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Alexis Lykiard

October 30, 2023

Alexis Lykiard (born 1940) is a British writer of Greek heritage, who began his prolific career as novelist and poet in the 1960s. His poems about jazz have received particular acclaim, including from Maya Angelou, Hugo Williams, Roy Fisher, Kevin Bailey and others.[1] Lykiard is also known as translator of Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont, Alfred Jarry, Antonin Artaud and many notable French literary figures. In addition, Lykiard has written two highly praised intimate memoirs of Jean Rhys: Jean Rhys Revisited (2000) and Jean Rhys: Afterwords (2006).

Alexis Lykiard
Born
Constantinos Alexis Lykiardopoulos

1940 (age 82–83)
Athens, Greece
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Novelist, poet, translator
Websitewww.alexislykiard.com

According to David Woolley of Poetry Wales:

As poet, novelist and translator, Alexis Lykiard has won many admirers over the years, but the early novels apart, his work has not received the popular attention it deserves. He has created a body of work that is erudite and witty but never obscure ... Lykiard's language is vivid, breathtaking in its sheer physicality, while still suggesting more ...[2]

Early life and education edit

He was born Constantinos Alexis Lykiardopoulos[3] in Athens, Greece, in 1940, to a mother, Maria Casdagli who was from Salford (her family being involved with the Lancashire cotton industry), while his father Antonis Lykiardopoulos hailed from the island of Chios.[4] Lykiard left Greece with his parents just after the German occupation, at the start of the four-year Greek Civil War,[4] travelling via relatives in Egypt to England. He has lived since 1946 in the UK, where he learned English and was duly anglicised from the age of six.[5]

In 1957, at the age of 17, he won the first Open English Scholarship ever awarded by King's College, Cambridge, graduating with a First-class Honours degree in 1962.[6] While at Cambridge University, he was editor of the university magazine Granta (originally called The Granta).[7]

Writings edit

Fiction edit

Lykiard's debut novel The Summer Ghosts, written when he was a teenager, was a best-seller in the 1960s, dealing explicitly with sex in the era following the Lady Chatterley trial – "Described on the cover blurb as 'the literary bombshell of the year,' this is a young author's 'literary' first novel, full of complexity and poetic descriptions, the narrative framework being the protagonist's drafting a therapeutic memoir while in a Bournemouth psychiatric clinic after a breakdown."[8] Lykiard published eight further novels – including the autobiographical Strange Alphabet (set in the Greece of 1970)[9] and The Drive North (depicting the life of a freelance writer)[10] – before abandoning fiction in favour of his first love, poetry. His last published novel was based on and took its name from the 1982 British drama film Scrubbers directed by Mai Zetterling, and was written to coincide with the film's release.[11]

Poetry edit

His numerous collections of poems have been widely praised, and include Milesian Fables, 1976 ("... an epigrammatic quality – fresh and honest transmissions of experience" – Gavin Ewart; "Very good indeed, entertaining, well-made, and with lovely modulations of mood form grave and tender to the witty and ironic" – Vernon Scannell), Cat Kin, 1994 ("Contagiously cat-like in all its dexterous twists" – Ted Hughes); Living Jazz, 1990 ("Thank you for loving enough and living enough to write Living Jazz" – Maya Angelou) and Skeleton Keys, 2003, of which Angus Calder wrote: "His argument with the world is brilliantly waged. Readers will learn a lot while they are moved by it."[6] The suite of poems that makes up Skeleton Keys explores the troubled era in Greece into which Lykiard was born, reassessing his personal ties with that history – involving family secrets and lies, public and private betrayal and heroism – "to underline how truth and lies are relative at last".[9][12][13]

Lykiard's 40-year collection, Selected Poems 1956–96, received appreciative critical accolades, with Dominic Behan calling Lykiard "The heir to my friend Louis Macneice", while Kevin Bailey wrote: "Alexis Lykiard is the true lineal heir to Lord Rochester and Dean Swift. He is an unsettling poet to read.... Forty years devotion to one craft – that of Writer. And his earthly reward from this philistine and anti-intellectual English society? An obscurity and relative poverty that is the inverse of his talent and contribution he has made to British literary culture... The voice of quality and reason in an age of kitsch... This book is certainly a must buy."[2]

His recent poetry publications have focused on the haiku, and Andy Croft reviewing 2017's Haiku High and Low, which he described as "a new batch of satirical epigrams", said: "Alexis Lykiard as always gives the traditional Japanese lyrical form a witty and satisfying punch."[14] Of his latest publication, Winter Crossings: Poems 2012–2020 Merryn Williams said that "this poet obviously does not mean to go gently into the night. Let's all hope that if we live to be eighty we can write like that. Shoestring can be proud of its newest books."[15]

