Vasilios Theodorakis – An Online Author

Her house,
Numbered on a whim,
Stood firm against our suburb’s change –
Claiming asbestos as its wonder,
Indestructible as it is.

Her husband,
In conversation – lit up her eyes.
Missed desperately,
She spoke fondly
Of his construction at the back.

Her neighbour – the one that stayed,
Known as possum man to the kids,
Bugger Lugs to her.
Observing his antics, eyebrows raised,
She tolerated his ways – taken with fistfuls of salt.

Our house – the one on the corner,
Forever labeled the Kelly’s,
Held stories of her son and their daughter,
Asleep on the floor,
More comfortable it seemed, than his bed at his mum’s.

Our family,
She greeted with a Xmas type card,
Embraced without judgement
She snuck it past doors,
Wondering on tip toe – who we might be.

Our presence,
In time – seeded many a smile.
Rewarded – now and then, with a cup of tea or a beer.
A little something, she’d say, to toast
The couple – she was certain, would stay.

Her dottering gone – I still radar the yards.
Peering over our fence,
As much as our cat – who continues to hope,
That her saucer returns,
With his contraband milk and a pat on the back.

Dedication (For Betty Cutlack)
Audio Version (To Be Added)
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2008

Seasons Greetings to all. This will be my last site update until next year – so please feel free to revisit some of the year’s material via the poetry index. I’ll resume my editing and uploading of verse (drawn from the last 24 years) as of Friday 11th January 2008. It’s been a long year and I’ll be taking some annual leave (for a change) – I need to unplug from the Net and step away from the Computer for a few weeks. :)

Before I do however, I’d like to thank the site’s many readers for their feedback and support from (across the globe). Its been very rewarding to discover that material which was stored away in archive boxes (and forgotten) for so many years is of some use and enjoyment to people out there on the Net.

This last set of poems, rounds up the year’s uploads to 52 – a good start I think, but there’s a lot more material to get through in the next few years.

The poems for this week include:
– Learning
– Human Within Humanity
– Once Upon A…
From the “Growing Up” anthology

And:
– Curvature
From a series of ungrouped poems written in 2001.

All things going well, I look forward to resuming my verse uploads in January 2008. Until then, keep safe and have a wonderful holiday/religious period.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – December 2007

The poems for this week include:
– Life
– Let It Be
– The Oneness Of Man And Woman.
From the “Growing Up” anthology

And:
– Cleared City Land
From a series of ungrouped poems written in 1998.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – November 2007

The poems for this week include:
– Loneliness
– A Thought – No, Just A Feeling…
– An Everlasting Question
From the “Growing Up” anthology

And:
– Beginnings
From a series of ungrouped poems written in 1997.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – November 2007

This is the first week of my new posting format i.e. three old poems and one new poem per week.

The poems for this week take the total number to 40. Editing and uploading has occurred for 13 consecutive weeks.

The titles include:
– Love
– Parting With An Incapacitated Friend
– Completeness
From the “Growing Up” anthology

And:
– Monkeyed
From a series of ungrouped poems written in 2006.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – November 2007

As highlighted on the 26th September 2007 – I need to stay realistic and accept what is working and avoid things that aren’t working. i.e. I need to fine-tune the format being using to get this material (poetry) online, otherwise I risk abandoning the process altogether.

Lets review what has worked so far and what hasn’t…

What Has Worked:
– three poems a week.
– poems in the order in which they were written.

What Has Not Worked:
– not uploading any recent poems.
– audio recordings which are taking far too long to generate.
– discovering mistakes in poems that have already had their audio and text uploaded to the site.

Because of the above issues, my weekly upload will now be based on the following:
– editing and uploading the next three poems in the order in which they were written.
– uploading a more recent poem each week.
– not carrying out any audio recordings until I’m certain a poem has reached a static (and correct) form.
– adding an audio version (MP3) and a printable version (PDF) to a poem’s posting once I know a poem is stable.

What does this mean for visitors? Audio recordings will be added independent of text uploads (and only when I’m certain that I haven’t missed any editorial corrections). The number of poem uploads will increase to four per week i.e. three older poems and one recent poem.

