Sophia Argyris was born in Belguim, moved to Scotland at the age of 10 and is now living in London, breathing in the pollution and battling with the crowds, until she can move to the country again. Her poetry has been published in several print and online magazine including Inclement, Argotist Online, Pyramid, Volume Magazine, The Scruffy Dog Review, Silenced Press, Red Pulp Underground and Hecale amongst others. Sophia's poetry contains fresh metaphors, ideas and language that challenge the reader to take part in her vision. Each poem is masterfully executed with the skills of a true poet,bringing a wide range of complex emotions down to a personal level for the reader. However, one never feels overwhelmed by Sophia's intensity, but rather inspired to pick up a pen and make a contribution to the craft. Aside from writing poetry, Sophia is also hard at work writing a novel entitled, Am I the Air? The storyline assembles around Alice. Alice is living in the city for the first time, trying to cope with the realities of unemployment, and with what she perceives as the ugly greyness of the world around her. Her dreams are filled with images of water, and vast ruined buildings, which she writes about in a one way conversation on postcards to an old friend who never replies. Through her housemate she meets a group of young people who sweep her up into a rush of bars and clubs,but Alice is never fully able to let herself go in the way others do, and so finds herself observing the complex and difficult relationships between the people she spends her time with from an estranged distance, feeling suffocated by the nature of human interaction and the inherent loneliness she sees in everyone.

Up the Staircase Spotlights: The Poetry of Sophia Argyris

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At the Edge of Silence The ceiling grieves, a vast landscape of mourning, tumbling above me like the sea. I lie below, fighting as ever with panic coiled behind my ribs, flicking its tongue at my throat. Televised voices infringe on the peripheries, imprinting themselves on the walls. Wind yelps and howls in the garden chasing its tail, as rain drags nails down window panes. What dreams will follow when the ocean finally pours heavy over me, and I slide, on the undertow of a yawn into sleep?

Reflections of Anna Put this picture on your wall above a fireplace warm and red, the bones have risen, the white has spread over skin hollowed with darkness. A ghost glows dully in the frame a memory never solidly formed, lost but not yet missed or mourned, sits wispily in the glass. Fingers grip and clutch at life but sustenance must not be found, no growth allowed to curve or round this child to womanhood. Limbs too long, too pale now, jutting hips and shoulder blades these lines are not beauty that fades but swift departing breath; and yet this image is set to warp, its shape will change under shifting eyes, it will spread and redesign its size to trick a shadow into shrinking.

Fighting the Seasons This time is the hardest when days are starved, nights grown gluttonous and fat brooding heavily, consuming the hours claimed by the dark, and the light falls submissive Cold grips us in its fist, leaving everything short of breath. Trees cry their tears like old and withered letters long unread, littering the ground with forgotten sentiments drawn by a gravity that seems to hold us more firmly. A barren beauty can be found in the skeletal landscape (as in a chalk sketch hastily done) and memory reassures that the sun will find the strength again to warm us.

A Sense of Falling Lately I have been muddied. Not blank like unspoilt paper but full of junk and the ends of stagnant conversations still smouldering like ashtrays. There is no way out it seems, no doorways or openings to make good my escape; this.is.all.there.is. I went abroad, the flight a scream across a darkened sky, breathed in the air of a different place, ate up the sun, and the moon that first night on a silent beach when nothing was solid; least of all me. Distance helped me to lose time, sweep clean the spaces I inhabit brush away the usual debris; find some sanctity and peace in transience. Yet even now back at the hard surface of my life I cannot seem to find an foothold.

All poems ©Sophia Argyris

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