Huntington Poet Makes Greek Cause His Own

George Wallace, Huntington resident and former poet laureate of Suffolk County, will move onto the international stage Wednesday at the Greek mission in New York.

He will read from his book EOS: Abductor of Men, a bilingual poetry collection dedicated to the struggles of the Greek people.

He talked with Huntington Patch this week.

Question: What is the event you're going to be involved in and what are you doing? 

Answer: The event is a bilingual benefit reading of poetry to support Project Hope for Greece, at the Permanent Mission of Greece to the United Nations, featuring poetry from my collection EOS: Abductor of Men (translated to Greek by Lina Sipitanou). The work will be interpreted in Greek and English by actors Anthoula Katsimatides, Martha Tompoulidou, Marina Stenos, Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges. To celebrate this unique book and to raise awareness of the ongoing crisis in Greece, publisher Three Rooms Press has organized this free reading. All profits from books sold at the event will be used to support Project Hope for Greece, a movement aimed at creating philanthropy amongst North Americans in response to the worst financial and humanitarian crisis facing Greece in an entire generation. 

Question: How did you get involved?

Answer: In my capacity as Suffolk County Poet Laureate and more recently as writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, I have been engaged in community to community outreach to groups of poets worldwide to share insights and ideas on the written arts. One such effort has led me to visit with poets in Athens, Greece on several occasions and my relationship with the writers there has grown -- not only as a person with Greek ancestry, but because of the aesthetic commonalities that I have found writers in the NY area share with contemporary writers in Athens and around Greece. This led to a collaborative effort to create the book EOS, a collection of my work translated into Greece. As that book was being developed, my awareness of the growing humanitarian crisis in that country fostered by the austerity package put forth by the EU and the IMF led me to dedicate the book to the cause of the ordinary Greeks suffering from these policies. It was Three Rooms Press publishers Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges who came up with the idea of a benefit reading at the consulate, which I enthusiastically agreed to once I learned of the good work of Project Hope for Greece. 

Question: What should Huntington residents know about the issues at hand?

Answer: I'm proud to be a Huntington native and feel we are among the most fortunate people in the world. And I have seen, over the years, that Huntington people are a generous and sharing people. But generosity is a flame that ought to be renewed in every one of us from time to time. I don't expect Huntington residents to jump on this particular bandwagon. I just hope people will appreciate this effort and maybe take a fresh look at their own lives and see if there is some new thing they can do to help others less fortunate than ourselves. 

Question: What else are you working on?

Answer: I'm deeply involved in fostering the poetry series at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, the barn in Huntington, and participate in groups of poets from the young writers at the Muse Exchange in Setauket to the Avante Garde writers at Great Weather for Media in Manhattan. I'm also working on a number of outreach initiatives, as writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace and as a representative of Long Island poetry, to share our accomplishments and our art with communities across the U.S. and in Europe. In recent years I've collaborated with Woody Guthrie Poets in Oklahoma, hipster poets in Woodstock, working class poets in Cleveland and Beat poets in Lowell, Mass. I've given lectures and presentations at literary shrines ranging from the John Steinbeck Centre in Salinas, Calif., to the Robert Burns Centre in Dumfries, Scotland, and more locally at the Nassau County Museum of Art and the Pollock-Krasner House in Springs. The opportunities are endless, it is an exciting time for me and I'm glad to have had an opportunity to share a little bit of it with your readers! 

The reading starts at 7 p.m., Press & Communication Office of the Permanent Mission of Greece to the UN at  305 E 47th St., 2nd Floor New York.

Free admission and complimentary food and beverage provided by GRK: Fresh Greek, YA Mastiha Liqueur.