Non-fiction edit

Lykiard has in addition written non-fiction, including two books that draw on his friendship with Jean Rhys (Lykiard is a long-time resident of Exeter, Devon, and would visit Rhys in the nearby village of Cheriton Fitzpaine, where she lived for the last two decades of her life): Jean Rhys Revisited (2000) and Jean Rhys: Afterwords (2006). Reviewing the former, Iain Sinclair characterised it as "A haunted meditation....A proper tribute to the unjustly reforgotten, as well as an heroic version of the writer's life, the slanted autobiography",[16] while Chris Petit wrote in The Guardian:

The richness of Lykiard's book depends on it offering more than just a memoir....He is alert to the sharpness of Rhys's inner voice, her psychological acuity and the torpor of her stories in contrast to the exactness of her prose; he, like Rhys, is drawn to careless lives. As well as being a meditation on the nature and business of writing, Jean Rhys Revisited is a piece of literary archaeology and a book of enthusiasms (Hamsun, Gissing, George Moore) that performs a useful act of referral. It is also a considered work about old age and beyond – Lykiard writes movingly about Rhys's fear of her approaching death – written by a man who was young when he knew Rhys, and is now approaching his own old age.[17]

As translator edit

Lykiard is a respected translator from French of avant-garde classics, including the complete works of Lautréamont, and novels by Alfred Jarry and Apollinaire (complete and unexpurgated versions of the erotic novellas Les Onze Mille Verges and Les Memoires D'Un Jeune Don Juan for the first time in English), alongside Surrealist prose and poetry, Louis Aragon, Jacques Prévert and Pierre Mac Orlan (the first unexpurgated translation of Masochists in America).[18]

Lykiard's translation of Les Chants de Maldoror by Isidore Ducasse, originally published in 1970 by Allison and Busby, was the first complete annotated English edition of the work,[19] and provided "a close reading of the original text that is stylistically accomplished (as might be expected of a professional translator who made some mark as a novelist in his own right in the 1960s and 1970s)."[20] Exact Change published Maldoror & the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont in 1994, when the Washington Post Book World said: "Alexis Lykiard's translation is both subtle and earthy... this is the best translation now available." Containing "a translation not only of all Ducasse's major texts but also of some more marginal pieces, and a thorough critical apparatus",[20] it remains the only one-volume annotated edition.[21]

Bibliography edit

Fiction edit

  • 1964: The Summer Ghosts (Blond)
  • 1966: Zones (Blond)
  • 1967: A Sleeping Partner (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
  • 1970: Strange Alphabet: A Novel of Modern Greece (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
  • 1973: The Stump (Hart-Davis, MacGibbon)
  • 1974: Instrument of Pleasure (Panther Original)
  • 1976: Last Throes (Panther Original)
  • 1977: The Drive North (Allison & Busby)
  • 1982: Scrubbers (W. H. Allen, ISBN 978-0352313430)

Poetry edit

Non-fiction edit

Selected translations edit

References edit

  1. ^ "Living Jazz", Official website.
  2. ^ a b "Selected Poems 1956–96" page, official website.
  3. ^ Biographical notes on Skeleton Keys page, author's website.
  4. ^ a b "My Greek Background", Alexis Lykiard website.
  5. ^ Biography at Getting On page, alexislykiard.com.
  6. ^ a b Biographical note for Getting On: Poems 2000 – 2012, Author's website.
  7. ^ Alexis Lykiard, "Granta days" 26 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Nthposition, September 2009.
  8. ^ "Romantic Fiction & Drama For Valentine's", South Central MediaScene 2012.
  9. ^ a b "Skeleton Keys" page, Alexis Lykiard website.
  10. ^ Alexis Lykiard, "Taking the Poetry Road", The Penniless Press.
  11. ^ "Scrubbers", Alexis Lykiard website.
  12. ^ "Alexis Lykiard", Corfu Blues.
  13. ^ Catherine Isolde Eisner, "A Prisoner of My Father’s Name: Alexis Lykiard’s Skeleton Keys", 17 April 2014.
  14. ^ Andy Croft, "Original lines on the working-class experience | 21st century poetry", 29 July 2017.
  15. ^ "London Grip Poetry Review – Clare Brant & Alexis Lykiard". London Grip. 24 November 2020.
  16. ^ "Jean Rhys Revisited" page at Alexis Lykiard website.
  17. ^ Chris Petit, "A woman scorned" (review of Jean Rhys Revisited), The Guardian, 24 June 2000.
  18. ^ Alexis Lykiard, "Mac Orlan", The Penniless Press.
  19. ^ "Maldoror Englished", Journal of Les Amis d'Isidore Ducasse, 2001. Reprinted on Alexis Lykiard website.
  20. ^ a b "Comte de Lautréamont", Olive Classe (ed.), Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English: A-L, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000, p. 818.
  21. ^ "Lautréamont – Maldoror & the Complete Works" page at Exact Change.

