Current Issue - A Bouquet of Poems

	EDITORIAL Dr. Christopher Bakken served as Fulbright Scholar at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in the winter semester of 2021/22. He is the author of the culinary memoir, Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table, as well as three books of poetry, most recently Eternity & Oranges. He also co-translated The Lions' Gate: Selected Poems of Titos Patrikios. He serves as director of Writing Workshops in Greece: Thessaloniki & Thasos and he teaches at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania.
Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)
	Alex Visalo Rainers is an undergraduate student at the School of English in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Its research interests revolve around queer theory and contemporary American poetry, with a focus on online transgender poet communities. He has been published in Honeyfire Literary Magazine and a Sunday Mornings Poetry Press poetry anthology. In their poetry, they focus on queer identity, queer history, and the body.
Postcard from Greece
	Alexandra Stefanidou was born in Thessaloniki in 1975. She graduated fromthe Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, with a MSc in Psychology. She has worked as a therapist in both private and public settings and is currently a student in the School of English in an attempt to expand her knowledge on the processes that permeate people’s narratives and make them unleash their creative powers over the centuries.
A Tea Shop in the Egyptian Bazaar, Istanbul
	Anastasia-Angeliki Karypidou is in the final year of her undergraduate studies at the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her research interests focus on English Literature and Culture from the Renaissance to the Present. Her poetry is inspired by feminist critique and gender studies but it also tries to shed light on her personal experiences from moments of contemporary history, offering her own critical perspective.
Days of 2007
	Anna Sakali is currently studying at the School of English of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She has always had a particular fondness for literature and poetry since her junior high school years but her love for writing flourished while being an undergraduate student in the School of English. She is an aspiring teacher and writer.
Gazing Through the Window of a Rusting Car at the Train Cemetery of Nea Ionia, Thessaloniki
	Anthony Kitsios is a fourth-year student of English at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Among his academic interests are Medieval and Renaissance Literature and their textual and inter/transmedial intersections and contradictions with subjectivity, gender, sexuality, and propaganda. His poetry, which is highly influenced by the work of Greek poets such as: Y. Ritsos, T. Livaditis, M. Laina, and K. Dimoula attempts to queer and theatricalize the conventional corpus of poetry crafting by reading the language as a body and the body as a language.
The Curtain
	Artemis Maragkoudaki is an undergraduate student of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She writes about all things she finds to be crooked and beautiful. She currently lives in Thessaloniki, with her four cats, and is content not to know what the future holds.
Retrospective Self-Portrait
	Charitini Lekou is an undergraduate student of School of English at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki from Arta, Greece. She is inclined toward creative ventures, and enjoys drawing, singing, and crocheting. She is particularly fond of Jane Austen, Peter Pan, and her pet rabbit, Titi. Her inspiration is drawn from 90’s pop culture and childhood nostalgia.
Postcard from Prague, Written Right under Charles’ Bridge
	Chryssa Chatziandreou is an undergraduate student at the School of English ofthe Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She is passionate about reading English, Greek and Japanese classic works of fiction and poetry. She loves learning languages, currently attending classes for Japanese and Swedish. Through her fiction and poetry she attempts to capture some interplay among a diverse set of cultures and investigate how these communicate with one another, in the same manner that different facets of somebody’s personality function in harmony to constitute the notion of ‘self’.
The Self
	Eirini Polychronaki is an undergraduate student at the School of English of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Amongst her interests are writing, teaching, learning foreign languages and exploring her spirituality.
Sitting on a Bench in Saranta Ekklisies, Thessaloniki
	Kyriaki Arnaouti is a senior undergraduate student at the School of English at the Aritstotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. From a very young age, one of her main interests has been language in all its forms, essentially leading to her studies and focus on translation and literature. In the meantime, she discovered her interest in gender and sexuality, as well as literary representations of the body through the work of others, or even her own.
The Persimmon
	Lydia Makri is an undergraduate student in the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Poetry has been for her an intriguing subject even before entering the university, which over the years has amplified and flourished due to all the available stimuli. Apart from poetry, she furthermore displays passion for the Arts in general, such as cinema and literature and hopes to find ways to make the most out of her interests after graduating.
Days of 2006
	Maria Petasi is an undergraduate student in the School of English at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her interest in poetry sparked in her years of studying in the School along with her already existing one in translation studies. In the recent years, her ever-growing fondness for poetry prompted her to explore the field of literary translation and, more specifically, its interdisciplinarity with gender and social studies.
Flaming June
	Penny (Panagiota-Paraskevi) Menekou is from Chalkidiki, Greece, and she is a student at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in the School of English. Thanks to the course Lit7-444 Creative Workshop Writing: Poetry with Dr. Christopher Bakken she had chosen to attend, she started composing her own poems. Her poetry revolves around the arts and the Greek history, customs and traditions.
A Postcard from Thessaloniki
	Ruzan Virabyan is an Armenian student of English in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, aspiring to be a teacher. She has been a resident of Greece for the past few years and draws inspiration from her homeland and her new surroundings for her poetry. She finds Greeks warm and welcoming, but her heart and mind are still in the Armenian highlands.
I Just Told my 53-year-old Dad There’s Nothing More Evil than a Priest as we’re Driving through his Childhood Village, Zagliveri
	Vasilis (Bill) Fragios is an undergraduate student of English (2017-2022) at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Aside from dabbling in poetry writing, he works as a freelance English teacher and has been an active member of the European Youth Parliament since 2015. In the future, he hopes to pursue a career in drama and theatre studies – both as a researcher and as a practitioner of applied theatre.