Poems (1945–1971), first published in 1978 and now in its eighth edition in Greece, contains work from the nine volumes Miltos Sachtouris wrote during the most productive period of his poetic career. The first of these volumes was written during the Axis occupation of Greece, and the last was published thirty years later during the military junta of 1967–74. Part poetic auto- biography, part historical document, this collection thus chronicles one writer’s reaction to three decades of intense social and political upheaval in a nation experiencing the successive horrors of occupation, civil war, and military dictatorship. Evocative and deeply moving, Sachtouris’s poetry builds up, block by linguistic block, an unforgettable vision that speaks even to those who inhabit worlds different and distant from his own.
