"THE GREAT PROVOCATEUR" by Dimitris Papadimitriou

"A Song Cycle dedicated to intellectual, moral and aesthetic liberty—and, why not, to libertinism!

Which is say it's dedicated to the poetically rebellious, the poem as act of disobedience. To provocation, in other words.

Dedicated, too, to the uncompromising hunt for an immaculate, unsullied, absolute truth which automatically consigns its standard-bearers to the fringes of society and to an unseen Inquisition. Because there's nothing more deathly anti-social than large doses of uncompromising truth.

Here, we present the first of three parts; the other two, God willing, will be with us in the near future. Aristophanes, Villon, Embirikos, Cavafy, Koropoulis, Lapathiotis, Leontaris, Brecht, John Donne, Palamas, Rilke, Sachlikis are just some of the protagonists in this cycle of heretical poetic forms.

The cycle's title has a purposefully 'heretical’ ring to it which, by honouring sarcastically also, by necessity, scorns honorifically (!) All the above, needless to say, should be taken in a spirit of jest...which, as some of us know, would have gone down well with someone who knew a lot about songs and heresy, our very own Manos Hadjidakis!

Literary consultant, Giorgos Koropoulis"

– Dimitris Papadimitriou