Monster and Colossus: a lecture by Cassi Plate, Thurs 16 Sept 2021 19.00h AEST

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

The event will be simulcasted YouTube Live, Facebook Live, and Twitter Broadcast.

You don't need an account to watch the live broadcast with any of the above services.

However, if you want to participate in the Q&A at the end of the seminar you'll need an account with the equivalent service in order to post your question in the comments / chat.

Costas Taktsis (Κώστας Ταχτσής), arguably the most important post-war Greek writer, referred to himself as a Sacred Monster. He called his life-long friend, Sydney artist Carl Plate, a committed internationalist and key figure in the post-war Australian modern art movement, the Colossus of Woronora. After Taktsis was banished from Australia, the friendship of these inveterate travellers - the writer and the artist - was kept alive through decades of correspondence.

Dr Cassi Plate will talk about the poet and writer’s experience of Australia during the post-war wave of immigration. For Taktsis, Australia was a place of innocence, a new stage on which to reinvent himself, and the form of the Greek novel. On the contrary, Carl Plate (1909-1977) saw Australia as a prison from which he sought to escape, but a prison that enabled him to keep painting.

Claimed as the first modern Greek novel, The Third Wedding, written largely in Australia, was dedicated to Carl and Jocelyn Plate.