This monumental work of experimental poetry comprises three books published in various editions over a period of thirty years and is organized around “a cluster of concepts including the scapegoat, the quest, the return of the dead, redemption, physical suffering, [and] mental illness.” In the tradition of prominent postmodernist authors such as William Gass, Thomas Pynchon, and Samuel Beckett, Lyacos has artfully employed language to vividly accentuate the anguish his protagonists experience throughout the series.

In truth, I suspect it’s almost better not to know too much about this backstory. By withholding information, Lyacos’ and Sullivan’s text, sparse and menacing, challenges the reader to create their own story, and the book is all the better for it.

However, while Z213: Exit is definitely hard-going, it’s nevertheless absorbing and enjoyable, even if one read is nowhere near enough to unlock its mysteries. The aim of the book, and who and what it’s about, may be unclear, but there’s enough to enjoy in the puzzles and the writing to make me want to revisit it.

READING AT BEYOND BAROQUE, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIAMay 30, 2019 @ 8:00 pm Read article at beyondbaroque

RINCON UNIT and WHETSTONE UNIT See website RINCON UNIT See website WHETSTONE UNIT

READING AT MALVERN BOOKS, AUSTIN, TEXASMay 23, 2019 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm Read article at malvernbooks

READING AT RM220, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANAMay 17, 2019 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pmDimitris Lyacos: Poena Damni  read article antenna.works

As I read The First Death, I imagine the carpet of corpses lining the Mediterranean. Strata and strata of limbs—now bones—piled up during recent decades, all belonging to shiploads of migrants seeking escape through Europe. I can’t help connecting the poetry under my eyes with this precise scenery. The most powerful, the most disturbing imagery Lyacos paints makes sense in this context where it naturally embeds itself.

How did a book of Greek poetry become one of the most-discussed and most-lauded pieces of contemporary European literature? Garrett Phelps, Assistant Managing Editor at Asymptote, explains what makes Dimitris Lyacos’ Poena Damni trilogy is so unusual—and so difficult to describe.

In conclusion, Poena Damni is a post-tragic work. Certainly, it does not follow from tragedy, if tragedy is intended as an ensemble of formal characteristics, but unequivocally describes the tortured and tragic fall of the (post)modern subject: A person made of one thousand screams whose core of being has broken apart and is spread out like an archipelago of anonymous islands on a vast empty surface.

A Dissociated Locus: Dimitris Lyacos Interviewed by Andrew Barrett - BOMB Magazine. The writer of the Poena Damni trilogy on analytic philosophy, polyphonous narrators, and alternate consciousness.

Your work has been widely characterised as “genre-defying”, “avant-garde” and “postmodern”, engaging with major narratives of the Western Canon and utilising fragmentation. In the epigraph to your third book in your Poena Damni trilogy, The First Death, you quote Hodges: “Nothing in this book is original, except perhaps by mistake”. Can you comment on how this relates to your writing?

Transpoesie 2018 - Brussels October 2018 - Reading at the Balassi Institute - 11 October 2018, 8pm

One of the most original and significant works to have come out of Europe in the new millenium is Dimitris Lyacos' trilogy, Poena Damni. Despite its short length, the text took over a period of thirty years to complete with the individual books revised and republished in different editions during ...

Poena Damni : Avec les gens du pont Dimitris Lyacos ; Michel Volkovitch ; Carole Wessel Éditeur : Le miel des anges Titre original : Με τους ανθρώπους από τη γέφυρα Prix de vente au public (TTC) : 12,00 € 68 pages ; 17,00 x 11,00 cm ; broché ISBN 979-10-93103-50-1 EAN ...

In Dimitris Lyacos’s The First Death densely layered fragments fluidly reference the Bible and Classical Greek literature. The white space around these passages heighten the stark sense of loneliness present in the book. The desperation in this book explores a thanatic urge through multiple vectors. [...]