Category Archives: Blog

Two more reviews of “Feeding the Doves”

Two more reviews of my book “Feeding the Doves“: one on Amazon.com, the other on Amazon.co.uk.

Patty Apostolides on Amazon.com:

“Lyrical and Concise”: “…well written and full of beautiful, touching, and sometimes haunting, melodic stories.”

Read the review by author of Greek Novels Patty Apostolides here
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Dr. Joseph Berke on Amazon.co.uk:

“Feedings the Doves = feeding the soul”: “This is a wonderful, evocative book, rich in imagery…”

The review by author and psychotherapist Dr. Joseph Berke can be read on Amazon.co.uk
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I am putting together quotes from all reviews with links here. Have you read them all?

NaHaiWriMo 4th Year!

February is National Haiku Poetry Month – wherever you might be on the planet. The shortest month of the year for the challenge that may become the longest-lasting commitment you will ever make!
But let’s start small. First write one haiku a day for the whole month. Join a community of poets around the world who endeavor to write at least one haiku a day. And see how it goes… I did, four years ago, when it all started.
The NaHaiWriMo Facebook community encouraged me, nurtured my writing; and this quiet, positive, non-critical presence of people helped me grow. This steady, unfailing presence provided a background for my daily attempts: poetic ventures, haiku versions to work on, check with others.
Other members let me know if they’d read my poem, if they ‘liked’ it, if a different version would work; if they shared my experience or predicament, my point of view, or appreciated my difference. Not often, but cumulatively, in doses that my ego could take…
It worked! I’ve made the commitment to haiku and its special way of seeing and conveying experiences.
Try it yourself. You may like it and start writing haiku each day of every month, all year round. It may help open up time, expand moments the way only haiku can.
To see how it works, take a look here
For how to go about finding out how to write these poems, there is help from the founder and co-ordinator of this project, Michael Dylan Welch here  and in more articles posted on this site
You will find the NaHaiWriMo Community here

And for inspiring, prize-winning as well as thematic collections of haiku by poets the world over, you will do well to visit the The Haiku Foundation site here

There’s also a daily poem treat, the Per Diem: Daily Haiku ready for you to pick up here

My first #GreekDinner Day

The #GreekDinner Day has come and gone. At the Greek restaurant, lots of meze, lamb (poor lamb!), wine, and baklava. Great food and great company. There should be more days like this.

BeFunky_eatgreekweb.jpgMany thanks to Keri Douglas for organizing this event. Many thanks too, to all the people who took part and spread the message. I got to know a few wonderful bloggers and hope to keep in touch.

I’m already looking forward to next year! Wait, come to think of it, why wait? I could have Greek food every day. So could you! #EatGreek!

 

#GreekDinner

This Wednesday, 15th of January 2014, a special event is taking place: a global gathering round a virtual table, where Greek meals are being served. Everyone is invited, and I will be going! I will be joining with family, sharing dishes, recipes and hopefully, photographs.

I’ll be tweeting from @stellapierides under #GreekDinner and #EatGreek. Did you see my recipe tweet for Soutzoukakia Smyrneika? I found it in the New York Times recipe section, but I knew it, with minor modifications, from my yiayia, grandmother, who came from Asia Minor. Very nice! Follow me on Twitter for more.

According to Keri Douglas of 9 muses news  “The goal is to celebrate… and honor your Greek heritage, culture and connection to Greece.” Is there a more fitting way to celebrate our Greek connection(s) than gather around the table for a long, long meal, talk of Greece and laughter?

Why not join me in having something Greek on the day? #EatGreek and prosper!

Feeding the Doves

Feeding the Doves: 31 short and very short stories, and haibun
Available through Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de and Kindle
Patty Apostolides on Amazon.com:

“Lyrical and Concise”: “…well written and full of beautiful, touching, and sometimes haunting, melodic stories.”

Read the review by author of Greek Novels Patty Apostolides here 
*
Dr. Joseph Berke on Amazon.co.uk:

“Feedings the Doves = feeding the soul”: “This is a wonderful, evocative book, rich in imagery…”

The review by author and psychotherapist  Dr. Joseph Berke on Amazon.co.uk
*
Katie Low in Sabotage Reviews:

“…characters recall how that sad event shaped their own histories, but the tone is one of hopefulness, of looking to the future and making the best of situations that will always be imperfect.”
“This sparseness extends to the stories individually, which do not waste their limited word-count on scene-setting or extraneous characterisation; each one evokes a mood, makes a point, or charts a phase in an individual’s development without telling us anything more than we need to know.“

Read the whole of what Katie Low has to say here
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Marjory McGinn on Amazon.co.uk:

“Stunning insight into the Greek experience”
“… each story is poet gem, offering … moments of revelation and introspection”

Read the whole of Marjory McGinn’s review here
Marjory McGinn is the author of “Things Can only Get Feta
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Blogcritics: Daniel Burton:

“Unique and surprising, tight and passionate language”
“Every once in a while, I get a book in the mail that is unique from anything else I’ve ever read. As a collection of short stories, Stella Pieride’s Feeding the Doves has given me a new definition of what short means, not to mention how quickly a story can be told… ”
“…references to Greece and its geography and culture, ancient and modern, pepper Pieride’s stories. It’s a wonderful setting for her flash fiction, and I found her writing a refreshing and unique collection.
“Each feels like an intimate glimpse into someone’s life, a brief moment in time. And given that each is so quick, so fast, and yet so personal, it’s saying something that Pieride is able to levy language to create this impact in such sort space.”

