“now, 1/3” and thepoem by Demosthenes Agrafiotis | Translated by John Sakkis and Angelos Sakkis

A book of temporally organized form that renounces time, that disassembles form. Demosthenes Agrafiotis’ poetry argues, chafes, bristles, and unrelentingly chomps at the bit of its own constraint, as well as at every other human construct, linguistic or otherwise, that might serve as a convenient container for consciousness. “”now, 1/3″” is an extraction of sand from the hourglass… as if the sand weren’t free to begin with.

—Harold Abramowitz

In agraphia, the inability to write, the letter A as prefix serves as sign of a negation — the way to say a thing that ain’t. The alphabet’s first sign annuls the logic of a civilization that defines itself by letters of the law. In “”Thepoem,”” Demosthenes Agrafiotis tarries with this term that lives inside of his own name, laying out “”words for the vacancies,”” in order to probe what appears where agraphia and insanity are synonyms for the law’s other side. The resulting text’s “”a lever for the reversal of separation,”” an oscillation between flow & frame that adds to the toolkit of our “”day-to-day epistemology”” as we pick our way through the borders of the made “”while the technical allegories seethe.””

—David Brazil

Demosthenes Agrafiotis is active in the fields of poetry/ painting/ photography/ intermedia/ installations and their interactions. He has a special interest in the relation between art and new technologies. His book Maribor (The Post-Apollo Press) was awarded the 2011 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation, Chinese Notebook (Ugly Duckling Presse) appeared later the same year, both books are translated by Angelos and John Sakkis. His recent books are +-graphies (Veer Books, London), Betises (Editions Fidel Anthelme X, Marseille, in french), ArtxArt (Redfoxpress, Ireland). He is based in Athens, Greece.

Angelos Sakkis, b.1946 in Pireus, Greece. Studied design at the Athens Technological Institute. Worked for a time as an assistant to the painter Spyros Vassiliou, and collected the material for “Fota kai Skies” (“Lights and Shadows”), a volume on Vassiliou’s work, published in Athens in 1969. Immigrated to U.S 1970. BFA San Francisco Art Institute 1989. His artwork has been shown in group and one-man shows and is in collections in Greece and the U. S. His poetry has appeared in Ambush review and Try magazine. Together with John Sakkis he has been translating the work of poet/ multi-media artist Demosthenes Agrafiotis. Their translation of Maribor (The Post-Apollo Press) received the 2011 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation, Chinese Notebook (Ugly Duckling Presse), also by Agrafiotis was published in 2011. He participated in the Paros Symposium on Poetry and Translation in 2008 and again in 2011. He lives in Oakland, California.

John Sakkis is the author of Rude Girl (BlazeVOX Books), and with Angelos Sakkis he has translated two books by Athenian poet and multi-media artist Demosthenes Agrafiotis — Maribor (The Post-Apollo Press), awarded the 2011 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation, and Chinese Notebook (Ugly Duckling Presse). The author of numerous chapbooks and pamphlets, most recently RAVE ON! (Lew Gallery). Under the moniker BOTH BOTH he has curated various projects including: blog, reading series, and since 2005 a magazine. A graduate of SFSU and Naropa University, he lives in Oakland.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 132 pages

· Binding: Perfect-Bound

· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] 

· ISBN: 978-1-60964-050-7

$16