Diana Anphimiadi

Diana Anphimiadi is a Georgian poet, linguist, teacher, writer, and journalist. 

After graduating from Ivane Javakhishvili State University with a Master’s degree in General Linguistics, Anphimiadi is now pursuing her PhD at the same university. She has published four books of poetry. Her debut Chocolate (2008) won the Tsero award in 2008 and the Saba award for best debut of the year in 2009. In the same year, she also received the Nikoloz Batarashvili award. Collections of her poetry have been published in English in Beginning to Speak (2018) and Why I No Longer Write Poems (2022). The publications feature the Georgian originals alongside the English translations by translator Natalia Bukia-Peters and poet Jean Sprackland. Why I No Longer Write Poems  was awarded the PEN Translates Award. 

According to her translator, Natalia Bukia-Peters, Anphimiadi’s poetry gives abstract thought a body and a pulse, thereby offering a glimpse of the eternal in the everyday, as her publisher describes it. Furthermore, she brings classical ancient myths back to life through the use of contemporary tools, expanding what we understand to be the poetic form. 

Next to her research and poetry, Diana Anphimiadi has also written two cookbooks and several children’s books. In 2018, she was recognized with the Iakob Gogebashvili Award for Children’s and Youth Literature for Fairytales written in a sketchbook (2018). She is actively involved in educational teaching and has published articles on pedagogy and inclusive education. In addition to her comparative and corpus linguistic research, she also researches Georgian gastronomy, culinary linguistics as well as culinary and ethnocultural practices. Her work has been translated into several languages, including German, Russian, Greek, Czech, Latvian and Armenian. Anphimiadi’s poems have been featured in multiple anthologies, such as Je suis nombreuses (2021), a French anthology of Georgian women’s poetry.