When most people think about modern Greek poetry, some famous names immediately spring to mind, such as George Seferis, Odysseas Elytis, and Constantine Cavafy. The more recent poets are perhaps not as well-known but their work still resonates powerfully in today’s Greece as they capture the spirit of the times much like the poets of the past generations.

Greek poetry in English translation is a great way to draw attention to the dynamic work of contemporary Greek poets and also expand the audience for these gifted poets among those who are not fluent in Greek. It might even inspire some to learn Greek to read the original text.

The Light That Burns Us by Jazra Khaleed is the English-language debut of Khaleed, one of Greece’s most radical poetic voices. This expanded edition, published by World Poetry Books, “is an unapologetic indictment of the wrongs faced by immigrants, by a rudderless young European generation, by leftist activists in a Greece and a Europe blighted by neoliberal policies of deregulation and privatization,” as noted in the book’s description.

Edited by Karen Van Dyck, with translations by Peter Constantine, Viktoras Iliopoulos, Sarah McCann, Jason Rigas, Max Ritvo, Angelos Sakkis, Josephine Simple, Brian Sneeden, and Karen Van Dyck, and a preface by Peter Constantine, The Light That Burns Us offers an unflinching look at Greece and the issues of today through thought-provoking and emotionally-charged poems. Khaleed challenges the reader with his forceful words to draw us out of our comfort zone and into the harsh world, highlighting what so many people experience on a daily basis as outsiders, the loneliness, isolation, prejudice, the need to connect with fellow human beings while others often turn their backs or even make the situation worse.

As noted in his biography, Khaleed is an Athens-based poet, translator, and filmmaker whose works focus on issues of working-class experiences and cultures, homeland and origin, immigration and war, and are an indictment of racism, social injustice, and classism in contemporary Greece. He has published four collections of poetry and his work is widely translated into European and Asian languages. English translations of his poems have appeared in The Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. Khaleed is a founding editor of the Athenian poetry magazine Teflon and specializes in translating political and experimental poetry into Greek. His short films have been featured at international film festivals. The Light That Burns Us is the first book of his poetry to appear in English translation.

Peter Constantine writes about Khaleed in the book’s preface, noting that: “Born in Chechnya in 1979, he was a poet who seemed very Greek and not Greek at all; his language was sharp, sophisticated, and controlled, with elegant rhythms and contemporary street speech that often had an undertow of a sophisticated language with moments of Byzantine and New Testament Greek. In his poetry there is a power, erudition, and control that Greek readers could not equate with a man named Jazra, a poet whom no Greek literary press or magazine was prepared to publish.”

The Light That Burns Us by Jazra Khaleed, published by World Poetry Books, is set to be released October 10 and is available for pre-order online: https://shorturl.at/t8P46.