“The volume of my collected works is not only a gathering of my poems but the entirety of my life, as I do not remember ever living without poetry. When I was young, my mother read poetry to me, and of course, I grew up in the shadow of my godfather, Nikos Kazantzakis. I knew how poems were written, meaning that you cannot program them. They decide when they will conquer you. You just need to have the sensitivity required to capture them. This perhaps also means 'talent.'

Of course, when you are young, the waves of poetry multiply, as love prevails. Another element of my poetic energy is that I first created in the 1960s, a period of renaissance for modern Greek poetry and art in general, or, as Kavafis says, “with exquisite music, with voices.” We saw the poetry of Greece attract international attention, whereas until then only the ancient Greeks interested them.

A beautiful experience, this collected volume." KATERINA ANGELAKI-ROUK The new edition is complemented by the biography of Katerina Angelaki-Rouk.