Tasos Leivaditis

Tasos Leivaditis
Leivaditis on Ai-Stratis in 1951
Born(1922-04-20)20 April 1922
Athens, Greece
Died30 October 1988(1988-10-30) (aged 66)
Athens, Greece
OccupationPoet, literary critic
CitizenshipGreek
Literary movementPost-WWII leftist literature; "poetry of defeat"
Notable awardsNational Poetry Prize, 1979 (for "Euthanasia Manual")

Tasos Leivaditis (Greek: Τάσος Λειβαδίτης; 20 April 1922 – 30 October 1988) was a Greek poet, short story writer and literary critic. He belonged to the postwar generation that was deeply marked by the struggles and failures of the communist movement. His early and politically committed poetry travelled through the ‘fire and sword’ of history, transforming in the end into powerful and paradoxical prose-poems, and displaying an erotically charged form of ‘neo-romanticism’ mixed with ‘melancholic minimalism’ where “genuine humility offers obeisance to the magic of language.”