Text: Sappho
Translation: Anne Carson ’If not, winter. Fragments of Sappho’ (2002)
Music: Miriam Karpantschof
Image: portrait of Hanna Bergman by Vendela Bergman

Lyre

Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos from around 630 A.C. She is one of the world's greatest poets. The word lesbian origins from her. She taught and performed with young women. Very little is known about her private life. She played the lyre, sang and danced. She invented the lyric I, the sapphic stanza, and the plectrum. Most of her lyrics are lost, one poem is intact, the rest are fragments.

SHE'S A SHOW has a wooden lyre (not made of tortoise shell like in Sappho's time) and plays it when working with fragments of Sappho.