I Got The Swings

By Eliza Stefanidi

Poetry I Paperback

In Eliza Stefanidi’s follow up to her debut, Sleeping With Plato, she explores her identity as a mother, poet, and someone with bipolar disorder, in fragmented, highly-original, and deeply striking language. 

Her verbal behaviour is always keenly aware of the sudden shifts words, images and allusions can make, establishing a collection that explores, laments, showcases, and mines, the depths of her highs and lows, her swings, to sing and dance, even as the darkness sometimes comes. 

Anyone interested in poetry, mental health issues, or what it means to be a mother in this challenging world will find this powerful collection profoundly rewarding. Rarely has poetry been so gnawed to the edge of sense, and then sent back to the world with love.

Eliza Stefanidi was born in Liverpool in 1980 and currently lives in Athens after studying ballet and Media and Cultural studies in London. She is British-Greek. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 24, she has made issues of mental, linguistic and social crisis her main themes. Her debut collection, from Eyewear Publishing, was Sleeping With Plato. Now a mother, she continues to write and explore many creative interests.

Eliza’s unconventional and penetrating look at life and its realities, along with her eloquent way in imprinting it, makes her body of work unique. Her poems take you on journeys, to places she sees everyday through her heart, with her offbeat glance. [...] Whilst challenging at times, there is no fear in confiding the world as she sees it, taking you with her in finding comfort there, where there was none before – Natassa Sarris, painter