Poet Stelios Mormoris joins me today to chat about his debut collection, The Oculus.
Bio:
Native of Boston, MA., Stelios Mormoris is CEO of SCENT BEAUTY, Inc., which markets beauty products worldwide. Citizen of Greece and the U.S., Stelios was born in New York, and lived most of his adult life in Paris.
Stelios is also a contemporary artist, specializing in abstract oil painting. He first studied poetry in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University as a student of William Meredith and Maxine Kumin. He received a B.A. in Architecture from Princeton University, and an M.B.A. from INSEAD [Institut d’Européen d’Administration des Affaires] in Fontainebleau, France.
He has been published in Books of Matches Lit Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Eunoia Review, Fourth River, Gargoyle, Good Life Review, High Shelf Press, Humana Obscura, Midwest Poetry Review, Narrative Magazine, Nassau Literary Review, Press, The Ravens Perch, South Road, Spillway, Sugar House Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Verse, Whelk Walk Review and other literary journals.
Stelios’ debut book of poetry titled The Oculus came out October 2022 by TUPELO PRESS.
Stelios has held positions on the Boards of the French Cultural Center of Boston, Historic New England, the Fragrance Foundation, and ACT-UP. Stelios is an avid gardener and sailor, and a former professional rugby player in France.
Welcome, Stelios. What do you enjoy most about writing poems?
Writing poems is a complex form of dialogue which travels in many directions: to myself, to others, to my ear, and to my eye, as if the poem is another being in the process of speaking to several audiences as I write. I find this a metaphysical process, whereby I am creating another self outside of the self, and it is form of liberation. This multi-faceted sensation is what I enjoy most about writing poetry.
Can you give us a little insight into a few of your poems – perhaps a couple of your favorites?
In “The Apron”, the speaker re-lives the memory of his deceased mother by putting on an apron he finds in her apartment, and re-makes the meal she never finished before she died, while wearing the apron. This poem is about discovery: the speaker remembers small details about his mother, her kitchen, what she used to make, objects in her home, and it is a form of newfound intimacy. But this intimacy, ironically, feels lonely, and punctuates the speaker is, in fact, alone.
The poem turns on itself, with an insight that the very apron the speaker is wearing, cloaked him once before when he was inside his mother while she was carrying him in a state of pregnancy. The poem concludes with the preparation of the meal, and it is a sort of reconciliation.
What I love about this poem is that it is plain diction, and lacks sentiment for an emotional subject. The narrative is rooted in image–what the speaker sees, and feels, and smells. The lines are tight and packed, and economical–which gives the poem force.
In the short poem “Poseidon”, the speaker is driven, like Poseidon, by movement, speed, sex and power. In the simplest of terms, it is a man flaunting his own virility. The allusion to Poseidon’s musculature, strength, speed and force is clear, but the poem succeeds because it is so short, like a bolt.
It is a miniature favorite in that it shows how poetry can be condensed and powerful, and tell a narrative with enjambed syntax, and a curated mix of words, line endings and stanza forms.
What form are you inspired to write in the most? Why?
I am most inspired to write in free verse, often with internal rhymes, and some structured stanzas. I love experimenting with formal forms like sestinas, villanelles, and sonnets, where appropriate, and I suppose that puts me out of step with most poets writing today. But I love the power of free verse when it is imbued with a aural and visual structure that is deciphered upon many readings.
I am proud of my poem, “Zeus”, which is a series of rhymed couplets. At first the poem clearly rhymes, in a sing-songy way, and has a sonic power, like the dog it describes. Then the poem begins to stray from the clear rhymes, to alternating rhymes, and then half-rhymes, but then concludes with clear rhymes again. It is my music.
The diction appears plain, but upon further readings is dense with image, metaphor, and simile, and in the end describes the intense sense of belonging between the speaker and his dog, and the love between them comes through without being sentimental.
What type of project are you working on next?
I am finalizing my second book of poetry, titled Perishable.This is more adventurous than my first, and outwardly covers themes of alternative sexuality, and that life is in a constant state of evolution, and, in this sense, things around us are constantly perishing, renewing, and perishing.
I think this collection is more “exhibitionist”, with more daring language, subject matter and visual formats.
Interestingly, I have included in this volume more prose poems, in my own style, broken into poetic stanzas, composed with long sentences of intense description.
The title poem, which concludes this collection, is a treatise by a speaker who is a boy spending a day with his grandfather, who is a gardener. It is clearly autobiographical, but the poem immerses the reader with details of the experiences of his grandfather in nature, with plants, with clients, in a locale that alludes to the constant state of nature dying, and being re-born–that life is in a constant state of decay and re-creation
Of course, the poem makes light of the inevitable truth that the grandfather he loves will physically perish, but that the memory of their love outlasts that decaying world around them.
