Chronicles of Care: Ep 1

By Tatiana Mezitis & Caroline Sydney

Meet the Pair

MENTEE TATIANA MEZITIS & MENTOR CAROLINE SYDNEY

Tatiana’s Anecdote: From discovering the beauty of Sappho’s writing to giggling in the Girls Write Now kitchen while we cooked eggs and recorded our podcast, Caroline and I have made nothing but good memories this past year. Her ability to patiently read through my writing and provide honest, helpful feedback never fails to inspire me, and I feel that I’ve grown to be a better writer because of her. I’m looking forward to continuing our exploration of the writing world during the next few months.

Caroline’s Anecdote: That first day at the New York Historical Society, Tatiana and I were handed folders with portraits of Sappho on the cover, and I immediately knew we would have to spend time together with her work. A few weeks later, huddled over a copy of Anne Carson’s If Not, Winter at a table in a buzzing coffee shop, we read a selection of the more complete poems. But the fragmentary pieces pushed us toward conjecture. To reanimate/reclaim/reinterpret Sappho’s place in history, we recast her lines into poems of our own. In this way, we could enter her story while she became a part of ours.