During the live-streamed pandemic book launch for Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete, the Greek composer Michalis Paraskakis and I had a wide ranging conversation about our individual and collaborative creative process. We discussed the differences between the Big Field and the Small Field and how we’re sometimes lost in the field. The Big Field is our reference to the poetry collection Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete and the Small Field refers to the original shorter cycle of poems which we are using for our work-in-progress music theater piece. Lost in the field is our inside joke about our decision making process regarding which poems, and which drafts of the poems, will be used for the music theater. We compared our ongoing work for the Field Guide [to the Lost Flower] with our earlier ensemble piece This which was also partly based on early drafts of poems.
While discussing transcriptions and translations we noted the similarities between the two. We also talked about how we do eighty percent of the creative work first in our minds before starting the handwriting/computer work.
Michalis Paraskakis is a composer and performer. His first opera Strella, was commissioned and staged for two seasons by the Greek National Opera in 2023. He has won the impuls composition competition where his piece Kāma premiered in 2017. His music has been performed in venues and festivals including Muziekgebouw aan ‘t Ij Amsterdam [NL], MATA Festival New York [US], impuls Festival [AU], Onassis Stegi [GR], REACTOR Vienna [AU], Korzo Theatre [NL] Tehran International Electronic Music Festival [IR] among others. He has collaborated with musicians such as Klangforum Wien, ASKO|Schönberg Ensemble, Ensemble dissonArt, Nieuw Ensemble, Momenta Quartet, Slagwerk Den Haag, Ensemble KLANG, Enno Poppe, Ilan Volkoc, Bas Wiegers, Ben Roidl-Ward, Katerina Konstantourou, Theodore Antoniou, Yorgos Ziavras, Konstantinos Terzakis and many more. He is also the founder and artistic director of the new music ensemble TETTTIX.
Eleonore Schönmaier’s latest collection is Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021). Wavelengths of Your Song (MQUP, 2013) was published in German translation as Wellenlängen deines Liedes in 2020 by parasitenpresse (Cologne). Dust Blown Side of the Journey (MQUP, 2017) was a finalist for the Eyelands Book Awards (Greece). Treading Fast Rivers (MQUP) was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. She has been honoured with the Alfred G. Bailey Prize, the National Broadsheet Prize, the Sheldon Currie Fiction Prize (second place), the Earle Birney Prize, and was a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Poetry Prize finalist, among others. Widely anthologised in the United States and Canada she has also been published in Best Canadian Poetry.
“A (re)creation of the surreality and altered time within deep states of grieving, Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete juxtaposes sorrow with fragmentary unapologetic joy.”
Tree roots are entwined into the walls of
the cave, and on the cliffs lining the gorge
goats stand with their tiny hooves as if
suspended in air…
“These are understated poems grounded in imagism, snapshots of a life, where the poet speaks quietly to her reader with precision and insight.” Armand Garnet Ruffo, author of Treaty#
“Spanning continents and decades, the poems in Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete bear witness to beauty, pain, and injustice alike. Meditative and musical, Schönmaier’s verse renders the world in vivid, attentive language.” Annick MacAskill, author of Murmurations
“Eleonore Schönmaier’s poems are profoundly lyrical. Their words come from a brave and tender witness, and in their white spaces is the sound of an orchestra playing by the sea.” Sadiqa de Meijer, author of The Outer Wards
