IF A PERSON SANCTIFIES themselves amid great pain, then both Giannoulis Halepas and Alexandros Papadiamantis and Theofilos Hatzimichail have sanctified themselves, not in the way that religions attribute holiness. It is certainly not a secular, human "holy trinity," but rather a trinity of beasts. Or rather a trinity of Aegean poets:

The Tinian poet of sculpture. The Skiathian poet of words. The Lesvian poet of colors. None of them lived a calm, unimpeded life. The elements that differentiate them, however, giving each one a unique, unparalleled stamp on their work, are more than the commonalities.

Of course, you will turn to biographies and studies if you attempt the rather impossible task of summarizing a person, especially a richly creative one, with three poems, whether lyrical or narrative. No intermediary, however, can introduce them to you better than their own work. You can borrow information, and even ideas. But you cannot borrow emotions. And without emotion, poetry is reduced to a rhetorical exercise.

The shiver that the melting of time and the coexistence of the fiercely opposing elements in Halepas's sculptures will cause you; the innocent, spontaneous beauty that you will experience in Theofilos's images; the psychological art of Papadiamantis that resurrects the so-called "simple people" in their immense complexity; these will draw you in and inspire your writing.