VK:
Baxter, he wrote such huge books. So, did you like what your connection with New Zealand poetry was?

AK:
Well, Baxter was lecturing at university, he had a series on aesthetics.

I had no real connection with New Zealand poetry, or the poetry (scene). In my case, I think you know every time they looked at a young woman, they had other ideas about it, which didn’t involve discussions about aesthetics.

VK:
I have read the life of Janet Frame about Australia, about New Zealand, and she writes similarly of how you describe it for young women. And then you moved to Australia by yourself?

AK:
Yes, I had finished Uni and I was absolutely dying to leave, to get out.

VK:
So I’ve read what you have written, how was your impression of Australia now as a landscape? And as a cultural setting?

AK:
Australia seemed to me to be full of foreigners, so to speak. I was staying with a friend in Anna’s neighborhood in Surry Hills. Anna and I lived only a few hundred meters apart, even though we didn’t meet then.

When I first arrived, I would go out and there were people talking other languages as if it were their own country. While in New Zealand you couldn’t do that, they would always tell you to shut up and speak in English if you did it in public actually.

AC:
At that time Surry Hills was full of Greeks. A lot of single men who were working in factories.

VK:
But, artistically, did you get connected immediately?

AK:
Not at all. Not even later. I think by chance, I met Anna. By chance, I met Rodney Hall because I was working at the Australia Council. It was Rodney Hall who actually published me in the Australian (newspaper) for the first time. I was reading what I could, trying to understand what was being published, and to actually get an idea of what was happening here.

VK:
How was the poetic life, the life of publishing poetry here at that time?

AK:
Well, I have no idea, no idea because I wasn’t in it. I don’t think I got in. Perhaps, in a superficial way.

VK:
I received a letter from Peter Politis, who writes novels (where) he told me he discovered your first book, The Alien. He said, this gave him a new perspective in his own writing. When was that book published -74, 73?

AK:
In 73.

VK:
Despite so many years since your first book, it’s still a distinct memory for me and has an effect even today. What do you think, if I may ask, what’s the new thing that you brought that was missing from the poetry back then, if you can, you know, remember, not analyse, but if you can remember?

AK:
Well, I don’t know. It’s difficult to say whether I brought anything, actually.

VK:
You did, because I think after a while you started becoming a kind of a voice.

AK:
It’s not evident to me. The other issue is Martin Duwell, who published the book, well, he had to fight enormously at the university to be allowed to publish me. Because no one liked me and I was totally outside the line of whatever they were publishing before.

VK:
But this is, I think, when we have a paradigm shift in poetic writing, I mean, we have this reaction of the old (guard).

AK:
Do you think we have a paradigm shift?

VK:
I think so, yes, because your poetry, from the 70s onwards, a gradual change happened. We had other people as well, you know, who changed completely the way that the Australian poetry defined its poetic space, but I think that you were instrumental in this change.

AC:
Also, in terms of writing a new kind of prose. Just around that time there were a whole lot of new kind of prose writers.

VK:
Your poetry as well is… has, as I call it, a deceptive simplicity.

AK:
I hope so, yes. But it gets through, I hope.

VK:
Oh, yes, of course it gets through, because of your ability to find the absolute minimalistic expression into the most complex psychological processes which I think it makes it really distinct. When I read your book Alexia, I discovered it in 1992- 93 , without even knowing you. I was impressed and read it a few times because it’s so simple, but it’s something else as well. It’s, it’s like the simplicity of a watch, you see the time, but there are all these complex mechanisms to show what the time is. I really like that psychological complexity. I love your use of English- it was so precise. I love the precision in your prose and then we’ve got your poetry.

AK:
It’s difficult for me to judge from inside, as you know. You probably can’t judge your style at any rate if you look at it.

VK:
I can.

AK:
I can’t get outside myself.

VK:
But I think your prose as well, is so different from what is written here in Australia.

AK:
Yes, of course, yes. This is why I didn’t make it anywhere.

VK:
Yes, but you did make it, in the long run, because I believe that essentially your poetry and your prose paved the way for the great changes that we see later on in the late 70s and early 80s, which became really dominant afterwards. You really helped us understand other poetry, especially contemporary poets. Your voice was there at the beginning. You became the muse that actually defined the melodies of a new generation. When I first read, your poetry and your prose, it was like a string quartet.

