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                                                                                               ARS INTERPRES PUBLICATIONS, STOCKHOLM

                                                                                       Announce the publication of CORFU BLUES, by JIM POTTS.

                                                                                                   208 Pages. Price €14.00 (125 Swedish Crowns)

                                                                                                                       ISBN 91-975980-1-1

                                                                                          Available now direct from the publisher  http://arsint.com/book_j_p.html

                                                                                                              or from Alibris http://www.alibris.com

CORFU BLUES is a collection of poems, songs, translations, interviews and essays by Jim Potts, inspired by the greater part of a lifetime’s experience of visiting, living and working in Greece, a country he has always loved and in which he now resides.

CORFU BLUES:  over 150 poems about Greece; Hellenism in Greece and overseas (Australia and the USA); about the fast-changing Balkans and Albania; about Corfu and Paxos; Vitsa and the Vikos Gorge; Thessaloniki and Athens; about religion, politics, folk and rebetika music.

The other half of the book consists of a challenging, iconoclastic and often controversial series of essays, articles, journal extracts and interviews about subjects as varied as the Military Junta, the American Sixth Fleet in Greece, the British in Corfu and Cyprus, Greek philotimo, Lord Byron, Lawrence Durrell and George Seferis, Demetrius Toteras’ dramatic masterpiece Sunday They’ll Make Me a Saint, Greek music, poetry and film (an in-depth interview with Michael Cacoyannis, the director of Zorba the Greek) and articles about places the author loves, especially Corfu and Paxos and the Zagori mountain village region of Epirus.

In CORFU BLUES, Jim explores many aspects of British-Greek relations, mutual perceptions, contested spaces and identities. He casts new light on some lesser-known areas in the history of Modern Greece.

There are also 20 Greek translations, by four different translators, of poems by Jim Potts, as well as ten song lyrics written by the author.

CORFU BLUES is illustrated by many photographs, most of them taken by the author between 1967 and 2005.

JIM POTTS, OBE, was Director of the British Council in Sweden (2000-2004). He worked for the British Council for 35 years, from 1969-2004, and served in many different countries in many different roles (Cultural Attaché and Director in Prague and Stockholm, film-maker and TV producer in Ethiopia and Kenya, Regional Director in Northern Greece and cultural relations practitioner in Australia, where he served for seven years as British Council Director, based in Sydney). He was Head of East and Central Europe Department when he worked at Council Headquarters in London. He is the co-editor, with Judith Black, of the anthology “Swedish Reflections, from Beowulf to Bergman” (Arcadia, London, 2003). He played a leading role in some ground-breaking cultural relations and public diplomacy campaigns such as the 1997 “New Images, Australia and Britain into the 21^st Century”, “New Wales in New South Wales”, “Scotland in Sweden”, “British Design Season”,  “UK Country of Honour and British Literature Focus” at the 2004 Gothenburg Book Fair, as well as helping to initiate Montage (the global, web-based programme of curriculum projects for schoolchildren around the world) in Australia and the Literary Links exhibition and book (Allen and Unwin,1997), which celebrated the literary relationship between Australia and Britain.

Jim studied English Literature at Oxford University (Wadham College) and Film-Making at Bristol University. In the course of his career he has made educational and documentary films (such as “The Cross, Art-Form of Ethiopia”), two independent CDs (“On the Memphis Road!” recorded at the Sun Studio Memphis in July 2004; and “Death Valley Blues”, not yet released).

Jim is also an occasional cultural journalist and writes articles for various publications. Some of his poems have been published in Greek, Czech (“16 Poems”, Prague, 1989), Romanian and Swedish. He is a member of the Corfu Reading Society (Anagnostiki Etairia), the Anglo-Hellenic League and the Friends of Mt. Athos.

Corfu Blues was launched in Sweden at the Mediterranean Museum in Stockholm and at the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators, Visby, in June 2006. It is available in most Corfu bookshops and in London at the Hellenic Centre, the Hellenic Book Service and the Muswell Hill Bookshop.

