Tsaloumas, Dimitris
TSALOUMAS, Dimitris
Nationality: Greek. Born: Leros, Greece, 13 October 1921. Education: University of Melbourne, B.A., Dip.Ed. Family: Married Ilse Wulff in 1958; two daughters and two sons. Career: Teacher with the Victoria Education Department and in secondary schools, 1958–82. Writer-in-residence, Oxford University, 1989. Awards: Australia Council grant, 1982, fellowship, 1984; National Book Council award, 1983; Patrick White award, 1994; Wesley M. Wright prize, 1994. Address: 72 Glenhuntly Road, Elwood, Victoria 3184, Australia.
Publications
Poetry
Resurrection 1967, and Triptych for a Second Coming (in Greek). Melbourne, Arion, 1974.
Observations of a Hypochondriac (in Greek). Privately printed, 1974.
The House with the Eucalypts (in Greek). Athens-Melbourne, AKE Press, 1975.
The Sick Barber and Other Characters (in Greek). Athens, Ikaros, 1979.
The Son of Sir Sakis: A Roman Tale for Advanced Children (in Greek). Privately printed, 1979.
The Book of Epigrams (in Greek). Thessaloniki, Nea Poreia, 1981; enlarged edition, 1982; in Greek and English, translated by Philip Grundy, St. Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1985.
The Observatory: Selected Poems (in Greek and English), translated by Philip Grundy. St. Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1983.
Falcon Drinking: The English Poems. St. Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1988.
Portrait of a Dog. Ringwood, Victoria, University of Queensland Press, 1991.
The Barge. St. Lucia, Queensland, University of Queensland Press, 1993.
To Taxidi: 1963–1992. Athena, Ekdoseis Sokole, and Melbourne, Owl, 1995.
Six Improvisations on the River. Beeston, Nottingham, Shoestring Press, 1995.
The Harbour. St. Lucia, Queensland, University of Queensland Press, 1998.
Stoneland Harvest: New & Selected Poems. Beeston, Nottingham, Shoestring Press, 1999.
Other
Editor and Translator, Contemporary Australian Poetry (in English and Greek). Thessaloniki, Nea Poreia, 1985; St. Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1986.
Editor, Selected Poems 1972–1986, by Manfred Jurgensen. Newstead, Queensland, Albion Press, 1987.
*Critical Studies: "Dimitris Tsaloumas Observed" by Judith Rodriguez, in Meanjin (Melbourne), January 1983; "The Poetry of Dimitris Tsaloumas" by R.F. Brissenden, in The Age Monthly Review (Melbourne), March 1983; "A Greek Poet in Australia" by Bruce Beaver, in Quadrant (Sydney), December 1983; "En utvandrad Grekisk poet" by Artur Lundkvist, in Svenska Dagbladet (Stockholm), July 1985; "Salt and Gravel" by Peter Levi, in Times Literary Supplement (London), 4 October 1985; "A Different Perspective" by David Constantine, in Poetry Review (London), 1(2), 1986; "Notes on the Poetry of Dimitris Tsaloumas" by John Barnes, Martin Duwell, M.G. Meraklis, and Chris Fifis, in Meridian (Melbourne), 6(2), October 1987; "Occasions of Metaphor" by Vincent O'Sullivan, in The Age Monthly Review (Melbourne), March 1989; Dimitris Tsaloumas, Poet by Con Castan, Melbourne, Elikia, 1990; "Poetry Born in Exile" by Andrew Reimer, in The Age Monthly Review (Melbourne), 18 July 1993; "Floating on Currents of Creativity" by Martin Duwell, in The Australian, August 1993; "'The Glint and the Shadow': The Poetry of Dimitris Tsaloumas" by Enrique Martinez, in Australian Literature Today, edited by R.K. Dhawan and David Kerr, New Delhi, Indian Society for Commonwealth Studies, 1993; "Exilens Dubbla Sprak: Dimitri Tsaloumas—Poeten Fran Vindarnas Oar" by Sun Axelsson, in Bonniers Litterara Magasin (Stockholm), 65(4), 1996; "Poetry and the Immigrant Experience" by Rajeev S. Patke, in Crossing Cultures: Essays on Literature and Culture of the Asia-Pacific, edited by Bruce Bennett and others, London, Skoob, 1996.
