Output details

Don Juan, 2012

'Don Juan, 2012' was written in response to a commission by Nigel Thompson as part of a book-length publication (Five Leaves Press, 2015) in which contemporary poets write an updated 'canto' of Byron's DON JUAN. The remit for the poem was as follows: the form, ottava rima, had to be the same, Don Juan had to be in it -- his name changed to Donald Johnson -- and the canto had to deal with something contemporary. There also had to be a love interest. Taking inspiration from Byron's own analysis of money in DON JUAN ("and money, that most pure imagination"), and in response to the form's capacity to handle rhetoric and political commentary, Morrissey took as subject the Eurocrisis, and in particular about the impact of the Eurocrisis in Greece, given Byron's connections with Greece (the place of his death). This entailed intensive background research on the Eurocrisis, on the parliamentary debates occuring in Greece throughout November 2012 as a further austerity budget was passed in the Greek Parliament and riots ensued, and on the rise of the Greek fascist movement, The Golden Dawn. The poem draws for inspiration on the reading of several interviews with ordinary Greeks facing unprecedented financial hardship. It reflects something of Byron's own experiences in Greece in setting part of the penultimate section at the site of the temple where Byron carved his name.