External links edit

  • Official website.
  • Alan Morrison, "Lykiard's Peak" (review of ''Getting On – Poems 2000 – 2012), The Recusant, 2013.

October 30, 2023
alexis, lykiard, born, 1940, british, writer, greek, heritage, began, prolific, career, novelist, poet, 1960s, poems, about, jazz, have, received, particular, acclaim, including, from, maya, angelou, hugo, williams, fisher, kevin, bailey, others, lykiard, also. Alexis Lykiard born 1940 is a British writer of Greek heritage who began his prolific career as novelist and poet in the 1960s His poems about jazz have received particular acclaim including from Maya Angelou Hugo Williams Roy Fisher Kevin Bailey and others 1 Lykiard is also known as translator of Isidore Ducasse Comte de Lautreamont Alfred Jarry Antonin Artaud and many notable French literary figures In addition Lykiard has written two highly praised intimate memoirs of Jean Rhys Jean Rhys Revisited 2000 and Jean Rhys Afterwords 2006 Alexis LykiardBornConstantinos Alexis Lykiardopoulos1940 age 82 83 Athens GreeceNationalityBritishOccupation s Novelist poet translatorWebsitewww wbr alexislykiard wbr comAccording to David Woolley of Poetry Wales As poet novelist and translator Alexis Lykiard has won many admirers over the years but the early novels apart his work has not received the popular attention it deserves He has created a body of work that is erudite and witty but never obscure Lykiard s language is vivid breathtaking in its sheer physicality while still suggesting more 2 Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Writings 2 1 Fiction 2 2 Poetry 2 3 Non fiction 3 As translator 4 Bibliography 4 1 Fiction 4 2 Poetry 4 3 Non fiction 4 4 Selected translations 5 References 6 External linksEarly life and education editHe was born Constantinos Alexis Lykiardopoulos 3 in Athens Greece in 1940 to a mother Maria Casdagli who was from Salford her family being involved with the Lancashire cotton industry while his father Antonis Lykiardopoulos hailed from the island of Chios 4 Lykiard left Greece with his parents just after the German occupation at the start of the four year Greek Civil War 4 travelling via relatives in Egypt to England He has lived since 1946 in the UK where he learned English and was duly anglicised from the age of six 5 In 1957 at the age of 17 he won the first Open English Scholarship ever awarded by King s College Cambridge graduating with a First class Honours degree in 1962 6 While at Cambridge University he was editor of the university magazine Granta originally called The Granta 7 Writings editFiction edit Lykiard s debut novel The Summer Ghosts written when he was a teenager was a best seller in the 1960s dealing explicitly with sex in the era following the Lady Chatterley trial Described on the cover blurb as the literary bombshell of the year this is a young author s literary first novel full of complexity and poetic descriptions the narrative framework being the protagonist s drafting a therapeutic memoir while in a Bournemouth psychiatric clinic after a breakdown 8 Lykiard published eight further novels including the autobiographical Strange Alphabet set in the Greece of 1970 9 and The Drive North depicting the life of a freelance writer 10 before abandoning fiction in favour of his first love poetry His last published novel was based on and took its name from the 1982 British drama film Scrubbers directed by Mai Zetterling and was written to coincide with the film s release 11 Poetry edit His numerous collections of poems have been widely praised and include Milesian Fables 1976 an epigrammatic quality fresh and honest transmissions of experience Gavin Ewart Very good indeed entertaining well made and with lovely modulations of mood form grave and tender to the witty and ironic Vernon Scannell Cat Kin 1994 Contagiously cat like in all its dexterous twists Ted Hughes Living Jazz 1990 Thank you for loving enough and living enough to write Living Jazz Maya Angelou and Skeleton Keys 2003 of which Angus Calder wrote His argument with the world is brilliantly waged Readers will learn a lot while they are moved by it 6 The suite of poems that makes up Skeleton Keys explores the troubled era in Greece into which Lykiard was born reassessing his personal ties with that history involving family secrets and lies public and private betrayal and heroism to underline how truth