The Art of Expression: Stelios Mormoris' Journey Through the Realm of Poetry

Stelios Mormoris, synonymous with creativity and artistry. Professionally distinguished in the beauty world, he has carved his niche from the field of perfumes into the realm of poetry. He is the chief executive officer of Scent Beauty, Inc., and through the leading role, Mormoris has played a key role in shaping the olfactory worlds of people right across the globe. Of late, however, it is his foray into poetry with his career-opening collection entitled The Oculus that has captured the audience and the critics alike.

Born in New York to Greek immigrant parents, much of Mormoris' life was spent in the vibrant city of Paris, where he honed his skills as an executive in the beauty industry. His academic background is as impressive as his professional one. Mormoris studied architecture at Princeton University, obtaining a B.A., and then went on to get an M.B.A. at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

This great knowledge of aesthetics, both visual and olfactory, lent a unique perspective to his poetry and hence made it real with the multi-faceted life he lived. The Oculus, Mormoris's first collection, is testimony to the ability of the poet to make the banal become extraordinary. Divinizes, by means of his words, even the poorest and humblest things; and together with that, the divine is anthropomorphized, while coming down to the human beings.

An acuteness of poignant depth and wonderfully euphonic, the poems of this collection continue to echo long afterward. Some critics have termed The Oculus rife with muscular power, this vibrant imagery escorting the reader through the lens of Mormoris's words into luminous vistas surrounding us all.

His interest in poetry began when he was young, and his mother introduced him to the works of Kahlil Gibran and Shakespeare. The tender age he reached when being exposed to literature sparked an eternal love for words and self-expression in his heart. It wasn't until he attended Princeton that he really started working on the voice as a poet under the tutelage of poets William Meredith and Maxine Kumin.

Since then, his work has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Books of Matches Lit Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Narrative Magazine, and Tupelo Quarterly.

But Mormoris is anything but a one-dimensional artist. Along with his poetry, he is a modern-day artist in abstract oil painting also, where boundless creativity has its fullest realization. His paintings are like his poetry-neither tells of the real bond he shares with the world around him, nor does either overlook the smallest amount of beauty anywhere.

In addition to a long-standing art practice, Mormoris has led an active civic life through Board participation in organizations like the French Cultural Center of Boston, ACT-UP, Historic New England, and The Fragrance Foundation.

From the roughness of rugby to the serenity of sailing and gardening, Stelios Mormoris seems to have it all. At the very core, a passion for reading and writing poetry endures. Now taking new directions in the fields of creativity, Mormoris takes us along with him into the world of perception-that world where the ordinary acquires the status of the fantastic and every moment is filled with poetic beauty.