Dimitris Tsaloumas comments:
I began to write at the comparatively young age of twenty or thereabouts. I wish I had not. It would have spared me all the regret that I was to experience in the following years. It was my passion for music that had driven me to it—music of a special kind that, I felt, could have come only from me. But it did not, so I stopped trying. It was not until the early 1960s that I resumed writing, mainly because what I was after was not coming from anybody else either. I do not know the extent of my success, if any, but I have been trying ever since, never for a moment deviating from the straight pursuit of that ideal, never allowing anything to interfere with it, neither expediency nor fashion. I worked in complete obscurity for twenty years. Few people knew of me in Greece and even fewer in Australia. It did not seem to bother me much. I was reasonably happy in what I was doing.
What I mean by "music" is something perhaps too complex for one word to express, but music in general has most of the things that make up the nature of my ideal: harmony of parts, order and discipline, the power of rhythm, a universality of language and meaning. For me the implications of this last characteristic are of particular importance. I think that no matter how personal the emotional basis of an experience is the work of art that results from it should both retain and project it beyond into something wider, more comprehensive. Humanity is vast, and poets should range far and wide over that vastness. I have always found the intimately personal stifling. Furthermore, I believe that a true poet's quest is founded on a faith that can only be sustained through a struggle with meaning (yes!) or the creation of new meaning out of the old. Each creative act should be a rebirth, the reaffirmation of that faith. There is nothing new in this, but the rebirth of faith is discovery, and I believe that poetry can only survive by the miracle of such a renewal.
* * *With the publication in 1983 of The Observatory, Dimitris Tsaloumas appeared as a revelation to Australians. Here was a mature and profoundly significant poet who had been living and writing in their country for more than thirty years, but in the Greek language, and who had a powerful independence of mind. It was not merely that Tsaloumas was a poet of the diaspora but that within his own terms he had created a body of writing commanding attention. The book was the first significant landmark of the evolving multiculturalism of Australia, yet at the same time it stressed an individuality and a style that placed Tsaloumas in the forefront of contemporary poetry in any country.
In the success of The Observatory, which won the National Book Council award for 1983, Tsaloumas was assisted by the distinguished collaboration of the translator Philip Grundy, and their second venture, The Book of Epigrams, reinforced both the powerful wit and the severity of the poet's resonant lyricism. In addition, his remarkable anthology of contemporary Australian poetry, with his own translations into Greek, demonstrated a sure understanding of Australian literary developments and was awarded high praise in Greece. As if to demonstrate further his versatility in both languages, Falcon Drinking, a volume of English-language poems, was launched at the Adelaide Festival Writers Week in 1988. Two further volumes of poems in English, Portrait of a Dog and The Barge, both published in the early 1990s, showed an increasing assurance in his adopted language. Here the acerbic attack and satirical edge noted in the translations in The Book of Epigrams have become savagely domesticated, and The Barge added to the poet's corpus with work of a more reflective vigor. His later collection The Harbour (1998) consolidated Tsaloumas's mastery of English in almost magisterial resonance but without any loss of his characteristic acerbic wit. It was awarded the John Bray Biennial Poetry prize at the Adelaide Festival in 2000.
Although he has drawn upon both Greek and Australian motifs, Tsaloumas has always avoided the superficial themes of nostalgia and alienation. His is a genuinely committed voice, but the politics are universal, and as we have discovered, the commitment transcends even the remarkable claims of specific languages. His work is intensely informed by a sensitivity to cadence that has made him acclaimed as a major Greek poet and, in his adopted country, an outstanding Australian one.
—Thomas W. Shapcott