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Nasos Vayenas was born in the northern Greek city of Drama in 1945. Following studies in Greek and Italian literature at the universities of Athens and Rome respectively, he completed an MA in literary translation at the University of Essex before writing his Ph.D. thesis on George Seferis at Cambridge University (1974-1979). Upon its immediate publication in Greek under the title Ο ποιητής και ο χορευτής [The Poet and the Dancer] (1979), this study was quickly recognized as a key statement on the Nobel Laureate’s poetics. Vayenas’s first book of poems, Πεδίον Άρεως [Field of Mars], appeared in 1974, and since then he has published eleven more collections, the most recent being Στή νήσο των Μακάρων [On the Isle of the Blest] (2010), as well as several critical works, among them Ποίηση και μετάφραση [Poetry and Translation] (1989), Η ειρωνική γλώσσα [The Language of Irony] (1995), which was awarded the National Prize for Criticism, and Μεταμοντερνισμός και λογοτεχνία [Postmodernism and Literature] (2002). Notable among his work as editor and translator are the anthology Συνομιλώντας με τον Καβάφη [Conversing with Cavafy] (2000), which collected a large number of Cavafy-inspired poems from around the world, and his 2005 translation, with Ilias Layios, of Richard Berengarten’s Black Light: Poems in Memory George Seferis [Μαύρο φώς: Ποιήματα εις μνήμην Γιώργου Σεφέρη] (1983). Nasos Vayenas is considered as one of the leading members of Greece’s ‘Generation of the Seventies’. His poetry has been translated into many languages and he is the recipient of major literary awards in three countries, including the Greek National Prize for Poetry (2005), the Attilio Bertolucci Poetry Prize (Italy, 2007), and the Branko Radičević Prize (Serbia, 2007). Nasos Vayenas lives in Athens. Since 1992, he has been Professor of Literary Theory and Criticism at the University of Athens. |