He now devotes himself to literary and cultural projects and is a founder member of the Living Arts Exchange: www.livingarts-exchange.com

CORFU BLUES by Jim Potts may be purchased on-line at:

Alibris.com or http://arsint.com/book_j_p.htm

http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/id/Corfu_Blues/9789197598019

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corfu-Blues-Jim-Potts/dp/9197598011/ref=sr_1_1/203-4912220-4405536?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183673047&sr=8-1

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In Sweden:

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________________________________________________
Book Review by Niki Marangou, in Cyprus newspaper O Filelevtheros, 27 July 2006

Ο ΕΛΛΗΝΙΣΤΗΣ ΤΖΙΜ ΠΟΤΤΣ

Γνώρισα τον Τζιμ Ποττς σε ένα συνέδριο στους Δελφούς και μου έκαναν εντύπωση τα καλά ελληνικά του και η γνώσεις που είχε για την ελληνική λογοτεχνία. Μίλησε τότε για την Κύπρο του 1953-56, για τον Ντάρρελ, τον Σεφέρη, τον Κάρντιφ, για λογοτεχνία και προπαγάνδα στα δύσκολα εκείνα χρόνια του αγώνα της ΕΟΚΑ.

Αυτές τις μέρες κυκλοφόρησε ένα βιβλίο του με τίτλο CORFU BLUES, Ars Interpres Publications. Πρόκειται για μια συλλογή ποιημάτων, τραγουδιών, συνεντεύξεων, άρθρων που έχουν σχέση με την Ελλάδα, στην οποία έζησε πολλά χρόνια και στην οποία επέλεξε να κατοικήσει. Τα θέματα ποικίλουν, από τα ρεμπέτικα μέχρι τον Λόρδο Βύρωνα, από τους συνταγματάρχες μέχρι τα Ζαγόρια και την Κέρκυρα. Επιπλέον ασχολείται με τις αγγλοελληνικές σχέσεις, αμφισβητούμενες θέσεις, και ρίχνει νέο φως σε άγνωστες πτυχές της νεώτερης ιστορίας της Ελλάδας. Μου έκαναν εντύπωση τα ποιήματα του. Εχουν  μια απλότητα και μια αμεσότητα που σπάνια συναντά πια κανείς στις μέρες μας, όπου συχνά βουλιάζει το νόημα του ποιήματος σε μια ακατάσχετη λογιοσύνη.

Ο Τζίμ Ποττς γεννήθηκε στο Μπρίστολ το 1944, σπούδασε αγγλική λογοτεχνία στην Οξφόρδη και κινηματογράφο στο Μπρίστολ. Δούλεψε για 35 στο Βρεττανικό Συμβούλιο σε διάφορες χώρες. Από το 2000-2004 ήταν διευθυντής του Βρεττανικού Συμβουλίου στη Σουηδία. Ένα ποιήμα του, μεταφρασμένο από τον Πάνο Καραγιώργο έχει τίτλο

ΒΙΟΓΡΑΦΙΚΟ ΣΗΜΕΙΩΜΑ

Μεταξύ του Β-2 και της ατομικής βόμβας

γεννήθηκα. Ανάμεσα στη μέρα της απόβασης

και τη Χιροσίμα. Γεννημένος Βρεττανός στο Μπρίστολ,

χειμώνας του 1944.

Μακρυά στο Σικάγο

ο μεγάλος Τζο Τέρνερ και μπούκι βούγκι Πέτε

περνούσαν τη νύχτα παίζοντας και τραγουδώντας,

την ίδια μέρα που είδα το φως.

«Δεν αγαπήθηκα πραγματικά…»

Σαν μωρό αγαπήθηκα.

Λίγους μήνες πριν από τη Γιάλτα

ούρλιαξα για πρώτη φορά.

Συνέχισα να ουρλίαζω.

Ισως να άκουγα τις βόμβες να χτυπούν στη Δρέσδη,

ίσως να ήξερα ήδη

ότι η μισή Ευρώπη είχε χαθεί.

Χαίρομαι που τουλάχιστον δεν μπορούσα να δω

το άνοιγμα των στρατοπέδων του Θανάτου,

τα βρεττανικά Στρατεύματα Απελευθέρωσης

στην Πλατεία Συντάγματος,

τους Αμερικάνους ξέγνοιαστους στο Πίλσεν

τα ρωσικά στρατεύματα να πλησιάζουν την Πράγα.

