The Gorge at Bicay from the collage series “Building Machines” by Spyridon Kaprinis
Perseverance Lands on Mars
& conflagrations candle all the anthrax
that seeps into the streets
but in the heart there is only violence
enough to retire in Miami.
A smile twists across the boxes
that bulge out of trash cans
while a child’s old trophies
sunshine the clustered windowpanes.
Napalm stagnates in a vast bathtub
& pantries crowding the kitchen
exorcise maize from the mouths
of devout dust storms.
Pulsing through the shallows, plastic bags
dazzle snappers & sell them
the fisherman’s lead
that quickly spirals trenchward.
The laws collapse like a ladder
on the sun-crazed laborers & judges
gavel the grounds of a car park.
Bind the branches of cleaved willow trees
& binds will branch down cleaved willow trees.
The Child or the City
Raise a child or raze the city—
brick and cherry blossom
remain locked in a century-long gaze.
Raze the city and its shadows
collapse into the dusty mist
that pearls over crack pipes.
Raise a child and an orange buoy
loosens off a cargo boat that carves
through the acid inlets.
Raze the city and its servants
no longer fry under white fluorescence,
no longer tryst with a vice grip—
About the author:
Andrew Hanson. I am a writer and poet living in Miami, FL, and I have been accepted by Clackamas Review, Broadkill Review, Bookend Review, Ekphrastic Review, Birmingham Arts, and more.
In the artist’s words:
Spyridon Kaprinis completed his graduate studies at the University of Westminster [BA (Hons) Arch., 1996-1999] and the Architectural Association School of Architecture [AA Dipl., 2000-2002] in London and his postgraduate studies at the University of UCL (The Bartlett / M.Arch. In Architectural Design) and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London (M.Arch. In Architecture and Urban Planning) with Distinction. Since 2010. He has worked for Zaha Hadid Architects in London, and since 2017 he has been teaching architectural design at London South Bank University and the University of Huddersfield (since 2019), where he is currently a PhD candidate. He has been a registered architect and member of the Technical Chamber of Greece (TEE) since 2003.
Description of work “Building Machines” (2020): the collage series “Building Machines” is a visual experiment based on the definitions of congruence and anatopism. Congruence describes a situation where a state of harmony is perceived or achieved. There is a governing notion of similarity, albeit a strange one: it is not a complete equivalence, nor a complete disjunction. Anatopism, on the other hand, is for “topos” what anachronism is for “chronos”, and it requires an operation of spatial transformation and transposition, which often leads to a multiple reading of the contraption and its new context.
https://spyroskaprinis.tumblr.com/