Argyris CHionis

Argyris Chionis (1943-2011) was born in Athens. He spent twenty years living in cities in northern Europe (Amsterdam, Brussels), working from 1982 to 1992 as a translator at the Council of the European Union, until he left it all behind for poetry and agriculture, settling in Throfari, Corinthia. He made his literary debut in 1966 with the poetry collection "Attempts of Light" (published by "Twelfth Hour"). His subsequent poetry books include: "Shapes of Absence" ("Arion", 1973, English and Dutch translation by Tor/Amsterdam, 1971), "Transformations" ("Boukumanis", 1974, Dutch translation by De Beuk/Amsterdam, 1976, along with poems from the collection "Nail Types"), "Nail Types" ("Egnatia-Tram", 1978), "Verbal Landscapes" ("Kastaniotis", 1983), "Like the Blind Before the Mirror" ("Hyacinth", 1986), "Internal Landscapes" ("Nefeli", 1991, 1st reprint: 1999), "The Motionless Runner" ("Nefeli", 1996, 1st reprint: 2000), "Ideograms" ("Ta Tramakia", 1997), "When Silence Sang" ("Nefeli", 2000), "In the Basement" ("Nefeli", 2004), "What I Describe Describes Me" (Gavriilidis, 2010). In 2006, a collected edition of his first ten poetry collections was published under the title "The Voice of Silence: Poems 1966-2000" ("Nefeli"). After 1981, he also engaged in prose, writing narratives for adults, children, and young people, such as "Stories from an Old Era That Hasn't Come Yet" ("Aigokeros", 1981), "The Invisible Triumph of Beauty" ("Patakis", 1995), "Three Magical Fairy Tales" ("Patakis", 1998), "Beings and Non-Beings" ("Gavriilidis", 2006), and "The Horizontal Height and Other Unnatural Stories" ("Kichli", 2008, State Short Story Award 2009, shared with Tolis Nikiforou). He was involved in literary translation, translating works by Octavio Paz ("Poems", 1981), Russell Edson ("When the Ceiling Weeps", 1986), Jane Austen ("Pride and Prejudice", 1997), Roberto Juarroz ("Vertical Poetry", 1997), and Henri Michaux ("With the Hook in the Heart: A Selection from His Work", 2003). He passed away unexpectedly on Christmas afternoon 2011, from a heart attack, at the age of 68, in Throfari, Corinthia, where he had lived for twenty years. (photo: Nikos Kokkalis/ "Kathimerini")