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Neos Kosmos Review (Australia’s leading Greek community news source) by Helen Velissaris:

“These stories manage to show universal themes entwined with the Greek psyche to give a new perspective on the Greece in the media’s headlines.
Above all, these stories show Greece isn’t defined by its current bank account, but rather the people that inhabit it.”

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Mia Avramut‘s review on Amazon.co.uk:

“From a symbol of the divine (“A Life-Changing Story), to an object of meditation and near-worship in Syntagma Square (as in the title story), to their possible end in a soup kitchen destined to feed hungry children (“Pigeons”), doves’ journey functions as a counterpoint to the human sacrifice and quest for nourishing truths. Several glimpses into silent, sometimes tortured lives, end in haiku. It serves to deepen the reader’s understanding, and add new dimensions to the prose. And it’s a treat, as Pierides is both an archeologist of experiences, and a mistress of haibun.
Since Yourcenar and Kazantzakis, nobody has illuminated with such wisdom and compassion the often unseen lives that make the humanity what it is: a traveling, travailing organism with feet of myth.”
.

Mia Avramut is a Romanian-born writer, physician, researcher, and poetry editor at Connotation Press.
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About
Having left Greece in her youth, Stella Pierides, the author of “Feeding the Doves”, returns to the country of her birth through a collection of stories that lie at the heart of Greek identity.
About the Book:
Greece has been in the headlines for a very long time. Recently, the headlines have been gloomy and negative, the country facing some of its most difficult years. Against this background, “Feeding the Doves” explores recurrent elements of the Greek psyche, tracing them back to challenges posed by the country’s history, culture, and environment.
The widow, the old loner, the refugee, the immigrant, the young, the writer, the expatriate, tell us their stories, touching upon themes at the heart of Greek being: Love and loss, civil war, immigration and diaspora, emigration, poverty, religion, history and catastrophe, and above all, the will to survive.

“What I admire here are the shining moments of revelation, of truths large and small bursting through the lives and memories of these characters. So many characters, and so rich!”
—John Wentworth Chapin
Founding Editor, 52|250 and A Baker’s Dozen

“Stories to surprise and entertain, to wake and calm, to wrench and elate, to tell the Greek story, past and present, and everyone’s story.”
-—Michael Dylan Welch, poet, writer,
and editor/publisher of Press Here books
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Fruit Dove Press
Email: admin@fruitdovepress.com
http://www.fruitdovepress.com
Perfect softbound
87 pages, 90gm cream interior paper
Full-color laminated cover
129 mm x 198 mm trim size

ISBN: 978-3-944155-03-6

Price: £8.00 UK and EUR 9,00

Available through Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de

Haiku Euro Top 2013

An honour to be included together with a number of my favourite poets in the Haiku Euro Top 2013 100 most creative poets!

This list is compiled by Krzysztof Kokot of Haiku Euro Top 100.  Thank you so much, Krzysztof .

The list can be viewed by clicking here. Check out the poets in the list for blooming, bubbling, daring, original work! It’s poetry and it’s fun!

Review of “Feeding the Doves” by Daniel Burton on “Attack of the Books!”

 

Feeding the Doves
Feeding the Doves

 

 

“Unique and surprising, tight and passionate language”

“Every once in a while, I get a book in the mail that is unique from anything else I’ve ever read. As a collection of short stories, Stella Pieride’s Feeding the Doves has given me a new definition of what short means, not to mention how quickly a story can be told… ”

“… I found her writing a refreshing and unique collection.”

Read the whole review here: Attack of the Books! 

The review is also available on Amazon.com 

 

Haiku Sequence, Diogen Pro Kultura, Autumn 2013, Third Place (tied)

autumn butterflies
the way she flutters
her eyelashes
*
across the chirping
of the pine crickets
a splash of red
*
pine crickets
too late
to let go
*
autumn butterfly
I never thought
I’d give up
*
pine crickets
I too hide
in the pine
*
Diogen Pro Kultura magazin: Third Place (tied) Autumn Haiku Sequence
Selected by: Đurđa Vukelić-Rožić Deputy editor in chief DIOGEN pro culture magazine for HAIKU Ivanić Grad, Croatia Sabahudin Hadžialić Editor in chief DIOGEN pro culture magazine 14.12.2013. Einhorn Verlag S. Begman, Küsnacht, Schweiz 14.12.2013.