Haris Vlavianos
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Haris Vlavianos is a contemporary Greek poet.
He was born in Rome in 1957. He studied Economics and Philosophy at the University of Bristol (B.Sc) and Politics and History (M.Phil, D.Phil) at the University of Oxford (Trinity College, Oxford). His doctoral thesis entitled, "Greece 1941-1949: From Resistance to Civil War", was published by Macmillan (1992).
He has published six collections of poetry, including The Angel of History (1999), which was short-listed for the State Poetry Prize. He has also published a collection of thoughts and aphorisms on poetry and poetics entitled, The Other Place (1994). He has translated into Greek, the works of well-known writers such as: Walt Whitman ("Selected Poems", 1986), Ezra Pound ("Hugh Selwyn Mauberley", 1987; "Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX-CXX", 1991), Michael Longley ("Selected Poems", 1992), Wallace Stevens ("Adagia", 1993), John Ashbery ("Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror", 1995), Carlo Goldoni ("The Venetian Twins", 1996 — a play staged by the Karolos Koun Art Theatre in 1996-97), William Blake ("The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", 1997—short listed for the State Translation Prize), Zbigniew Herbert ("The Soul of Mr. Cogito and other Poems", 2001), Fernando Pessoa ("Herostrato: The Quest for Immortality", 2002, "Marginalia", 2005) and E. E. Cummings ("33 x 3 x 33: Poems, Essays, Fragments", 2004—short listed for the State Translation Prize).
He is the editor of the influential literary Greek journal Ποίηση (Poetry). His collection of poems Adieu (1996) has been translated into English by David Connolly and published in the UK by Birmingham University Press (1998). A Selected Poems volume of his translated into German by Dadi Sideri Speck, into Dutch by Hero Hokwerda and into Italian by Nicola Crocetti, has been published by "Romiosini Press" (2001), "Rotterdam Poetry International"(2000) and "Crocetti" (forthcoming), respectively. A selection of his poetry has been translated into Catalan by Joaquim Jesti and just published in Barcelona by the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes. A new "Selected Poems" volume of his, translated into German by Torsten Israel, will be published next year by “Hanser” in Munich with an introduction by the well-known German poet, Joachim Sartorius. His poetry has also been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Albanian and Swedish and has appeared in numerous European and American journals and anthologies.
His collection of poems, entitled, After the End of Beauty, was published in March 2003 and was short-listed for the State Poetry Prize and the "Diavazo" Prize. At the end of the year his translations of the poetry of Wallace Stevens and Michael Longley will be published in bilingual volumes. His essay on Dante ("The Divine Comedy as Poetic Autobiography") has appeared as an introduction to the Greek translation of Boccaccio’s biography of Dante.
He is Professor of History and History of Ideas at the American College of Greece and teaches Translation Theory at the European Centre for Translation. He is the editor of the Greek domain of the Poetry International web site (www.poetryinternational.org). For his contribution in promoting Italian literature and culture in Greece, the President of the Italian Republic bestowed upon him in February 2005 the title of "Cavaliere".
[edit] Selected works
- Somnambulations (1983)
- Peddler of Miracles (1985)
- In a Manner of Speaking (1986)
- Implacable Refutation (1989)
- Η Νοσταλγία των Ουρανών (The Nostalgia of the Skies) (1991)
- Adieu (1996; also in English translation)
- Ο Άλλος Τόπος (The Other Place) (1994, thoughts and aphorisms)
- Ο Άγγελος της Ιστορίας (The Angel of History) (1999, also in German translation)
- Μετά το Τέλος της Ομορφιάς (After the End of Beauty) (2003)
