“Anastassis Vistonitis occupies a unique position in Greek letters: equally acclaimed as a poet and a journalist, he switches from one medium to the other with seeming ease, now composing poems and literary essays, now turning out book reviews and articles, often on the same day. Both streams feed the sea of his imagination—he calls his prose a continuation of poetry by other means—and his Greek readers are fortunate to have his work available to them in so many forms…Indeed his work is a testament to the ancient Greek idea of the intimate connection between the body and the soul. What good luck to have a selection of his poems in English, in the splendid translation of David Connolly.”
—from the introduction by Christopher Merrill
Anastassis Vistonitis was born in Komotini, northern Greece, in 1952. He studied Political Sciences and Economics in Athens. From 1983 to 1988 he lived in the U.S.A. (New York and Chicago) and traveled extensively in Europe, North America, Africa, Australia and Asia. From 1996 to 2001 he was a member of the board of the E.W.C. (The Federation of European Writers) and from 2003 to 2007 he was its vice-president. In addition to poems, essays, book reviews and articles contributed to many leading quarterlies and news papers in Greece and abroad, Anastassis Vistonitis has published eleven books of poetry, three volumes of essays, four travelogues, a book of short stories and a book of translations of the Chinese poet Li Ho. He was the General Editor of the candidature file of Athens for the Olympic Games of 2004. Anastassis Vistonitis’s writings have been translated into 17 languages. He writes for the leading Greek newspaper, To Vima, and lives in Athens.
Translator David Connolly has lived and worked in Greece since 1979. He is currently Professor of Translation Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has written extensively on the theory and practice of literary translation and has translated over thirty books by leading Greek authors. His translations have received numerous awards in the UK, the US and Greece.