AK:
That’s a very lyrical description.

VK:
Small but… condensed and intense.

AK:
You have to also consider the issue that throughout my writing life, if I can put it that way, they constantly complain that everything is too small. Too small, too small. We can’t publish you unless you have, you know, 250 pages, and so I was totally outside even on the grounds of smallness, actually.

VK:
I think it was prejudice more than anything else. It was prejudice because the most important poetic form that has influenced Australian poetry is haiku, the Japanese haiku. Other poets and writers were aspiring to what you describe as smallness. I think you were accused of smallness because they couldn’t make it, couldn’t do it as effectively.

AC:
It was also to do with the length of a book and the economics of it.

AK:
Yes, all the economics of it. The economics of publishing a poetry book. You were publishing small books, but I mean, everyone else was constantly knocking me out.

VK:
Well, I discovered your poetry and then I discovered the other poets, like A.D. Hope. The poems of Orpheus, which I think was his best collection. And they were full of mythological Greek references. But his poetry seems very, if I may say, 19th century.

AK:
Yes, all of it was sort of 19th century. Hope, McAuley, all of it.

VK:
Victorian stuff. Your poetry was something else, you are a unique modernist.

AK:
Yes, like Anna.

VK:
Anna, I think, is actually a radical modernist.

AC:
But Antigone was really versed in modernism already from her reading in Romania and the minimalist composers and very aware of visual art and the minimalism of visual art. It’s something that was part of (Antigone’s) whole world. I think that’s why the dominant feature of your poetry is the imagery.

VK:
Do you consider yourself an imagist poet?

AK:
Well, I don’t know. It is visual and a bit surrealist.

VK:
Surreal, yes. Well, I was translating the Fragments, (Giramondo 2016) you know, and as a translator, I had a problem, because to translate your work, you must add something. I’m most impressed, your poetry is beyond that, because it’s so slight if I may say and has the right variation of meaning, which is so unique in your work.

Your poetry has that incredible, agonistic ambiguity. So, can I ask you about the development of your poetic language, from the earlier to the last? Do you see any changes in your way of perceiving poetry or writing poetry?

AK:
Well, the only thing that I can say is that I have now, what shall I say, developed much more. My mother used to say, you seem to be so free, why are you producing this little, you know, such small things… I think that I developed in the sense that I could express, with a greater ease and find a vocabulary for it. While before it was very difficult to do. I was working at it and working at it and very little was coming, I thought that nothing would come at any rate in the long run.

VK:
You’re writing about the landscapes of the soul and they are depthless, but also, I think that your condensation, the epigrammatic element in your work is very difficult to be achieved today. I mean, can I give you a reference to Seferis, for example? I believe that the best poems of Seferis are the last poems. He wrote the Three Secret Poems. Suddenly, he writes seven lines, six words, three words, and that’s it.
I think that what he achieved at the end with his minimalist epigrammatic poetry, you achieved it from the beginning. Because you have a sense of what is, if I may use a term which is scandalous today- essential.

AK:
He (Seferis) wrote in Greek. You know, he could fly, he could swim, he could do whatever he wanted (in his own language). In my case, I came from outside. English was a sort of thing in which I had to be very careful how to use it, or how I went in, or how we should express this. And I was constantly expressing things which are outside the language.

VK:
Which is your great achievement.

AK:
While he was expressing something which was already in Greek, you know, the past, the history. It was a continuum… while in my case I was going in as a foreigner.

VK:
Yes, but that gave you an immense authenticity in what you are doing. Seferis, he goes to Cyprus, if you remember, he writes these poems by mimicking that local idiom, but you never did that. You took your own voice into this new language.

AK:
But don’t forget that I didn’t have an apprenticeship as well. All poets in every language, have an apprenticeship in which they imitate poets that they like, or poets that they find, while in my case, I was outside all this apprenticeship in terms of poetry. I had to find a language to express at the beginning, you know, in very small ways and so on. And then, later express it better. So, it’s a totally different sort of line of development from a local one. But even Anna (Couani), even Anna is outside the thing. I mean, she was here, saw them all, was in touch with them and was active in the scene and so on but still she’s not actually like anyone.

