An almost 20 year long Odyssey* celebrate that we have reached the 1000th published contribution with Claudia Coleman’s beautiful, colourful poetry painting the Mediterranean. At the same time, we take the opportunity to publish seven more exciting poets before we moor the corbitae, the virtual ship that has navigated the famous sea on so many poetic voyages.
Favourable winds and an azure coloured sea do not suffice to maintain the corbitae and tired crew at the moment. So, we raise a (final) glass of falerner in tribute to all the amazing poets, writers and translators who have participated in this Odyssey and exclaim, Mille Grazie!
Yes, a Thousand Thanks and let the beautiful, rich colours that you have used to paint the Mediterranean world live forever through your inspiring words, your amazing images! Your poetry will certainly continue to delight all the thousands of visitors Mediterranean Poetry reaches every day …
*For 10 years Odysseus and his fellow Achaeans fought against the Trojans. It took another 10 years of unimaginable challenges before Odysseus could see Ithaca and his beloved Penelope again.
Sincerely
The Editor
Anders Dahlgren
Mediterranean Poetry
Claudia Coleman is a translator and writer of fiction and poetry. Her poetry has appeared in Write to Meow (Grey Wolfe Pub.), The Blotter Magazine, and Edge of Humanity Magazine; and her fiction in Thin-Skin Literary Magazine and Arlington Literary Journal (forthcoming Dec 2026). She has published several articles in Revue des Science Humaines and other scholarly journals, as well as two book translations from the French, both by Stanford Univ. Press. She lives in San Luis Obispo, CA with her family and two cats.
Please visit Claudia Coleman’s post and enjoy her Mediterranean world …
Reed Venrick is a writer from the Florida Key islands, usually publishing poems with a nature, travel or philosophical theme. Reed Venrick currently resides between Marseille and Aix-en-Provence.
Please visit Reed Venrick’s post and enjoy his Mediterranean world …
Travis Park is an Indiana writer whose poetry and haiku have appeared or are forthcoming in Modern Haiku, Ribbons, Presence, Wales Haiku Journal, The Listening Eye, Haiku Universe, dadakuku, and elsewhere. He is drawn to quiet moments, enduring landscapes, and the intersections of history, memory, and the natural world.
Please visit Travis Park’s post and enjoy his Mediterranean world …
Richard Holinger’s fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in Chautauqua, The Southern Review, Witness, SIR, Hobart, Prime Number, Boulevard, and elsewhere. Nominations include the Pushcart Prize (7), Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and published in Best Microfiction 2025. Publications include North of Crivitz (poetry, Kelsay Books); Down from the Sycamores (poetry chapbook, Finishing Line); Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences (humor, Dreaming Big); Unimaginable Things (stories & novella, Main Street Rag Publications) and Manure Dreams (essays, Winner, Choeofpleirn Press Nonfiction Award 2025, one a “Notable” in 2018 Best American Essays). He holds a Ph.D. from UIC and survived as a secondary school teacher and adjunct instructor for forty years. He lives in rural northern Illinois.
Please visit Richard Holinger’s post and enjoy his Mediterranean world …
David I. Hughes is a writer based in West Cornwall, UK. His poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous international journals and anthologies. Recent honours include the October Project Grand Prize for Poetry and the LitFox Poetry Book Award semi-final. His debut novel ‘The Listener,’ a work of speculative fiction, was published in 2025.
Please visit David I. Hughes’ post and enjoy his Mediterranean world …
George Zoumpoulakis is a writer and collage artist from Greece (Hellas). His work spans poetry, Haiku poetry, and fantasy stories, blending visual and textual textures to explore the mysteries of human nature.
Please visit George Zoumpoulakis’ post and enjoy his Mediterranean world …
Konstantinos Papaioannou was born in Athens, Greece, in 1981. He graduated with First-class honours from the Department of German Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and earned his postgraduate degree in Cultural Management from the Deutsche Akademie für Management in Berlin, Germany. He has worked as a teacher for children and adults as well as a therapist for individuals on the autism spectrum.
From 2013 to 2019, he lived in London, UK, where he worked at Haute Collage Fine Art Gallery. There, he developed his artistic language, and started working as a visual artist. Upon returning to Athens 2019, he delved into Ancient Greek Philosophy and Ancient Greek Religion. These have since served as a source of inspiration for his poetic and visual work, which interact and complement each other.
He has exhibited his artwork in Greece, the United Kingdom, and Slovakia, and he is represented currently by galleries in Greece and abroad.
The “Mystics”, published by Elikranon Editions, marks his first appearance in the field of poetry, and was awarded the first Prize for Visual Poetry by the Hellenic Authors’ Society.
Please visit Konstantinos Papaioannou’s post and enjoy his Mediterranean world …
George Kalamaras, former Indiana Poet Laureate (2014–2016), is Professor Emeritus of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne where he taught for thirty-two years. He is the author of twenty-seven collections of poetry—eighteen full-length books and nine chapbooks. His poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, AGNI, Boulevard, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry (Chicago), and numerous others, including Greek and Greek-American magazines like Mondo Greco, Poetry Greece, and Ergon. He has received many awards for his poetry, including an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, two Individual Artist Grants from the Indiana Arts Commission, and others. Most recently he won the 2024 Indiana Book Award for Poetry. George Kalamaras lives in Livermore, Colorado.
Please visit George Kalamaras’ post and enjoy his Mediterranean world …
Anyone who has been travelling to the Mediterranean and the countries bordering the famous Sea has most certainly been in “danger” of falling in love with the people, culture, art, film, food, music, atmosphere and not the least – the literature which tries to describe the feelings the wind and sea evokes!
The idea with this site is to be able to share our fascination with this world with others and let it be a place where one may read poems/short texts created by poets/authors that live (have lived/travelled) around these waters and, through their literary efforts, have captured the very essence of the Mediterranean World!
This Odyssey – more than 3 000 poems, haiku & prose texts
painting the Mediterranean