τα ίχνη (On the trail). In 1972, she was awarded the Second State Poetry Prize for the collection Το λίγο του κόσμου (The Little of the World); in 1988, he was awarded the First State Poetry Prize for the collection Χαίρε ποτέ (Farewell Never) and, in 1994, the Ouranis Prize of the Academy of Athens for the collection Η εφηβεία της λήθης (Lethe's Adolescence). In 2001, she was awarded the Aristion Prize for Letters by the Athens Academy for all her work - the first time a woman has received it - and received the Golden Cross of the Order of Honour from the then President of the Republic, Konstantinos Stefanopoulos. The Association Capitale Européenne des Littératures awarded her the European Prize for Literature in March 2010. In the same year, she was honoured for all her work with the Grand State Prize for Literature. In 2015, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in Theology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
She published her first poetry collection (Erebus) in 1956 and has since been widely published in Greece and her poems translated into English, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Bulgarian, German, Swedish and Catalan, among other languages. However, she is little known outside her own country. Some suggest that one reason for her low profile may be that her lyrical style does not shine equally well in translation: she takes many liberties with the Greek language and breaks with grammatical conventions - something difficult to convey in another language.
Two of her collections of poems, Farewell Never (1988) and Lethe's Adolescence (1994), are dedicated to the memory of her husband, who died in 1985.
Works
English
Spanish
Catalan
- Ποιήματα [Poems] 1952;
- Έρεβος [Erebus (Darkness)] 1956;
- Ερήμην [In absentia] 1958;
- Επί τα ίχνη [On the trail] 1963;
- Το λίγο του κόσμου [The Little of the World] 1971;
- Το τελευταίο σώμα μου [My last body] 1981;
- Χαίρε Ποτέ [Farewell Never] 1988;
- Η εφηβεία της λήθης [Lethe's Adolescence] 1994;
- Ενός λεπτού μαζί [One Minute's Together] 1998;
- Ποιήματα (Συγκεντρωτκή έκδοση) [Poems, complete edition], 1998;
- Ήχος Απομακρύνσεων [Departure's Sound] 2001;
- Χλόη θερμοκηπίου [Glass-house lawn] 2005;
- Μεταφερθήκαμε παραπλεύρως [We moved next door] 2007;
-Τα εύρετρα [Findings] 2010;
- Δημόσιος καιρός [Public time] 2014;
- Άνω τελεία [Semicolon] 2016.
Prose works:
- Ο Φιλοπαίγμων μύθος [A mocking myth] 2004 [Admission speech to the Academy of Athens];
- Εκτος σχεδίου [Out of programme];
- Συνάντηση Γιάννης Ψυχοπαίδης, Κική Δημουλά [Meeting: Yannis Psicopedis - Kiki Dimoula] 2007 [Anthology with seventy-three paintings by John Psychopedis].
Bibliography
-Dimulá, Kikí, La pasión de la lluvia. Bilingual edition (Greek-Spanish) (2013). Translation and foreword by Πέμπτη στις πέντε. Seville: Point de Lunettes/ Collection Romiosyne.
-Dimulá, Kikí, Anthologie de Kiki Dimoula (2007). Selection, translation and foreword by Eurydice Trichon-Milsani, p. 7. Paris: L’Harmattan.
- Blog of the Greek Language Centre (2012), “Διμουλά, Κική”, (retrieved on 09/07/2023)
<https://www.greek-language.gr/digitalResources/ancient_greek/anthology/mythology/browse.html?tag=>
-Dimulá, Kikí, Ποιήματα (s. f.), (retrieved on 09/07/2023)<https://users.uoa.gr/~nektar/arts/tributes/kikh_dhmoyla/various.htm>
-Angelis, Dimitris and López Recio, Virginia (2015), “Kikí Dimulá”, in Antología: Poesía griega (1940-2015). Foreword and translation by Virginia López Recio, in Revista Ómnibus, n. 50, (retrieved on 01/07/2023)
<htpps://www.omni-bus.com/n50/sites.google.com/site/omnibusrevistainterculturaln50/index.html>
-Wikipedia (2022) “Kikí Dimulá” (retrieved on 01/07/2023) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiki_Dimoula>
Didactic approach
-Classical culture: Block Persistence of classical languages. Language and lexicon, in a possible comparative study between classical and modern Greek; Block Continuity of cultural heritage. Literature, art and science, understanding any literature as the heritage of humanity.
-Universal Literature: 1st Baccalaureate. Bock Themes and forms of world literature. Lyric poetry. Interpretation of fragments of Greek literature of different genres, periods and themes.
-Spanish Language and Literature ESO. Block of literary education.
- Greek at Baccalaureate level: Block of literary education.