AC:
What about the MA you did in French in New Zealand? I think that you’re in a way closer to French than you are to English.

AK:
Probably, but I’m writing in English. Perhaps, it’s a kind of French sensibility.

AC:
I think that’s why, in Antigone’s verses, you can see a fusion of different linguistic tonalities.

VK:
You have an eccentricity in the best possible way, which is really, I think, it makes your poetry unique here in Australia and so difficult to be translated, if I can go back to my translating method, because I wanted to translate the Journals as well and I gave up. It’s so subtle what you say there. And so amazing.

AK:
I should invite you more often to come and have coffee with me.

VK:
How do you place yourself within the poetry that is written today in Australia? Do we have any affinities? Do you see any affinities?

AK:
Not really, because they are all within an English tradition even now, actually.

VK:
What about the poetry that came out of the multicultural movement in the 70s and 80s.

I’m trying to find who is closer to you, in the Greek-Australian (scene)… I wouldn’t have placed you in the Greek-Australian literature because you’re beyond that. You’re Australian.

AK:
Well, I don’t know.

VK:
You’re beyond that. I think Greek-Australian has become a sort of a restrictive term of classification.

AK:
Yet again, you’re dealing with a society here that constantly restricts, actually, either Australian or Greek or whatever.

VK:
Yes, they classify and pigeonhole and bracket you in one thing. That’s why I don’t believe that you belong to the Greek-Australian literature. But your voice has an impact on the new Greek Australians. Yes, (look at), Tina Giannoukos, Korali Dimitriou, Efi Hatzimanolis, Dimitra Harvey.

AK:
Maybe they have the courage actually to look at themselves and do it as they want to, not try to be influenced by Australia or whatever, or the methodology here, but I can’t say that I’ve been an influence…

VK:
Yes, but you paved the way, you gave the voice, you gave the language, you created the idiom which they didn’t have before, and they created I think something which is evolving at the moment still, and I think that’s the legacy that you have left behind.

AK:
I’m not aware of it, but it’s nice to hear about it.

VK:
You gave them the moral courage to confront your own voice.

AK:
Once you write something and you send it out and it comes back (rejected), you (try) again and again and again. It means that they do not accept the medium. And you have to have enough courage to be able to constantly to (confront) enemies on the other side (of your work).

VK:
What is controversial, is that your voice is missing from many histories of Australian literature.

AK:
Yes, of course. This is why Anna is constantly looking at all this. We are all missing. Well, this is why, because we are not accepted.

VK:
Still today, you think?

AC:
Yes, of course. It was not so long ago that Peter Porter wrote an article, I suppose it was about 20 years ago. He was railing in one of the (local) English newspaper or Australian newspaper about, you know, why are we listening to these people who can hardly write English? Peter Porter said that. Meaning people like Antigone. But there was also somebody on the Australian Council at one point made a remark about Antigone- that she can’t speak English.

VK:
What?

AC:
If you have an accent, according to them, you’re not speaking English.

VK:
What are you speaking?

AK:
Something in between. When they see the in between, they get scared and terrified. Because I think that they didn’t want change in the Australian literature, or Australian poetry and prose as well.

VK:
As you said, they copy, they mimic the Americans to a degree. And as I said to our friend David Brooks, if not the Americans, it’s Mallarmé.

AK:
Mallarme – Frank O’Hara.

VK:
Remember some years ago we organised some readings at the Nicholson Museum. We invited Les Murray. We had invited him first, and then Tranter, and then Adamson, and then you, and Judith Rodriguez. But I remember Tranter spoke very positively. But do you think that modern Australian poetry lacks a centre? Linguistic, symbolic, or even a canonical figure? Because essentially, poetry exists around canonical figures, schools, movements. We don’t have that here.

AK:
I don’t think so, no.

VK:
Why are we so dispersed?

AK:
Probably because the country is so big, but I don’t know. I was always an outsider. Actually, (I felt) I wasn’t part of it at all. I think Anna would be more in it than I would be.