------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

For an interesting article on Diamantina Roma, see the oration by the Governor of Queensland, who quoted from my poem "Diamantina Roma and the Postings of Governor Bowen", which appears in "Corfu Blues":

http://www.govhouse.qld.gov.au/the_governor/OfficeoftheGovernorQueensland_Oration.asp

Here is an extract from the Governor's Oration:

"On reflection, my inclination was to explore further the life and times of Diamantina, wife of Queensland’s first Governor, Sir George Ferguson Bowen.

I wanted to know more about this captivating, exotic woman, of her serenity and kindness. And like many others who have read of the Bowens’ time in Queensland, I wondered about that couple’s relationship - the differences in upbringing and cultural traditions - yet encouraged by the impetus they gave, in partnership, to Australia’s northern colony, newly separated from New South Wales in 1859.

I was reminded too of the seeming contradictions in their temperaments. I am not the first to have considered this. The opening lines of a poem attributed to Jim Potts, currently with the British Council in Sweden, whose work Diamantina Roma and the Postings of Governor Bowen begins thus:

that selfish brute Bowen,
got Corfu, then Brisbane,
New Zealand and Melbourne!
Missed out on New South Wales!
Twenty years down under,
Sir Gorgeous Figginson Blowing…
 

Potts’s use of the word ‘brute’ and the sarcasm inherent in the corruption of Bowen’s name are taken directly from 19th century writer and natural history artist, Edward Lear, known the world over as the author of The Owl and the Pussycat.

Lear met Bowen on the island of Corfu and had lived there for some time in rooms near the Metropolitan’s Palace. He wrote of society under the British Protectorate as “having all the extra fuss and ill-will produced by a Court and small officials.” Apparently Lear’s particular loathing of Bowen appears in his personal correspondence.

My friends, I wanted to use this occasion to satisfy my desire that the good works initiated by Lady Bowen should not be taken for granted, that we should recall her influence in the ‘salons’ of Brisbane, meeting people in its dusty streets, encouraging music and culture, establishing hospital facilities, motivating her peers, and charming foreign and local visitors."

An article in Swedish by Lars Ryding (about my time in Sweden) can be accessed on Svenska Dagbladet's website:

http://www.svd.se/dynamiskt/kultur/did_6764936.asp

The Living Arts Exchange
NB The following seminar has been postponed until 2007.

The Living Arts Exchange aims to facilitate cultural projects in Europe and  around the world, with a special focus on the United Kingdom, Greece and Sweden.

Its founders are Jim Potts and Rea Ann-Margaret Mellberg (see below, with Professor Emeritus Kjell Espmark, distinguished Swedish poet and Member of the Swedish Academy, Chairman of the Selection Committee for the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

First LIVING ARTS event- February 25, 2005, at Katarina Kyrka, Södermalm, Stockholm at 1900 hrs. Song recital by Aliki Kayaloglou, accompanied by Michalis Sourvinos, classical guitar. The concert was a tribute to the Nobel Prize Winners George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis, the Greek poets whose poems were set to music by great composers like Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Hadjidakis. Aliki Kayaloglou is one of the greatest interpreters of Greek poetic-song, and she has collaborated with both Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Hadjidakis in concerts and recordings. Aliki usually gives recitals dedicated to poets whose work she admires, such as Seferis, Sappho, Elytis, Lorca, Cavafy, Ritsos and Gatsos. This event was facilitated by cooperation between Katarina Kyrka, the Greek Embassy and Living Arts Exchange, with support from The Swedish-Greek Cultural Committee. Jim Potts introduced the recital, after the words of welcome by the Reverend Anders Björnberg and the Ambassador of Greece in Sweden, Mr Nicolaos Couniniotis. The concert was a great success, with an enthusiastic audience of around 500. There was also a seminar on Music and Poetry on February 24th at the Greek Community Association Hall. Jim Potts spoke on "Theodorakis, Britten, Dylan: Who did most for Poetry?". Further information from Gia Giovanni at the Cultural Section, Greek Embassy, Stockholm.

