Lessons from the Greeks, the poetry collection by Gail Sidonie Šobat won the Grand Prize in Eyelands Book Awards 2020 and the prize was a Greek translation for the book. As it happens every year -the grand prize winner’s book of the unpublished EBA category is not an unpublished manuscript anymore. It was published and released in Greece in October 1st.
It is a bilingual edition, of 170 pages, the book was translated by Gregory Papadoyiannis and the cover is a product of Strangeland -strange days team work.
Lessons from the Greeks – Prologue
I was a happy adolescent
when I learned
women can be gods
like any in the bombastic male pantheon
Achilles I know little about
except that he hurt his heel
or his mother did
when dipping him upside down in the River Styx
a strawberry to chocolate
as would any sensible maternal goddess
Like him we limp towards mortality
let us hope though
as we reach our nether years
that no arrow likewise
pierces poisonous our heels
eat, drink, be merry
find another use for Trojans
than making war
PAGES: 170/ PRICE: 14 euros / ISBN:978-618-5278-61-8
Gail Sidonie Sobat is a poet, a singer, and the author of 12 books. She is the creator/coordinator of YouthWrite®, camps for kids who love to write… just about anything, and an instructor in the communications programs at MacEwan University and in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. Gail has presented across Canada, including Canada’s North; Doha, Qatar; Hanoi, Vietnam; Bern, Switzerland; Helsinki, Finland; Istanbul, Turkey; and more recently at the Northeastern Modern Language Association in Baltimore, Maryland. She’s been writer-in-residence in several Canadian schools, at Queen’s University, in Doha, Qatar, at the University of Alberta through the Canadian Authors Association, for the Metro Edmonton Federation of Public Libraries, and for NorthWords in Yellowknife, NWT. Her work is published in academic and literary journals, anthologies, and has been broadcast on radio and performed on stage. Gail is a Global TV Woman of Vision and a recipient of her city’s Arts and Culture Citation Award. She’s moved 40 times in her life from Badlands to Siksika Nation Reserve to hideous suburbs to Istanbul to the Sunshine Coast to her writer’s garret in a century-old temperamental house.
*Due to the pandemic problems and restrictions of the year the award ceremony in spring of 2021 was canceled. the good news is that there will be two more books from the Eyelands Book Awards 2020. The Grand Prize for published books -Jennifer Steil’s Exile Music, (translation was offered instead of five days holidays in Athens) and Robin Martin’s Lizarmaid -the winner of Three Rock prize.
Eyelands Book Awards 