AC:
There were warring coteries.

VK:
Oh, right. Who are the coteries?

AC:
Well in my generation there were different factions who in a way had different influences. There was a (John) Tranter group who were American influenced- totally American influenced. Things are really different now, there were other people who were like more romantic and more (Robert) Duncan-esque and there are other people like Kris Hemensley -Melbourne (based) who were more experimental and modernist. Then there were all the older people you know- there was a real generational split, I think, in Australian writing.

VK:
When? In the 80s?

AC:
Well, my generation of poets really had nothing to do with the old people. You know, even though I realise now they probably were, you know, quite interesting people. We just saw them as sort of irrelevant.

AK:
There was (James) McAuley…

VK:
McAuley- his last poems are not bad, but he became a doctrinaire, you know, a Christian preacher. What about the Seven Bells? Kenneth Slessor? Do you like any others – Robert Adamson?

AK:
I’ve read them from time to time. There are poems which are good.

VK:
I think he’s (Adamson) one of the only poets in Australia that has for me that genuine sense of- the tragic in life. But (getting back) to your poetry, it comes in between of all that, I think. It breaks that continuum, the English continuum. You created a new school, that emerges now. You say you don’t know, but I’m analysing and I’m searching into these things. Every time I mention your name, people respond by saying how deeply influenced they were by you and very grateful because they read your work.

AK:
But this doesn’t come out in any way, actually. Because when things are published, there is really very little reaction. I mean, this is 40 years of reactions. Not that many. So, you’re still dealing with a very silent field.

AC:
If you talk about the gatekeepers, the gatekeepers are just, you know, people who are arbitrarily appointed. And they don’t really know anything about literature. What Vrasidas is talking about is actual writers who are writing now, who may not have any public influence.

AK:
In Australia a lot of writers are reading other writers. Yes, of course, of course. We are the only ones who are reading each other. But (we are not being) read about in the major presses, or newspapers.

VK:
But I think that there is a new generation now, who have been deeply influenced and affected by your work. For example, Peter Polites who is not (only) Greek-Australian, but Australian, told me that he discovered his voice through your work. And other writers as I mentioned earlier and young poets (writing) now who discover their poetry, their voice, through discovering and reading your work. I think the work of a poet has an influence, a long-term influence.

AK:
Yes, of course, of course, I know that. I’m still surviving on Romanian poetry.

VK:
Immediately (Mihai) Eminescu comes to mind. So, you still refer to the poetry of your youth, then?

AK:
Yes, well we lived in them for such a long time, and at home and the French (writers) too. I mean, you carry all these in yourself, as a basic sort of vocabulary.

VK:
Do you have an intellectual community in Australia?

AC:
You did have a circle, you know, like Rudi Krausmann. If you think of Antigone’s work in the context of Aspect magazine, that Rudi Krausmann edited- you fit very easily into that context. And the German modernists that Rudi was publishing, Rudi’s own work too.

AK:
Yes, because we had a common, more or less, background of direction and so on. We were all foreigners.

AC:
There was also your friend, the minimalist painter Franco Paisio.

AK:
Yes, we were a group of foreigners that had come together through different issues. Rudi actually was publishing, so he published some of us. And then there was Jolanta and Jurgis (Janavicius), my Lithuanian friends, and the American Jim Provencher. But these were friends. It was a group of friends who had intellectual connections. We would have dinners and come together regularly at these gatherings, once a month or so.

VK:
I’m worried that we have exhausted you. I have two very important questions.
What is poetry for you?

AK:
Why do we write? I think necessity, otherwise we wouldn’t.

VK:
And so, why do we read?

AK:
The same sort of necessity. A necessity of expressing ourselves or connecting with others. With ourselves, the past, the current society, the philosophical underpinnings of a lot of things in general.

VK:
And do you think that poetry still has a role to play in our society?

AK:
Well, I don’t know, that’s very difficult actually. It has totally disappeared now (in terms of importance) even in terms of poetry prizes.

AC:
There are a few prizes. You received one a few years ago. (State Library of Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award).

