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Agapi & Other Kinds of Love
Agapi & Other Kinds of Love is Luka Lesson's poetry and Hip-hop theatre show turned verse-novella - inspired by the 7 Ancient Greek words for love and Plato's Symposium in equal measure. Published in 2022 at the premiere of the Agapi at the National Museum of Australia, the book is equal parts rap verse collection, poetic narrative & classical history lesson - taking the reader on a journey unlike any other.
Set in both modern and Ancient Greece, self-love, erotic love, familial love, the love of the stranger, friendship and more all collide with statues of Aphrodite, Molotov cocktails and the Parthenon's steps.
The primordial gods: Chaos & Cosmos, watch over the two sets of lovers as they dance with destiny in the same city, but in very different times - until eventually, the gods watching over the action decide that it is time to intervene.
Agapi & Other Kinds of Love shows us how loves prevails despite the trials and tribulations of the ages.
"Luka never fails to delight in this vibrant and beautiful dive into love"
~Omar Sakr
"Agapi & Other Kinds of Love is a romance throughout space and time told in rolling verse. With an excellent rhythm and natural flow, the story expertly weaves the stories together through time. I enjoyed watching the two sets of lovers experience the forms of love and realize the impact that their love can have. I especially loved the notes that Chaos adds on at the end, bringing additional insight and humor."
~Anonymous ReviewThe Future Ancients
The Future Ancients is Luka Lesson's first collection of poetry and rap verses. Released in 2013 , the collection takes the reader into the catacombs of ancient history, the unabashed political opinion of a Greek-Australian poet raised in the Pauline Hanson era, and the reflections of a rapper who is starting to admit that he might actually be a romantic at heart. The collection takes the reader to the kitchen table of a Greek grandmother (Yiayia), to the hypocrisy of global modern warfare (New Crusades), through a maze of self-discovery (Labyrinth) into the revelation of writing and the saviour of humanity and out into the sunlight of love and learning (The Confluence). The Future Ancients is a collection that slips between complex rhyme schemes with intricate details and rolling rhythm, into delicate prose poems which highlight the power of metaphor, symbolism with a mythological undertone.
The collection includes such works as:
Yiayia
May Your Pen Grace The Page
Please Resist Me
The Confluence
Amber Lights
Athena
The New Crusades
A to Z
and more.
The words will rumble in your gut, kick dust in your face and lead you to an oasis of lyrical luxury.
“Luka Lesson is the kind of poet other poets want to be. Other poets want to be honest” ~ Shane KoyczanAntidote
Antidote is Luka Lesson’s second collection of poetry and rap verses (2015) that presents itself as a salve for troubled times. This short and sharp collection asks the deeper questions, stirring the snake from its nest and creating a brave soundtrack to shedding our skins, taking stock of who we are and having the courage to head back into the fray.
The poems in Antidote bounce from dealing with depression and anxiety (Bones), to politics and uprising (Anonymous & Subcomandante Marcos), and the power of our words to have powerfully affect our realities (Antidote).
In Antidote, Luka’s words punch above their weight, as he writes: “It’s not the bigger they are / the harder they fall / it’s actually / the smaller we are / the harder we brawl”
Antidote is a collection that you will keep returning to on those days you feel lost in the madness of our world - it provides to the reader a certain kind of medicine for the poison of the world.
"Luka is a genuine artist of high quality whose poetry is powerful and poignant. I salute his prophetic witness"
~Dr Cornel West.