My first book of poetry, Static Exile, was published by Penned in the Margins at a time when I had a foot in the door of various London-based poetry organisations. It did fairly well (for a poetry book). I think at one point it was among the top 5 sellers for PITM, though I’m not sure if that counts for much. It does mean the book is now out of print with the publisher, but copies are still available through some online sellers. (If you can’t afford a physical copy, but would like to read the poems, write to me via the contact page and I can share a PDF.)

The book’s title refers to the feeling of disenfranchisement I had growing up in England as part of the Greek diaspora (second generation), despite always having lived in the place I was born. I was reading a lot of Caribbean literature and found resonance in ideas to do with cultural hybridity, from Derek Walcott and Stuart Hall, as well as George Seferis’ writings from exile (especially his poems about Stratis the Mariner). I often felt I was invalidated by being too Greek for England, or too English for Greece. This feels like an ongoing problem in social media today; the middle ground of debate and acceptance has been eroded.

The poems vary a lot aesthetically. One reviewer described me as having ‘an easy and a hard mode’. I draw hybrid influences from avant garde and conventional modes of poetic expression and end up falling into that category between, sometimes called fusion poetics (but also sometimes too experimental / too traditional, for either end of the spectrum).

The title poem, ‘Static Exile,’ is about a giant lizard trying to get a job in London, after going for a swim in the Thames. He quickly falls foul of authorities and is hunted by tanks. There’s a somewhat coded reference near the end to the death of Charles de Menezes. Some of the early draft material became ‘DVD Extras’ near the end of the collection, which in turn reference my favourite poem by Seferis. (I’m not too keen on Keeley and Sherrard’s translations, which are precise, but occasionally prosaic or clunky in places.)