Publisher's Synopsis
Nikos Kavvadìas was a Greek poet and sailor, who wrote about the incidents and adventures of life at sea. His poems blend nautical terms and sailors’ slang with romantic imagery. He was born in 1910 in Manchuria and as a teenager in Piraeus joined the merchant navy. He spent almost his whole life at sea, dying in Athens in 1975. He travelled widely as a wireless operator in the merchant marine and while some of his poems relate to exotic ports of call the language remains sober and simple. He is one of those rare poets who succeeds equally on a serious and popular level. Simon Darragh’s translations, the first to be published in England, do justice to his various gifts, both as poet and story-teller.
