Undressing the Earth

Becky Dennison Sakellariou was born and raised in the United States outside of Boston, Massachusetts, and in 1965, she moved to Greece where she married, settled and thrived for more than forty years. Her professional work has included teaching, writing, editing, and counseling. Sakellariou’s attachment to Greece and her abiding roots in New England have given her the gift of two singular perspectives on peoples, cultures, geography, and daily living which inhabit and enrich Sakellariou’s writing.

Sakellariou has written and published poetry for many years. Her chapbook, The Importance of Bone, won first prize in the Blue Light Press (San Francisco) competition of 2005, and her full-length book, Earth Listening, was published in 2010 by Hobblebush Books of Brookline, NH. In 2013, Finishing Line Press (Tennessee) brought out her chapbook, What Shall I Cry?, which was followed by a two-year long collaboration with Greek poet, Maria Laina, for The Possibility of Red/Η Πιθανοτιτα του Κοκκινου, a bilingual edition of eleven of her poems, also published by Hobblebush Books. In 2015, Passager Books (Baltimore) brought out her art/poetry book, Gathering the Soft, a meditation on cancer illustrated by Tandy Zorba. Sakellariou’s latest book, No Foothold in this Geography, is a collection of the last five years of her work.

In the past few years, world political events have empowered Sakellariou’s writing, infusing it with tension, contradiction and even ambiguity. Most recently, her attention has been centered around the refugee situation in Europe, specifically Turkey and Greece, and her own experiences in the camps and with the immigrants themselves. Her poetry reflects her endless amazement at both the power of memory and the persistence of the mystery of all things.

Paperback: 67 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books/Aldrich Press (September 6, 2018)