Nikos Fokas, poet of the ‘marginal experience’

January 18, 2006 Throughout its course, Nikos Fokas’ poetic work has presented a remarkable unity of style and a constancy in the way he ponders on the meaning and the mission of poetry. Based on his more mature poems, the reader can observe that for Fokas, poetry is a marginal personal event, a personal and unparalleled experience which he tries to transfer into as common an idiom as possible. Throughout its entire course, Fokas’ work has followed the path of a poet who succeeded in creating his own voice from early on.

What Fokas’ language is after is not a fleeing passion but the critical moment when existence becomes fully aware of its absolute loneliness, its abode in a desolate country, its unapproachable place in a universe irrevocably cast into decadence. In other words, something more profound, more meaningful, something that defines the ontological dimension of human fate. We could say that Nikos Fokas’ poetry functions in the manner of an argument that needs as much lucidity as possible in its phrasing so that it may support the poet’s attempts to see clearly. At the same time, however, it is an argument that originates entirely from within the poet’s empirical world. In a language that is analytical and grounded in common sensuality, he attempts to capture the essence of small and unimportant incidents, of the minimal moments through which the general and panhuman elements may kaleidoscopically open up for the benefit of the reader.

Fokas’ work, from his early collections to his latest pieces, is pervaded by an endeavour to crystallise marginal emotions – an endeavour which we might say traces a parallel path to that of contemporary painting. In his first books, Fokas, appears with the characteristics of his work somewhat fleshed out; his language is not only sharper but also more pugnacious. His thematic roots, however, are easily discerned even in this early phase. Having said that, as time goes by, Fokas’ language becomes more and more literal, more and more on target, more poignant and pithy. For example, in his latest collection we are fascinated by the way he constantly reminds us of a person who feels alien within the cycle of the life’s repetitions; this is something that, without a doubt, can be ascertained from the earliest stages of his work in the bipolar principle of Paradise versus Hell, which, in a broader sense, symbolises the marginal opposing forces that lay a claim on human life.

If, according to an older quote by Fokas’ himself, poetry is “the prose of our marginal experiences”, only a language purged of its highly emotional load is able to distinguish what is substantial and constant in our forged reality. One might even say that one of the most fundamental axes of Fokas’ poetics lies exactly here: in this eternal motion of the poetic ego towards that which is exchanged through various tricks, shy of handing its deeper substance over so easily. The vitally important quest for lucidity presupposes an austere mode of expression, but this in its turn demands an even more advanced imagination, which the poet uses as a mirror to depict what is truly meaningful, that is, what Fokas himself calls “marginal experience”.