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Complete Poems

George Seferis

Edited by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Seferis Complete Poems
10% off
Categories: 20th Century, Greek, Translation
Imprint: Carcanet Classics
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (320 pages)
(Pub. Sep 2018)
9781784106676
£25.00 £22.50
  • Description
  • Author
  • Reviews
  • George Seferis's Complete Poems reissued as a Carcanet Classic

    George Seferis is the great Greek poet of the twentieth century, a classic among classics. The formal and thematic versatility of his work, its decisively modern inflections, call Eliot’s poems to mind: fastidious and expansive in equal measure. Like Eliot’s deep-rooted Modernism, Seferis’s never loses touch with the stones and inscriptions of the past. He writes for his and our time, poetically and politically alert: culture can free us or, misapplied, can trammel us. Aptly described as ‘the unlocker of ancient stones and sea voyages’, Seferis was for Peter Levi ‘one of the greatest writers in this century in any language. . . From Seferis it was possible to learn. . . what seriousness about poetry is.’ And Archibald MacLeish wrote, ‘if any contemporary poet can be said to be essential, Seferis is that poet, and this’ – referring to an earlier edition of this book – ‘is the true body of his work’.
    George Seferis
    George Seferis (1900–1971) was born near Smyrna in Asia Minor. His long and distinguished diplomatic career began in 1925: he was appointed Ambassador to the UK, a post which he held from 1957 to 1962. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963. He famously opposed the Greek junta of ... read more
    Edmund Keeley
    Edmund Keeley translated the poetry of Cavafy, Seferis and Sikelianos with the late Philip Sherrard. His translations of Yannis Ritsos received the Academy of American Poets’ Landon Award and the EU’s First European Prize. He is a novelist whose non-fiction works include Cavafy’s Alexandria and Inventing Paradise . He lives in ... read more
    Philip Sherrard
    Philip Sherrard (1922–1995) lived his later years on the island of Evia. Among his many books perhaps the best-known are two studies of modern Greek literature, The Marble Threshing Floor and The Wound of Greece, and the later Edward Lear: The Corfu Years . With Edmund Keeley he translated the ... read more
    'Seferis' poetic observations of the world are unique and memorable [...] There is an immense sensuality and depth throughout [...] Carcanet Press have produced a handsome volume where the poems are clearly reproduced and given breathing space on the page.'

    Maria Taylor, Nine Arches Press Blog

     'Seferis' extraordinary gift occupies...the realm of the marvellous real.'

    'Rather than an inventory of ruins, or setting up of monuments, his is a poetry of recovery. He achieves this with an uncanny simplicity. The directness of tone feels personal. The pitch works against poetical memory...towards the difficult, unresolved enigma, that of a collective of individuals, buried in the Greek landscape....Seferis raises them up for sympathy and compassion.'
    Ishion Hutchinson, The Poetry Review
    'One of the greatest writers in this century in any language ... From Seferis it was possible to learn ... what seriousness about poetry is.'
    Peter Levi
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