and lies are relative at last 9 12 13 Lykiard s 40 year collection Selected Poems 1956 96 received appreciative critical accolades with Dominic Behan calling Lykiard The heir to my friend Louis Macneice while Kevin Bailey wrote Alexis Lykiard is the true lineal heir to Lord Rochester and Dean Swift He is an unsettling poet to read Forty years devotion to one craft that of Writer And his earthly reward from this philistine and anti intellectual English society An obscurity and relative poverty that is the inverse of his talent and contribution he has made to British literary culture The voice of quality and reason in an age of kitsch This book is certainly a must buy 2 His recent poetry publications have focused on the haiku and Andy Croft reviewing 2017 s Haiku High and Low which he described as a new batch of satirical epigrams said Alexis Lykiard as always gives the traditional Japanese lyrical form a witty and satisfying punch 14 Of his latest publication Winter Crossings Poems 2012 2020 Merryn Williams said that this poet obviously does not mean to go gently into the night Let s all hope that if we live to be eighty we can write like that Shoestring can be proud of its newest books 15 Non fiction edit Lykiard has in addition written non fiction including two books that draw on his friendship with Jean Rhys Lykiard is a long time resident of Exeter Devon and would visit Rhys in the nearby village of Cheriton Fitzpaine where she lived for the last two decades of her life Jean Rhys Revisited 2000 and Jean Rhys Afterwords 2006 Reviewing the former Iain Sinclair characterised it as A haunted meditation A proper tribute to the unjustly reforgotten as well as an heroic version of the writer s life the slanted autobiography 16 while Chris Petit wrote in The Guardian The richness of Lykiard s book depends on it offering more than just a memoir He is alert to the sharpness of Rhys s inner voice her psychological acuity and the torpor of her stories in contrast to the exactness of her prose he like Rhys is drawn to careless lives As well as being a meditation on the nature and business of writing Jean Rhys Revisited is a piece of literary archaeology and a book of enthusiasms Hamsun Gissing George Moore that performs a useful act of referral It is also a considered work about old age and beyond Lykiard writes movingly about Rhys s fear of her approaching death written by a man who was young when he knew Rhys and is now approaching his own old age 17 As translator editLykiard is a respected translator from French of avant garde classics including the complete works of Lautreamont and novels by Alfred Jarry and Apollinaire complete and unexpurgated versions of the erotic novellas Les Onze Mille Verges and Les Memoires D Un Jeune Don Juan for the first time in English alongside Surrealist prose and poetry Louis Aragon Jacques Prevert and Pierre Mac Orlan the first unexpurgated translation of Masochists in America 18 Lykiard s translation of Les Chants de Maldoror by Isidore Ducasse originally published in 1970 by Allison and Busby was the first complete annotated English edition of the work 19 and provided a close reading of the original text that is stylistically accomplished as might be expected of a professional translator who made some mark as a novelist in his own right in the 1960s and 1970s 20 Exact Change published Maldoror amp the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautreamont in 1994 when the Washington Post Book World said Alexis Lykiard s translation is both subtle and earthy this is the best translation now available Containing a translation not only of all Ducasse s major texts but also of some more marginal pieces and a thorough critical apparatus 20 it remains the only one volume annotated edition 21 Bibliography editFiction edit 1964 The Summer Ghosts Blond 1966 Zones Blond 1967 A Sleeping Partner Weidenfeld amp Nicolson 1970 Strange Alphabet A Novel of Modern Greece Weidenfeld amp Nicolson 1973 The Stump Hart Davis MacGibbon 1974 Instrument of Pleasure Panther Original 1976 Last Throes Panther Original 1977 The Drive North Allison amp Busby 1982 Scrubbers W H Allen ISBN 978 0352313430 Poetry edit 1963 Journey of the Alchemist Sebastian Carter 1967 Paros Poems An Island Sequence Athens Aiphroe 1969 Robe of Skin Allison amp Busby ISBN 978 0850310092 1972 Eight Love Songs Transgravity ISBN 0 85682 