Tasos Leivaditis (1922-88). Born and raised in Athens, Leivaditis worked as a literary critic for a leftist newspaper and achieved both critical and popular renown in Greece for his rich poetic oeuvre. His involvement as a youth in leftist politics led to his imprisonment for more than three years. Soon after his release in 1951 he made his poetic debut, and he was to go on to publish twenty volumes of poetry as well as a collection of short stories. The poems submitted here are from his 1979 work Euthanasia Manual, which earned him Greeceās highest honour in poetry, the State Poetry Prize.