AK:
No one cares about… public acknowledgment. There’s no public acknowledgment. (With regard to publishing now) there’s a lot of noise (re- publicity). It’s all to do with shelf space. The bookshops calculate the sales and the moving things off and on the shelf. And if it does sell, it’s on the shelf and it doesn’t sell, off. If it’s there for six months, it’s got to go.

VK:
Six months, that’s a lot, I think. Less than that.

Personally, I believe that there is a triumvirate of three women, (Emily)Dickinson, (Elizabeth) Bishop and you.

AK:
Yes? Oh well, I’m really in good company.

VK:
Incredible company because you have similar patterns of expression, completely different words and completely different atmospheres, but there is an invisible line that connects you. I find your poetry continues a kind of a current in poetry.

AK:
The tone is also low key.

VK:
It’s the poetry that somebody uses when he or she is in a dialogue- with themselves.

AK:
Well, it depends how you define religious.

VK:
Cosmic feeling of belonging.

AK:
We have to give it you Vras, you always come up with the right expressions.

VK:
I mean, your last poetry that I translated, I love the snapshots of the real, but you became more expressionistic. In one, you have this incredible, amazing description of the train going through the tunnel.

AK:
No one liked that one. I sent it out and it came back (rejected) three times.

VK:
Well, that’s amazing.

AK:
So, if there are religious elements, or any existentialist elements, it could be because I write about death and these are fundamental issues in poetry. One is not sure from inside. I mean, you know that a poem is working at the end of it, but you don’t know its dimensions or how it will be taken by other people or where it is. It’s still an unaccountable sort of issue that you are looking at. Hoping for the best.

VK:
Your poetry is esoteric, it has this sense of inwardness, interiority.

AK:
Well, you are dealing internally with the whole business, essentially.

VK:
Have you been satisfied with the reception of your poetry overall?

AK:
Well, there hasn’t been much of it. If it were not for the Greeks, people like, Helen Nikas I would have been totally outside, because they created an element in which the poetry is somehow considered as part of the scene. If you look at the book (Antigone Kefala: A Writer’s Journey Owl Publishing) that you (Vrasidas Karalis) put together with Helen (Nikas) actually, well the reviews I assume are by other people as well, but a lot of it is actually, our own people, so to speak. But not simply our own people, the people who belonged, who tried to belong.

There are lots of people who read and they don’t read us.

VK:
I’ll go back to a Greek proverb: when you eat only one thing, you can’t see anything else. Part of the problem with Australian literature is the one dimensionality of these (gatekeepers).

AK:
And also, a total lack of interest and curiosity. No desire to incorporate, to have more voices. To actually see what can come in, or how it can be considered. You’re dealing constantly with a very narrow definition of what it is to write in Australian.

VK:
So before finishing, do you think that there is a distinct corpus of work which we call Australian literature in general, or we are simply a sub-branch of the American or the English poetry in general?

AK:
I don’t know, I think there is, now more than before actually, something that actually relates to the country, to the space, to the past to a certain extent. But there are movements. It’s no longer like McAuley, you know, a 19th century approach to Australian poetry. You’re dealing with more real life now in Australia, I think, yes.

VK:
But still, the American presence is very strong, isn’t it?

AK:
Yes, of course. Do we have an independent voice, then, towards them? Well, I don’t know. You have to tell us because you are analysing it.

AC:
It used to be the English voice up until quite recently. It’s only the last 20 years or so that it’s been the American voice. The Americans have had a huge influence.

VK:
Beatnik poetry has influenced a lot of people.

AC:
In a way, that’s anti-American poetry.

VK:
Yes, Anti-American- American poetry. We have our friend George Mouratidis. Who writes beatnik poetry and refers to your poetry as well. He has written the introduction to Jack Kerouac’s: On the Road. (The Original Scroll edition).

Getting back to your poetry, it becomes a sort of landmark in the definition of so many current writer’s poetic selfhood, which I find really encouraging and empowering. You appear in so many writers’ work- as a presence. And even though in the past, as you point out, there were so many reservations in accepting your poetry, if I may say, and I love making prophecies, the future belongs to you. The future belongs to your poetry.

AK:
I have to invite you more often to come, because I shall be feeling very well for a week after all that.