When did you first consider yourself a writer / poet?
The day I came home from school at the age of 13 and my mother left me a copy of Kahlil Gibran, THE PROPHET, with liner notes. I moved to this idea of being a ‘philosopher’, of using words to move others. And then the next week she left on my bed a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which I consumed like a “kid in a candy store”, pardon the analogy–but I was whipped up with excitement by the words, rhymes, structure, and meditations on love and self-understanding.
I still did not think of myself of being a so-called “poet”–the word itself carries a certain weight that is burdensome. But, in a workshop with my professor, William Meredith, at Princeton in the 70’s, I wrote and read aloud a poem called “Sunstruck”, which was very imagistic, a sort of surreal mural of (my?) parents’ acrimonious marriage. And after I read it, there was a sort of silence in the room and Mr. Meredith (whom I later discovered won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry), just smiled and said softly “excellent.”
This gave me small wings, and, from there, I read and read many contemporary poets, and starting finding my voice, in the context of theirs.
How do you research markets for your work, perhaps as some advice for not-yet-published poets?
I think there is no rhyme or reason here. I grew up reading THE NEW YORKER, and, there, discovered many great poets, whose books I read. Then I migrated to POETRY, and, from there to the PARIS REVIEW and KENYON REVIEW. As the decades went by, I saw the proliferation of literary journals, showcasing the great diversity of writing in the English language. It was actually quite confusing to me: to witness the great splintering of styles and sensibilities, to the point I was put in a corner where I had to ask myself, “Who am I?”, “What is my voice?”. The vocabulary of poetry became vaster, as if I was introduced to different alphabets.
After much soul-searching, I went back to my beginnings where I wrote in a style familiar to me, and not copying what I read, or trying not to imitate–or surpass–the impressive poetry written by so many other writers. I aimed to be true to myself. I always felt musicians had to grapple with this dilemma, in the context of the “marketplace”.
So…..I do not do “research” per se, as if there were an overarching strategy on where to publish my work. I read many journals, and get a sense of what the journal’s sensibility is, and simply ask myself will my poetry “fit in” this journal. It is akin to identifying your clan….and it takes time, and a good degree of understanding what characterizes you as a poet.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
My quirk is that I have these moments of “trouvaille”–a great French word, which means “finding something magical…..”. My “trouvailles” could be a word, or a phrase, or a headline in the news, or a piece of a conversation I overhear in a restaurant, or a phrase from a live speech….and they strike me, and I begin to obsess on how this mix of words can become a poem.
This can happen anywhere, at anytime, and, very often, at the most inconvenient moments–such a when as CEO of a Company, I was in a meeting in front of teams of employees discussing P&L’s and working capital, and someone mentioned off-handedly to someone else, they bought a new “autumn sweater.” So right now the title of a new poem “Autumn Sweaters” is floating around my imagination, taunting me to write it.
It feels like a joyous disease to be struck this way with such minor, internal inspirations. These then send me into a cycle of writing a narrative around the genesis of the poem, that becomes hard to stop, like a train without brakes.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a professional athlete. First, I wanted to be a baseball player, then later in life, a bodybuilder, then a rugby player (which I played professionally in France, while I was an executive at a beauty company.) Of course my manifold mind got a hold of me, and I was interested in too many things, intellectually and otherwise, that prevented me from single-mindedly focus on this wonderful dream.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
It occurs to me that all readers should be thanked by writers for their reading. It is a form of tribute, and it is a form of confidence and belief in someone else.
Also, my heart goes out to the LGBQT+ community in the United States, who as activists created a movement of searching for equality, that has spread around the world. It seems extremely self-evident that all people have the right to be who they are, marry whom they want, pay taxes on the same terms as others, to identify as one gender or another, or not all, to have employment opportunities on an equal footing to others, based on merit–and, ultimately, to express themselves without judgement.
It is an interesting phenomenon that very often collective struggles result in greater progress, and the LGBQT+ movement is one of them
The last idea I wanted to share with my readers is that I gravitate toward writing that is aesthetic, positive, informative, and sensorial–true to the subject or idea I set out to express. I try to avoid political messaging, self-pity, and using poetry as a form of public self-healing in my writing–which I see volumes of around me. It is valid, and beautiful and meaningful, for sure, not my bailiwick.
For these domains, I save my expression in conversations among friends, and see a sort of “separation of church and state”, between my poetry, and the outside world, so to speak.
Thank you for allowing me to express myself in this blog. I learn about myself when I answer such interesting questions. Bonne journée. Stelios
You’re quite welcome. Thanks for being here today!
Links:
Website | Tupelo Quarterly | The Good Life | The Raven’s Perch