Jim Potts, born Bristol, England, worked for the British Council for 35 years, from 1969-2004, in the UK, Ethiopia, Kenya, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Australia, Sweden. He was Director of the British Council in Czechoslovakia, Australia and Sweden, and Head of East and Central Europe Department in London. He was also Cultural Attache in Prague and Stockholm. He was awarded the OBE in the New Year’s Honours, 1998. Jim studied English Literature at the University of Oxford (BA, MA), Education at London University and Film and Drama Production at Bristol University. Jim made many short films in Ethiopia and Kenya and worked as a media consultant and journal editor. He now concentrates on writing, particularly poetry (which has been published in Greek, Swedish, Czech and Romanian) and articles about literature and music. "Corfu Blues" (his collection of poems and prose pieces about Greece), will be published by Ars Interpres, Stockholm and New York, in March 2006. 

Rea Ann-Margaret Mellberg, born in Piraeus in 1951, studied at the Universities of Stockholm and Lund. She obtained her PhD in Modern Greek Poetry from Lund University in 2004. She has worked as a university teacher (Stockholm University, 1973-1977) and as a translator of Swedish literature into Greek; for the Ministry For Foreign Affairs in Greece and as Cultural Attache in the Embassy of Greece in Sweden since 1995. Her main translations into Greek include Modern Swedish Poetry, Plays of Strindberg and Ibsen, works by Dagerman, Söderberg, Almquist, Swedenborg and others. She received an award from the Swedish Academy in 1991, for literary translations from Swedish to Greek . She received another award in 1994, from the Swedish Writers' Union, for translations from Swedish to Greek. In 1995 she received the Silver Cross of The Polar Star from the Swedish State, for her work in cultural exchange between Greece and Sweden. She is a member of the Greek and Swedish Writers' Unions, a  member of the Swedish Board of the Friends of the Swedish Institute in Athens and a member of the Board of the Greek Cultural House in Stockholm. She has organised many important cultural events in Stockholm.

With their long and wide experience of international cultural relations work and project management, Jim Potts and Ann-Margaret Mellberg aim to draw in experts and creative artists from their extensive global networks to advise, lead and collaborate on specific projects. 

Imagine, for instance, a series of writers’ workshops, inspiring creative retreats and professional seminars led by experienced tutors in one of the most beautiful and unspoilt villages and regions of Greece- in Vitsa, one of 46 villages of the Zagori region in Epirus, situated around 1000 metres above sea level, with panoramic views of wooded mountain ranges and perched high above the dramatic Vikos Gorge . The Living Arts Exchange has been established to create opportunities and to supply this need. The ancient mountain settlement of Vitsa, with its stunning stone architecture, boasts houses and churches from the 16^th century, and age-old cobbled paths and steps which lead down to the gorge. As a settlement,Vitsa has roots stretching back to 900BC. It also boasts a number of beautifully-restored guest-houses, small family hotels designed and furnished in the traditional Zagori fashion. Not far from Vitsa, elegant stone bridges and monasteries can be visited. The bustling city of Ioannina is only 40 minutes away by car, and apart from the fascinating island and its frescoed Byzantine churches in the Lake of Ioannina and the remains of the harem of Ali Pasha on the acropolis of Ioannina, there are other famous sights such as the ancient theatre and oracle of Dodona. 

The light and air itself is a source of inspiration in Vitsa, not to mention the mountain views, the invigorating walks, the vegetation and wild flowers, the tranquility, the monastic peace and quiet with little to be heard other than the distant tinkling of  goats’ and sheep bells. All this makes Vitsa an ideal centre for ecotourism as well as a cultural centre. Vitsa recently hosted (September 2004) a highly successful workshop and course which attracted 30 women from Sweden, Norway, Britain, Ecuador, Italy, the USA and Greece. The local people and village authorities are extremely welcoming and pleased to see visitors from abroad. They want Vitsa to become a significant cultural center for both Greeks and visitors from overseas, and literary culture is high on the agenda, with many Living Arts Exchange writing courses and workshops planned.