VK:
Your poetry is something that has escorted me, accompanied me, through so many different things in my life, and I think that happens with the new generation of writers as well. Your poetry gives the heart of writing, which is essentially a dialogue of humanity, of humans with themselves. I think that your poems are a kind of, if I may say, heralding a new situation in the poetic selfhood. So before finishing, tell us something about your diaries.

VK:
What I saw in the first diaries (journals), which I immensely enjoyed is this sense of a cultivated European (sense of) looking, but at the same time there was an irony towards your own self.

AK:
A lot of irony, but no one picks it up, you know.

The Late Journals cover the period from 2000 to 2020 and I have quoted some other poems in it. I’ve also included some visuals, pictures and photos of friends, some still alive, others who have died – to bring them there.

VK:
It’s an elegy essentially? I liked the tone of your voice in the first Journals (Sydney Journals)

AK:
Well, I think it should be the same in the Late Journals. Yes, a continuation.

VK:
But there was a curiosity as well in exploring the landscape, the Australian landscape, in the previous ones. And I love your commentary on the programs you watched on TV back then. You’ve never lost your curiosity. And you have a photographic eye for details.
It’s an amazing sense of pinpointing details but capturing the whole. But also, I think probably every society (at some point) doesn’t want to accept anything that it doesn’t understand. Especially when it’s coming from outside, when it is in a different type of voice. I think Greece would be the same. But more anarchic, there’s no centre to regulate anything.

But the good thing about Greece, is that we don’t have that over-centralisation of publications and publishers. There is a huge number of smaller publishers and publishing.

AK:
I was absolutely stunned actually, to see all the poetry books when I was in Greece. There were an enormous number of them.

VK:
Despite the period of crisis. I think Greece, multiplied its small publishers. Poetry is the great victor of this crisis.

AK:
They publish a lot. Even when I was there, 10 years ago, I was constantly impressed. And they look good. Good editions.

VK:
The publications are amazing. In the last 10 years during the crisis, we have so many books coming out, especially poetry, which is never expected. It’s not centralised, so people are coming from everywhere, Thessalonica, Patras, Crete, Athens and I think they have a lot of now electronic journals too. If I may say, there’s more respect for poetry as well. And a multiplicity of venues, booksellers. Seferis first collection, Strophy, (1931) was published in 300 copies and sold only 25 and the rest were there until 1969, 70. I think this is what we need in Australia, don’t you think, a sort of a kind of multiplicity of venues?

AC:
Publication is not really happening here. There are more readings. But, there are magazines like Cordite. There’s Mascara and there are quite a few others publishing online. It’s definitely more online now. But, Kit Kellen has published more than 80 books in the Flying Island series. They’re small poetry books. They’re being launched at our gallery. (The Shop Gallery – Glebe)

VK:
I have two more questions. Can you recall your first contact with the Australian literature of the 19th century and of the early 20th century, facts and feelings?

AK:
What I read mostly when I came here was current literature, like the work of Elizabeth Harrower. I didn’t read the standard Australiana- Lawson, Patterson.

VK:
Can you give us a portrait, or tell us a few things about your mother?

AK:
My mother was a reader. She read enormously. This is why I became a reader too. Because she constantly, you know, talked to me about the books. She read Stendhal, and she would tell me about the characters and dramatic developments.

VK:
Stendhal, (Le Rouge et Le Noir) The Red and the Black?

AK:
Yes, Le Rouge et Le Noir and lots of other books. Yes, she was, a reader and I would say, low-key, not like me. A very soft voice, and also trying to understand constantly and very good to us- because we were going through enormous difficulties. The tragedy of her life was my brother who became ill, and she could not understand why, he was such a nice boy, he was growing up quite well and then dealing with the whole situation that we faced… This was actually the greatest difficulty for her, but otherwise she was young, I liked her, we were friends.

VK:
What kind of person was she? Was she a person of her times? Was she religious?

AK:
Religious? No, no. Not religious at all. I went with her only once in my life to a church and that was during Easter and I don’t know why we went because we never went to church otherwise. That was enough. She was not religious.

VK:
I think that in your poetry there’s a lot of music. What’s the role of music in your work?

