Antigone Kefala

Antigone Kefala Poems

Antigone Kefala Biography

Antigone Kefala was born in 1935 in Braila, Romania, to Greek parents. The family were resetlled in Greece after the war, and then migrated to New Zealand (this is the subject of her poem ‘The Place’). She gained a BA and an MA in French Literature at Victoria University in Wellington. Since 1960 she has lived in Australia. Kefala has published four books of poetry, The Alien (1973), Thirsty Weather (1978), European Notebook (1988) and Absence (1992, 2nd edition 1998); and four books of prose, The First Journey (1975), The Island (1984), Alexia (1984), and most recently, Summer Visit: Three Novellas (Giramondo, 2002). Her poetry and prose has also been published in bilingual English-Greek and English-Czech editions, and in a trilingual English-French-Greek edition.)

The Best Poem Of Antigone Kefala

Transfiguration

Underground. The shadows
crowded in the room.
Then light began to pour
from the arched ceiling,
exploding light
in which they danced
jumped up to touch it
and be made of light,
the light
a rain that they were
splashing in, their hands
reached upwards
bathed in these splinters
of white glass.

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