Dean Kalimniou
Census Censure: Census 2021 seeks to understand what it means to be Australian, but ignores the complexities of ancestry
According to tradition, in 16th century BC, Cecrops, the mythical first king of Athens, conducted a census of his subjects. Each Athenian was compelled to provide a single stone and …
Dialogue –
Olympic obscurities: Things you may not know about the revival of the Modern Olympics
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been off the Olympics ever since the 1990 IOC announcement that Atlanta was to host the 1996 Centenary Games. This is not only …
A taste of freedom: Viva la degustation
Contrary to common belief, dégustation is not the hipster-bourgeois Greek-Australian term for a τσιμπούσι. Referring to the gustatory system, it is derived ultimately from the Latin gustare, meaning “to taste,” …
Karen Martin’s “Dancing the Labyrinth”, a bilingual approach
Recently released in the original English and a Greek translation, Karen Martin’s novel, set in sun-kissed Crete exhausts the constructs of time, language and identity. From the outset a conceptual …
Just us for Cyprus
Earlier this year I was honoured to be invited to address the Melbourne Armenian Community’s protest march against the Australian government’s lack of recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Commencing on …
Understanding the Greek periptero, neighbourhood hubs in the motherland
As a young boy, I was convinced that the periptero (Greek kiosk) a word mysterious and exotic to my Greeklish attuned ears, had something to do with the descent of …
Life –
Cavafy’s ‘Parthen’ – a poem beyond translation
Edmund Keeley writes that when it came time to render Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy’s work into English, the poem “Parthen,” (meaning taken, or conquered), had to be excluded because its …
Life –
“A recipe for Daphne”, a novel of nostos, huzun and longing
How can you feel nostalgia for a place you have never lived in? A neologism, in the Greek language, the word was first coined as a medical term in 1688 …
Delta and the variant strains working through letters of the Greek alphabet
At this, the commencement point of the narrative, the gentle reader is courteously invited to spare a thought for the tender feelings of Australian chanteuse Delta Goodrem, whose first name …
A week of being Greek
My friend Yianni is convinced that I am labouring under the delusion that I am possessed of a sense of humour. Accordingly, he claims that he has been valiantly attempting …