Catherine Strisik is a poet from Taos, N.M. As a girl she wrote down lines of poetry that resonated with her and continued this practice later with original work, not realizing she was actually creating her own poetry. She eventually developed techniques to serve her writing in order to capture life’s subtle details. Strisik also discovered that a shocking event, or a jarring of the nervous system, is often the catalyst to start a poem. Today she reads Kalispera, which was was born during a recent trip to the Greek island of Crete, where startling little events happened nearly every day.
Catherine Strisik: This poem was inspired by an evening walk I took most evenings in the settlement of Fortetsa, which is in Heraklion. It sits up high overlooking the whole city of Heraklion and the Sea of Crete. And each evening I took a walk and emerged from the same alleyway and there was a group of men sitting in a circle each night. And at first it was just the noticing of each other and then as it became more familiar and I would come into this circle and pass by them I began waving, and then all of the sudden we were all saying “kalispera” to one another, which means good afternoon and that was all. But it was a gift.
kalispera
In the dusk around the corner by the butcher shop
a few white-haired men look up from their circled chairs,
cigarettes, pipes, their leather shoes, clean
and shiny where I muse
every time I round the corner to this
opening at the end of this long alleyway, the stillness, the white-capped sea, the spring
blossoms, where they listen
in the pure and familiar silence
that is home.
When I stop what I’m doing, what appears like nothing really, a walk,
and listen, their kalispera
my kalispera in unison kalispera.
It’s my precise pronunciation, my eyes
invisible behind brown-tinted sunglasses, my always quick
amble, my impossible tranquility
in the dusk’s darkening the alto barks of wandering startled dogs,
their aloneness, my aloneness, every time I’m aware of the fricatives
of the Cretan language and the olives
on their shared table, soaked in brine.
About the author:
Catherine Strisik is an award-winning poet, writing coach and editor of the Taos Journal of Poetry. She was Taos, N.M.’s poet laureate from 2020 to 2021, and she’s the author of poetry collections The Mistress, and Thousand-Cricket Song and the chapbook Insectum Gravitis.
About the host:
Steven Law is the co-producer of KNAU’s series PoetrySnaps! He is a poet, essayist, storyteller, and the author of Polished, a collection of poems about exploring the Colorado Plateau by foot and by raft.
About the music:
Original music by the Flagstaff-based band Pilcrowe.
Poetry Snaps is produced by KNAU Arizona Public Radio and airs the third Friday of each month.
