CHristoforos Liontakis

Christoforos Liontakis (1944-2019) was born in Heraklion, Crete. He studied law in Athens and attended courses in the philosophy of law in Paris. In 1973, he published his first poetry collection titled "The End of the Landscape." His collection "With the Light," published in 1999, was awarded both the State Prize for Poetry and the Poetry Prize from the magazine "Diavazo" in 2000. His poems have been translated into French, German, Italian, and English, and have been published in the "Harvard Review," issues 50, 1998, and 80, 2000. Thanos Mikroutsikos set some of his poems to music, which were released on a CD titled "Poetry with Music: Konstantinos Kavafis-Christoforos Liontakis." As a translator, Liontakis focused extensively on French literature, translating works by Genet, Apollinaire, Bonnefoy, Éluard, Rimbaud, Ponge, Valéry, and Stendhal, among others, and edited an "Anthology of French Poetry." The French Ministry of Culture named him a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, and the Municipality of Heraklion awarded him the Nikos Kazantzakis Prize. In 2012, he received the Poetry Prize from the Kostas and Eleni Ouranis Foundation of the Academy of Athens for his lifetime achievements. He passed away on July 26, 2019, at the age of 74.