Nanos Valaoritis

Nanos Valaoritis (July 5, 1921 - September 12, 2019) was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1921. He studied philology and law at the universities of Athens, London, and the Sorbonne. He was the first to present articles and extensively translate Greek poets of the 1930s—Seferis, Elytis, Empeirikos, Engonopoulos, Gatsos—in London. He lived in England from 1944 to 1953, where he met T.S. Eliot and his circle. From 1954 to 1960, he resided in Paris and became acquainted with André Breton and the surrealists. In 1960, he returned to Greece and directed the magazine "Pali" (1963-1966). In 1969, he presented Greek poetry in the French magazine "Lettres Nouvelles." From 1968 to 1993, he taught comparative literature and creative writing at San Francisco State University. His poetic works were published there by City Lights, the publishing house of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He organized a presentation of Greek surrealists at the Pompidou Center in 1990-91. From 1989 to 1995, he co-directed the magazine "Synteleia" with poet Andreas Pagoulatos, which was reissued in 2004 under the title "Nea Synteleia." In 1959, he was awarded the Second State Poetry Prize, which he declined. He received the State Poetry Prize (1982) and the State Prize for Chronicle-Testimony (1998). He also received an award from the N.P.A. [National Poetry Association (American Poetry Society)] in 1996—an award previously given to Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and others. He was awarded the Ouranis Prize by the Academy of Athens for his poetic work (2004). The President of the Republic awarded him the Golden Cross of the Order of Honor (2006). In 2009, he was honored with the Grand State Prize for Literature for his entire body of work. His books have been published abroad in English and French translations. He was a founding member of the Society of Authors. He returned permanently to Greece in 2004. Works: Poetry - "The Punishment of the Magi," London 1947 - "Central Arcade," Athens 1958 - "Microbial Foci," pub. Cable, San Francisco 1977 - "Anonymous Poem of Fotinos Aigiannis", Ikaros 1978 - "The Hero of Chance", Tram, Thessaloniki 1979 - "The Feathered Confession", Ikaros 1982 - "At the End of the Day", Nefeli 1984 - "The Colored Fountain Pen", Dodoni 1986 - "Poems I", Ypsilon 1987, "Poems II", Ypsilon 1987 - "Unlettered Scripts", Kastaniotis 1996 - "Sun, the Executioner of a Green Thought", Kastaniotis 1996 - "Allegorical Cassandra", Kastaniotis 1998 - "The Descent of the M", Ypsilon 2002 - "An Alphabet of the Deaf", Ankyra 2003 - "The Great Homeless", Ypsilon 2004 - "The Reopened Pandora's Box", Ankyra 2006 - "Land of Diamonds", Mandragoras 2007 - "Mailbox of Undelivered Letters: Poems 2002-2006", Ypsilon 2010 - "Greenhouse Flowers", Apopeira 2010 - "Anointments", Society of (de)cades 2011 - "Sky the Color of Vanilla", Ankyra 2011 - "Bitter Carnival", Psychogios 2013 - "Sun, the Executioner of a Green Thought", Gavrielides 2014 - "In the Subcyan Eye of the Cyclops", Psychogios 2015 Prose - "The Traitor of the Written Word", Ikaros 1980 - "Born from the Bones", Nefeli 1982, 2nd edition 1999 - "Some Women", Themelio 1982 - "Xerxes' Treasure", Estia 1984, Ankyra 2008 - "The Murder", Themelio 1984 - "My Life After Death Guaranteed", Nefeli 1995 - "Fairytalology", Nefeli 1996 - "The Dog of God", Kastaniotis 1998, 2nd edition 2004 - "The Broken Arms of the Venus de Milo", Agra 2002 - "Do You Know Elpiniki?", Electra 2005 - "Xerxes' Treasure", Ankyra 2008 - "By Zeus: The Adventures of an Agent of Himself", Electra 2009 Essays - "Andreas Embirikos", Ypsilon 1989 - "For a Theory of Writing", Exantas 1990 - "Modernism, Avant-Garde and Again", Kastaniotis 1997 - "Correspondence G. Seferis - N. Valaoritis 1945-1958", Ypsilon 2004 - "For a Theory of Writing, B", Electra 2006 - "Homer and the Alphabet", Hellenic American Union 2010 - "Either of Heights or Depths", Psychogios 2013 - "For a Theory of Writing, C: From Text to Hypertext", Psychogios 2016