Carol Sansour: I can’t talk about this on the phone…

“I can’t talk about this on the phone…” is originated from my translation of a hundred poems by Katerina Gogou into Arabic. The project is based on the connection between translation, historical research, self-reflection, and artistic expression. Beyond language barriers, the research seeks to reveal the complex political and socioeconomic currents that gave rise to Gogou’s profound poetry.

“I can’t talk about this on the phone…” delves into the political and social milieu of Gogou’s era, unraveling her activism and its poetic echoes. This exploration concurrently intertwines with my personal narrative as an Arab immigrant woman in contemporary Athens, creating a dialogue between the past and the present.

The investigation of what it means to be a political subject in the public sphere, a concept deeply ingrained in Gogou’s own work, is at the center of the project. As a poet, I also negotiate the complex intersectionality that a political existence in an unfamiliar setting represents. The research aims to describe the difficulties and achievements of navigating the public domain, while considering the confluence of individual and group narratives.

The format in which the conclusions of the research will be presented is not yet decided. It will depend on connections created and findings. “I can’t talk about this on the phone…” could be offered as a written essay, poetry, visual art, audio recordings, an experimental performance, or a combination thereof. Beneath all these forms, nevertheless, lies a common element, coming from an Arab woman poet living in today’s Athens, from another era and with different political and cultural realities: a letter to Katerina Gogou, updating her on the present state of affairs in Athens and highlighting the enduring value of her work.

In essence, this project is a deep dive into the political identity of an Arab woman in Athens, navigating the intricacies of public existence. It aspires to contribute to cross-cultural understanding by fostering a nuanced dialogue between different temporal and cultural realms.

This long-term project has also brought me into collaboration with the Kalogerakis brothers, whose talent and enthusiasm transformed translation into performance, into a battleground of language and identity. Where are the borders? Do we really need to understand one another in order to feel, to act, to resist?

Everything has shifted since the project’s inception. What was meant to culminate in a letter to Katerina has been repeatedly undone and reconfigured. Is it history, genocide, erasure, that interrupts any attempt at closure? Over the past two years, I have changed profoundly. Not for better or worse, but toward something rougher, more suspicious. I now understand disappointment not as an abstract feeling, but as a condition.

Whenever I meet someone who knew Katerina on the personal level, they are careful to tell me how dark she was, how extreme, how sad, how “crazy”. How everything in her life was taken to the edge. I listen, uncertain what to do with these warnings. I do not romanticize despair, but I cannot ignore the question that lingers beneath her work and now beneath mine: if living is an act of resistance, what, then, is worth living for? This project/research, is not, I think, an attempt to answer these questions. It is a lived, ongoing practice. A commitment to Gogou, not as a subject to be examined, but as a companion in thought, language, and resistance.

I write.