The award-winning poet speaks to TO VIMA International Edition about memory, the cities of his dreams, the loss of rights, the poetry that refuses to console, and his conversation with the painter Leda Contogiannopoulou

Three decades later, Elytis' absence remains palpable—not only in literature, but in the country’s collective memory. And perhaps that, more than anything, proves that some creators never truly depart.

Palamas’ funeral evolved into the largest act of resistance staged by the Greek people against the German occupiers. It was a moment when grief turned into defiance, and poetry into protest.