AK:
Yes, my father played the violin and my brother the cello, they were both professionals.

VK:
Do you like to listen to music these days? Who’s your favourite composer?

AK:
Yes, of course. There’s so many -Shostakovich, Beethoven.

AC:
Antigone’s father was a composer as well. He used to write songs.

VK:
Do you remember any one of them?

AK:
I’ve got them, of course. My father used to write novels as well. I’ve got them as well.

VK:
Have you published any of them?

AK:
No, no. It was a private affair. I started to learn the piano, and he wanted to encourage me, so he was writing these little ditties you know and also, he was writing poetry of sorts.

VK:
How did they (your parents) meet?

AK:
Ah, well that is very interesting. It was in Romania, (Nicolae) Iorga, you know, the historian was coming to Braila to give a lecture.

VK:
He wrote, Byzantium after Byzantium.

AK:
Yes, that’s right. Mama and Papa didn’t know each other, but they were at the lecture. Mother was late, and she was looking around in the large theatre to find a space, and so she found a space and there was an empty seat next to her and Papa sat next to her. That’s how they met. Listening to Iorga.

VK:
How interesting. You mentioned before that you’re third generation Romanian. When did your forefathers go to Romania, in 1850?

AK:
Yes. The family had been there since the 1860’s.

VK:
Where did they come from?

AK:
Originally, Messolonghi. That’s what it is on the passports. But then they left and went to what is now Tekirdag in Asia Minor. And then, of course, they went to Romania.

VK:
What did they do in Romania?

AK:
In Romania, they were merchants. My great-grandfather was a part of a union of people who work with wood (woodworkers) in Romania in 1865- he actually founded the union.

VK:
Did they speak Greek during that period?

AK:
Oh yes. I don’t think that my grandmother ever learned Romanian. Braila was full of Greeks, so was Bucharest, but Braila specifically. They read Greek too, father used to order books from Greece all the time.

VK:
So when did they leave Braila?

AK:
Well, we went for a year to Bucharest, and then we left. That would have been 45, 46. But otherwise, we were in Braila the whole time. My brother had to go to Bucharest to go the conservatorium.

VK:
So, before communism, was it easy for the Greeks to live in Romania?

AK:
Well, during the war it was quite difficult because the Germans were there.

VK:
Do you remember the day of leaving Romania?

AK:
Well, I was very small at the time- I can’t remember exactly around 8, 9, or-10, 11. But you do have memories. What I discovered was, we actually ordered this book by this Romanian Israeli French painter called Avigdor Arikha, and he was born in Bukovina, you know between Romania and Azerbaijan.

VK:
Pavel Celan was from there.

AK:
Yes, Celan was from there- with Avigdor, he survived because the Israelis were selling the Romanian trucks and because of that they allowed- I don’t know how many (exactly)- but thousands of Jewish children to leave Romania and to go to Israel. And the whole transaction was in Braila because they went by boat. Apparently, the SS was there too.

VK:
(Most of) the intelligentsia of the Romanians back then were fascists.

AK:
Yes, they were. Even (Emil) Cioran.

Antigone Kefala Works

Poetry
The Alien (Makar Press,1973)
Thirsty Weather (Outback, 1978)
European Notebook (Hale & Iremonger,1988)
Absence: New and Selected poems (Sydney, Hale & Iremonger,1992. 2nd ed, 1998)
Poems: A selection (Melbourne, Owl Publishing,2000)
Fragments (Giramondo Publishing,2016)

Prose Fiction
The First Journey (Wild & Woolley,1975)
The Island (Hale & Iremonger,1984)
Sunday Morning in The Oxford book of Australian Short Stories, selected by Michael Wilding (Melbourne: Oxford University Press,1994)
Alexia (Owl Publishing,1995)
Summer Visit: Three Novellas (Giramondo Publishing,2003)
Sydney Journals (Giramondo Publishing,2008)
Max: The Confessions of a Cat (Owl Publishing,2009)
Late Journals (Giramondo Publishing,2022)

Awards
2017- Queensland Literary Awards- Judith Wright Calanthe Award for: Fragments.
2022- Patrick White Award