This week will be the last of the three poem per week format. I’d like to thank the site’s many visitors for their patience while I continue to iron out “how to proceed” in populating the site with its content. :)

The poems for this week include:
– Poverty
– Friend
– Budgerigar

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – November 2007

After talking to a number of people, and after experiencing my own “cringe” associated with this early work, I’ve decided to mix in a more recent piece with each week’s postings.

Though this early writing is a genuine reflection of where I was at during the 1980’s, its not much of a reflection of what I write today. As a result, I ask that readers grimace and ‘bare with me’ as I get this early material online. I hope that the anthologies which follow “Growing Up” are more to people’s liking.

I’ve also realised that some pieces are primarily thoughts – diary entries on scraps of paper which don’t have any poetic form at all. I’ve decided that instead of trying to incorporate these pieces as poetry, I’ll upload the material to the prose section instead i.e. ensuring that the work is still documented and available, but not being passed off as poetry.

All pieces from this week’s selection are still part of the “Growing Up” anthology – the splice of “Growing Up” and more recent work will begin in a few weeks time week.

The interesting thing about this week’s work is that it includes poems with various forms of rhyme. Rhyme was a technique that I dabbled in before developing my own style. Rhyming schemes haven’t been used in the bulk of my writing, as I felt they set up to many restraints for what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.

Again I’ve run out of time in regards to the audio versions – I will endeavor to get back to making recordings as soon as possible.

The poems for this week include:
– A Thought Of Peace.
– A Father’s Stand…
– The Loss Of Love?

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – October 2007

This week’s selection comes from 1983 – i.e. the “Growing Up” anthology.

It includes:
– The Universe – Force
– Nationality
– Time

My voice is almost back to normal, so I should be able to add audio versions for all subsequent postings. I’ll also endeavour to add an audio component to the last three week’s worth of material. This may take about a month to complete.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – October 2007

The next few weeks of poetry come from a long ago era, written by a still healthy, bright eyed, naive youth who was all of 16 years of age. Bands like “Huey Lewis & The News” were big around that time, hairstyles were even bigger and Commodore Computers were all the rage. I barely recall this 16 year old’s life, and were it not for a couple of photos and these pieces of writing, all records of that person would have been lost close to a quarter of a century ago.

Ironically, many of the hopes this adolescent wrote about – like not wanting to be a wage slave, did become my reality. (Not through choice mind you, but through circumstance – as a result, I have this to say to any young people out there – ‘be careful what you wish for, it may just come to pass!’) Because the ‘lad’s’ writing is so distant from what I do today, I’ve tried to keep the editing of these pieces to a minimum. In many ways, these poems have a greater (personal) historical significance than any poetic value – i.e. they track/highlight how my writing style developed. This first anthology was collated from 1983 through to 1990 and titled – “Growing Up”. It contains more than 50 pieces in total.

This week’s selection comes from 1983 and includes:
– Emptiness Within
– Recovery
– The Circle

I’ve also scanned some art work from this same era. The first image is of calligraphy I had created for the folder that housed all the poems (in this anthology). The second image is of a drawing I was going to use for the cover of the anthology i.e. if it ever got published. As I don’t intend to use this image, when I finally self publish this material, I thought it might be of some interest to web readers.

Unfortunately, my voice is still not 100%, so these poems will also have to wait for their audio to be added at a later date.

Finally, please keep in mind, that it wasn’t until 1987 that I started to add exact dates to pieces. As a result, poems from 1983 to 1986 are arranged in the order in which they were written and within the year in which they were written, but the actual date that they appear on this site is only an estimate.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – October 2007

The poems for this week are quite recent – written in 2004, 2005 and 2007. Unfortunately I’ve come down with a bout of laryngitis, so the audio versions of these pieces will have to wait for a later date. This posting concludes the ungrouped material which I’ve used to kick start the site. As of next week, I’ll be going back to the beginning and uploading poems in the order in which they were written. I’ll be starting with work from 1983 i.e. the “Growing Up” anthology.

In the meantime, this week’s selection includes:
– A Neighbour Weeding
– Out Of Mind
– Cleo The Cat

In addition to this I’ve finally added the about the author page to give readers some idea of who they’re dealing with here. :)

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – October 2007