My relationship with books has always been a romantic one. Holding a book in my hands, it is the touch that plays the primary role. Following that is the sense of smell. I always tend to smell books, even when they are not freshly printed. Then, I stand in awe before their door knocker. And as soon as I knock and the book opens, I eagerly and curiously enter its pages, immersing myself in its words, drawing pleasure, or perhaps not, from this communion.

Sometimes, I feel the need to talk about the bond created by my interaction with them. I mean, I wish to represent in words the feeling I derived from a work and its author and to express the response, the "impression" that it caused me.

My creative engagement with literary topics primarily, but also with art themes and anything else broader and spiritual that sparked my interest during the period from 1989 to 2020, led to the birth of the texts housed in this volume. The writing was done amateurishly, which means with a love for writing and art in general. And, of course, without Prikryust practices. S.K.

In Facing an Alien Door Knocker, we realize that this is not the same knocker that Koutsounis used to knock on for poetry to open to him, but another, alien one, that will lead him into the winding paths of critique; and we cannot say in any way that this is a book foreign to the poet's pursuits.

This edition, wanting to be an ark of any other text of his, apart from poetry, has also brought with it several systematic observations about creators engaged in arts akin to poetry, such as ancient tragedy, modern theater, cinema, visual arts, and photography; with a common characteristic in all approaches the interpretive perception that comes from a modern artistic and literary consciousness.

From the preface by Alexis Ziras.