005 9 1972 Greek Images Second Aeon Publications 1973 Lifelines Arc Publications 1976 Milesian Fables Arc ISBN 978 0902771505 1976 A Morden Tower Reading with Vernon Scannell Morden Tower Publications ISBN 0 905760 00 X 1985 Cat Kin I Rivelin Grapheme Press ISBN 0 947612 08 4 1985 Out of Exile Selected Poems 1968 85 Arc ISBN 0 902771 77 9 1990 Living Jazz Tenormen Press ISBN 0 9514903 0 3 1990 Safe Levels Stride ISBN 0 946699 84 4 1991 A Lowdown Ecstasy with Christopher Cook Spacex Literature 1992 Food for the Dragon with Christopher Cook John Daniel Tony Lopez 1993 Beautiful Is Enough Westwords 1994 Cat Kin rev expanded edn Sinclair Stevenson ISBN 1 85619 463 9 1995 Omnibus Occasions Headlock Press 1996 Selected Poems 1956 96 University of Salzburg ISBN 3 7052 0960 4 2003 Skeleton Keys Redbeck Press ISBN 1 904338 04 6 2007 Judging By Disappearances Poems 1996 2006 Bluechrome ISBN 978 1 906061 24 1 2008 Unholy Empires Anarchios Press ISBN 978 0 9558738 0 5 2009 Haiku Of Five Decades Anarchios Press ISBN 978 0 9558738 1 2 2009 Travelling Light Thirty Haiku Anarchios Press Limited Edition 100 signed copies 2010 Haiku at Seventy Anarchios Press ISBN 978 0 9558738 2 9 2012 Getting On Poems 2000 2012 Shoestring Press ISBN 978 1 907356 46 9 2013 Old Dogs and No Tricks Forty plus haiku Anarchios Press Limited Edition 100 signed copies 2014 Divers Haiku Forty odd haiku Anarchios Press Limited Edition 100 signed copies 2015 Schooled For Life Shoestring Press ISBN 978 1 910323 41 0 2017 Haiku High and Low Anarchios Press Limited edition 100 copies signed 2018 Time s Whirligig Anarchios Press Limited edition 100 copies signed 2020 Feet First Haiku at Eighty Anarchios Press Limited edition 100 copies signed 2020 Winter Crossings Poems 2012 2020 Shoestring Press ISBN 978 1 912524 62 4 Non fiction edit 1993 The Cool Eye texts of two interviews with Lawrence Ferlinghetti Stride ISBN 1 873012 49 7 2000 Jean Rhys Revisited Stride Publications ISBN 1 900152 68 1 2006 Jean Rhys Afterwords Shoestring Press ISBN 978 1904886341 Selected translations edit 1970 Lautreamont s Maldoror Allison amp Busby 1977 Lautreamont s Poesies Allison amp Busby 1989 Alfred Jarry Days And Nights Atlas Press ISBN 978 0947757199 1994 Maldoror amp the Complete Works Comte de Lautreamont Exact Change 1995 Guillaume Apollinaire Flesh Unlimited Creation Books 2003 Antonin Artaud Heliogabalus Creation Books ISBN 978 1840680157 2011 Pierre Mac Orlan Masochists in America Penniless Press Publications ISBN 978 1 4478 4656 7 2019 Antonin Artaud Heliogabalus or the Crowned Anarchist Infinity Land Press ISBN 978 1916009110 References edit Living Jazz Official website a b Selected Poems 1956 96 page official website Biographical notes on Skeleton Keys page author s website a b My Greek Background Alexis Lykiard website Biography at Getting On page alexislykiard com a b Biographical note for Getting On Poems 2000 2012 Author s website Alexis Lykiard Granta days Archived 26 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine Nthposition September 2009 Romantic Fiction amp Drama For Valentine s South Central MediaScene 2012 a b Skeleton Keys page Alexis Lykiard website Alexis Lykiard Taking the Poetry Road The Penniless Press Scrubbers Alexis Lykiard website Alexis Lykiard Corfu Blues Catherine Isolde Eisner A Prisoner of My Father s Name Alexis Lykiard s Skeleton Keys 17 April 2014 Andy Croft Original lines on the working class experience 21st century poetry 29 July 2017 London Grip Poetry Review Clare Brant amp Alexis Lykiard London Grip 24 November 2020 Jean Rhys Revisited page at Alexis Lykiard website Chris Petit A woman scorned review of Jean Rhys Revisited The Guardian 24 June 2000 Alexis Lykiard Mac Orlan The Penniless Press Maldoror Englished Journal of Les Amis d Isidore Ducasse 2001 Reprinted on Alexis Lykiard website a b Comte de Lautreamont Olive Classe ed Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English A L Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers 2000 p 818 Lautreamont Maldoror amp the Complete Works page at Exact Change External links editOfficial website Alan Morrison Lykiard s Peak review of Getting On Poems 2000 2012 The Recusant 2013 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Alexis Lykiard amp oldid 1144999849, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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