Michael Giotis is a poet, independent journalist and organizer. When I met him at his home, this hero was slightly hobbled, nursing a late fútbol injury.
Giotis is a former announcer and color commentator for the Sonoma Sol soccer team, and he has one of those mahogany voices. At his dinner table, he served me his homemade miso soup before we launched an epic conversation in which Giotis read seven of his poems in English and Greek.
The conversation I recorded for my podcast is linked and quoted here. Of his poetry, Giotis declined pigeon-hole classification. Still, across our interview, he cited as influences praxis, domesticity, punk DIY culture, the lyrics and mystic fantasy of early Sabbath and Def Leppard, the panegyric poetry ancient Greeks wrote to hail conquerors and the modernist Greek poetry of anticolonial liberation. He also cited business presentations, slam poetry, William S. Burroughs, the stark sci-fi parables of Octavia Butler and fatherhood.
A professional prose-writing journalist, Giotis favors the medium of poetry for its “wide open expression” and “directness.”
CH: Amid the welter of poetic and lyrical influences, how did you find your voice?
MG: It took me a while, but in the end, I found my voice was me all along (laughs).
CH: You have several active political and educational organizing efforts, but in the context of this conversation, can you tell me about your “Found Poets” poetry series?
MG: With others, I organize a poetry group that meets and puts on a show most first Saturdays, 3-6pm, here in Petaluma at The Big Easy.
CH: Ah, a classic low-lit jazz hole—the perfect setting.
MG: It feels really good in there for sure. We bring in poets from around the country to headline, and we have a collective of poets in the North Bay and Bay Area in a curated undercard. I want to say we are organizing this for a general audience—because poetry can be entertaining as well as challenging.
CH: Especially with those slam poetry influences. Could you throw out some local poets from your collective that we should know better?
MG: Mahrs Schoppman, powerful, understated, improvised poetry; Stacy Tuel, who captures the essence of what it is to be connected to the world so well; Rashida Clendening, the Audio Angel; Bernice Espinoza, an immigration lawyer and bad-ass poet.
Learn more. Follow linktr.ee/giotisLINKS for our interview, the ‘Found Poets’ series and more. Giotis’ first poetry anthology, Daybreak, can be purchased at Copperfield’s Books.
