Takis Sinopoulos ( el, Τάκης Σινόπουλος;

Pyrgos, Elis Pyrgos ( el, Πύργος, meaning "tower") is a city in the northwestern Peloponnese, Greece, capital of the regional unit of Elis and the seat of the Municipality of Pyrgos. The city is located in the middle of a plain, from the Ionian Sea. The ...

, March 17, 1917 –

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

, April 25, 1981) was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

poet and a leading figure among the so-called first postwar generation of Greek poets. A doctor by profession, he came of age at the beginning of perhaps the most terrible decade of Greece's recent history, running from the Metaxas dictatorship through war, occupation and the horrors of civil war, many of which he experienced at first hand.Ricks, David. "The Shadow of the Greek Civil War in the Poetry of Takis Sinopoulos", in ''The Greek Civil War'', edited by Philip Carabott & Thanasis D. Sfikas, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2004. These experiences, and their exorcism, inform much of his work, as did the colonels' dictatorship of 1967–1974. Alongside his poetry, he was an astute and prolific critic as well as a talented painter, and his encouragement help launch the very much younger poets who became known as the generation of the seventies.

Principal publications

* ''No Man's Land'', 1952 * ''Songs'', 1953 * ''The Meeting with Max'', 1956 * ''Helen'', 1958 * ''Night and Counterpoint'', 1959 * ''The Song of Joanna and Constantine'', 1961 * ''The Poetry of Poetry'', 1964 * ''Deathfeast'', 1972 * ''Stones'', 1972 * ''Chronicle'', 1975 * ''The Map'', 1977 * ''The Book of Night'', 1978

Translations

* ''Landscape of Death The Selected Poems of Takis Sinopoulos'', tr. K. Friar (1979) reek & English texts* ''Selected Poems'', tr. J. Stathatos (1981)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sinopoulos, Takis 1917 births 1981 deaths People from Pyrgos, Elis Modern Greek poets 20th-century Greek poets