What happens when Cavafy enters the means of mass transport

What happens when lines from poems are put out there using the omnibus of mass communication platforms? How does poetry relate to everyday life? What sort of perils does Cavafy face when… he takes the Metro? How ready are we to treat poetic texts as a domain for dialogue and re-creation?

Academics, researchers, art critics and journalists will be coming together on the Main Stage of the Onassis Stegi to discuss Cavafy on public transport on Monday 4 November 2013.

Taking their cue from the recent Cavafy Archive media campaign on Athens’ buses, trams and underground, the panelists will be discussing the place art might hold in our everyday lives, the ways in which poetry can raise issues relating to cultural heritage and its management, the aesthetic of the fragment, and the political dimension of popular and Pop culture.

The participants will try to draw conclusions from the campaign’s public juxtapositions of poetry and life and explore the range of ways in which C.P. Cavafy’s work is read and received today.