Translate

Sunday, February 23, 2020

This Spinning World

Author, Jim Potts, channels his Greek life in places such as Corfu, the Zagori Mountains, and the city of Athens as he spins some very entertaining tales in, This Spinning World, 43 Stories from Far and Wide, published in September of 2019.

I originally was led to this author when I read, The Ionian Islands and Epirus: A Cultural History, a book I absolutely love and continue to reference frequently. So when I realized he had this new one,  I thought I'd give it a try. I was not disappointed. This is an author who has had a very interesting and diverse life that includes a career in international cultural relations that has taken him all over the world. And that experience is etched in his stories. As I spun through This Spinning World, I laughed and cried and turned the pages. There is something for everyone.

It's that Greek connection that originally attracted me to the stories but actually Edward, the main character in the story, "January," is my new BFF. Edward seems to be my kindred-spirit-of-declining-years. "After 60 years, close to his contractual age of retirement, he had finally come face to face with the overpowering sense of the Absurd." To see oneself and one's thoughts so clearly laid out in print, no matter how disturbing, is very cathartic. To know that aging and its mind blowing realizations have a commonality to them, is to smile while reading lines such as, "His horizons felt as limited as the Stockholm skyline in snow." Yes, Edward, I understand. But take heart, Edward works everything out and thus, the reader does too. That is the beauty of these stories. They are human and relatable while being thought provoking and engaging.


Most of Mr. Potts' books are on Amazon:  Amazon UK

He also has a more recent work, Reading the Signs (a collection of 111 poems) and for these newer books, colensobooks@gmail.com handles the ordering.

This Spinning World: ISBN 978-1-912788-02-6
Reading the Signs: ISBN 978-1-912788-06-4

I leave you with some imagery from the collection in Reading the Signs:

Plaka, 2003

Watching the tourists
come traipsing down from the Acropolis
I don't think they look
like their lives have been changed.
They're glad to flop down
in a shady taverna
with a plateful of squid, in Plaka.
There are always more marbles.
Finite,
the fruits of the sea.



Excerpt from Dry Stone Hideaway 
(Vitsa, 1983)

Before I came I'd had the dream,
A cobbled path, a kalderim,
leading down the mountainside
to a high-arched bridge, an ice-cold stream.

The village houses, split mountain rock, 
flagstone slabs to slate the roofs, 
the cistern in the high-walled yard.
Water pure, of melted snow, the shaft well-made, 
made long ago, eggshell-coated, calcium-sealed.