Shamugia's oblique gaze pierces our surreal and absurd world

Christina Kapetanopoulou   |   September 2, 2024

With stormy and often harsh language Shamugia captures the political and social life of his country ( You know that/the problem with the Soviet Union was/that everything was forbidden/whereas the problem with the post-Soviets is/that everything is compulsory?) and not hesitates to publicly refer to persons and situations when necessary. He is the poet who writes about the difficult everyday life in Georgia, the impoverishment of its inhabitants and the uprooting, corruption and illegal enrichment of politicians, but also the profound conservatism and religiousness of Georgian society.

Paata Shamugia's oblique gaze pierces our surreal and absurd world and produces poetry that pleasantly surprises. In fact, it invites the modern reader to discover or re-remember his own skewed gaze and to see poetry and poets anew, turning his back on entrenched moral and aesthetic understandings, in the here and now of his own life. If there is any aim for modern poetry, it can be no other than the shaking of the modern reader.

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