A Voice from Afar
My name is Alexander Papanikolaou.
I am a textile specialist, a wannabe poet, and a traveller between lands, languages, and lives.
Born and raised in Greece, shaped in the UK, refined in the factories of China and the solitude of the Isle of Man, I write from the in-between. My poems are stitched from memory, exile, work, myth, and the deep desire to belong without losing myself.
Much of my creative work is inspired by Homer’s Odyssey: not just as literature, but as a living metaphor for my own journey. I’ve moved across borders, across roles, across emotional landscapes, often unsure if I was heading toward home or away from it.
These poems are fragments of that journey:
.
⸻
Penelope in Me;
Not all journeys are outward. This poem explores the Penelope that lives in all of us: the part that waits, that weaves, that holds on to love and memory when time and distance try to unravel it. It is a quiet song of longing, patience, invisible strength and our journey to meet ourselves.
⸻
Aeolus and Nausikaa
This dual poem holds both the wind and the welcome. Aeolus, keeper of the winds, speaks of lost direction, of how even divine gifts can lead us astray if mistrusted. Nausikaa, the gentle girl who found Odysseus shipwrecked, is the embodiment of unexpected kindness: a reminder that sometimes salvation wears a human face.
⸻
This is not just poetry. It’s cartography.
I map my life in myth and metaphor.
I write to remember. I write to heal.
I write to tell the world: I came from afar, but I am here. And I have a voice.