There could be few more stimulating environments in which to share insights and hone your creative skills, whether in writing (poetry, drama, autobiography) or other art-forms. The area is as rich with associations of famous historical figures like Lord Byron, Edward Lear and Ali Pasha (and Kyria Frosini) as it is with the cultural traditions of the semi-nomadic Sakataksani people and of the Zagorian Epirots who went abroad to make their careers, to endow the villages and schools back home, and to build their impressive stone mansions.

Walks around the village and short hikes down the Vikos Gorge (and optional treks through the National Park) are a must , and other cultural excursions of historical, architectural and environmental interest are available.

NB The Living Arts Exchange will also organize projects and workshops in other inspiring environments and venues, but the initial focus will be on Vitsa, Zagori.

“Few parts of Greece are more surprising, or more beguiling, than Zagori…The beauty of its landscapes is unquestionable…..the last place that one would expect to find some of the most imposing architecture in Greece” (Greece, The Rough Guide, p 278).

“The region of Zagoria, north of Ioannina, offers some breathtaking vistas….With winding, cobbled and stepped streets, the villages could have leapt straight out of a Grimm fairy tale.” (Lonely Planet, Greece, p 335-336)

“Whenever their talk veered to their summer pastures in the Zagora, all their eyes lit up like those of the children of Israel at the thought of Canaan, and all spoke at once. What pigeons, what hares! You didn’t need wine there- the air made you drunk; and as for the shade, the grass, the trees and the water- why the water came gushing out of the living rock as cold as ice, you couldn’t drink it it was so cold, and you could drink it by the oka, and feel like a giant….Words failed them.” (Roumeli, Travels in Northern Greece, Patrick Leigh Fermor, p. 60).

“From Delvino onwards the road rises abruptly from mountain to mountain, from ridge to ridge, ribbon-like, over-hanging, with steep climbs. 

All round, the mountain-sides supporting the bare, treeless peaks are green with wild ilex and oak. 

Lower down, thick shady plane-trees cover the ravines. 

Crystal waters utter their cool song sweetly in the deep valleys…. 

At each new bend, as the road climbs higher, the sky opens wider; eyes embrace beautiful, ever-expanding worlds. 

Plains and mountains, rivers and seas dream in the blue light. They level out in the distance. They mingle with the boundless sky. 

High, terribly high. The great contentment which the sensitive traveler experiences in these high blue solitudes is doubled by the secret feeling of delight that no ugliness of the human crowd reaches here. 

The motionless mountain silence prompts with a certain secret pleasure in the soul the happiness of complete isolation. Something which seems outside life……One embraces life more completely on the heights. Perhaps because one comes closer to God…… 

High mountains, shadowing mountains, wooded mountains, mountain shapes like petrified waves in space, in a blue, mystical light. 

Somewhere round here was the religion of ancient Greece born. Dodona, Io, Zeus the Thunderer. 

One experiences more deeply the mystery of the world’s birth, seeing from these heights the god-created crown of the mountains of Epiros waving bluely and dipping up and down in space….. 

At the foot of the mountain-village, goat-folds. He-goats and she-goats. Bleatings and bells. Kitsos and the shepherdess Mosco. Daphnis and Chloe. Pan, the Great Pan, who never dies up here. Deathless, incorruptible Life….” 

In The Epiros from Greek Travels by Kostas Pasagianis, Athens 1931, translated by Philip Sherrard and quoted in The Pursuit of Greece, Denise Harvey and Company, Athens.

“Europe’s most outstanding area of natural beauty. The wild flowers, including over 50 varieties of orchids, are an absolute joy.”   www.travelux.co.uk

“Places of such beauty are rare and appeal to all.”  www.travelux.co.uk

“Vikos Gorge is one of the most breathtaking natural sites in all of Greece and one of the largest and finest gorges in Europe.”   http://www.epcon.

"The most striking (villages) of the Western Zagorachoria....are those perched by the Vikos Gorge, possibly the most dramatic mountainscape in all of Greece...Monodendri and Vitsa are within sight of one another...above the upper reaches of the Vikos Gorge. Vitsa is less huddled together and is to many tastes the more attractive of the two, its upper quarter having the views and the lower quarter being the more pleasant to sit or wander in..."   "The Most Beautiful Villages of Greece and the Greek Islands" by Mark Ottaway and Hugh palmer, Thames and Hudson, 1998 (pp83-84).