Rigas Kappatos

Rigas Kappatos was born in Dilinata, Kefalonia, in 1934. He is a poet, essayist, short story writer, and anthologist. For many years, he traveled as a sailor. During the Dictatorship (1969), he relocated and has since lived in America, spending part of his time in Greece. He studied Philology (without completing his studies), foreign languages, and music. In his literary activities, he primarily focuses on Spanish, systematically translating poets and prose writers for many years, mainly from Latin America but also from Spain. In this field, he has published anthologies of Peruvian and Chilean short stories, in collaboration with poets Pedro Lastra and Javier Sologuren, as well as individual and collective poetry anthologies, such as: the first Greek anthology of Pablo Neruda (1966), the anthology of César Vallejo's poetic work (ODEB, 1979 and "Complete Poems," bilingual edition, "Gutenberg," 2000), Nicanor Parra, Pedro Lastra, and Oscar Hahn, the commemorative edition of the Spanish Civil War "They Shall Not Pass," the "Complete Poems" of García Lorca, in collaboration with Kosmas Politis. In 1995, his translation of the "Dictionary of Symbols" by Juan Eduardo Cirlot was published, and from "Ekati" editions, "The Dictionary of Isms" by the same author, etc. He occasionally collaborates with various literary magazines in Athens and regularly writes for Greek newspapers in New York. In collaboration with Mexican poet Carlos Montemayor, he published an anthology of Greek poets in Mexico in 1984, and with Chilean poet Pedro Lastra, he created the anthology "The 100 Most Beautiful Love Poems in the Spanish Language," which is in its 9th edition in Spanish, third in Greek (bilingual), "Ekati," 2000, 2001, 2006, and has exhausted one edition in English, Seaburn, New York, 1998, and eleven editions in Spanish. With the same collaborators, he has prepared a new anthology of modern Greek poetry, including 70 poets from Cavafy onwards, to be published in Venezuela. Additionally, with poet Pedro Lastra, he prepared the special anthology "The Presence of Greece in Latin American Poetry," which includes 107 poets from the continent inspired by Greece, from the time of the Spanish conquest to the present day; it was published in Greek by "Ekati" and in Spanish by the National Library of Chile. Rigas Kappatos has published six of his own poetry collections and a book of short stories featuring animals. Also forthcoming is an anthology of contemporary Latin American poetry with 95 poets. His poems have been included in various anthologies and translated into Spanish and English. In collaboration with Chilean poet Enrique Lihn, he published in Mexico in 1985, by "Premia" Editions, in Spanish, his poetry collection about cats "The Poems of Athinoulis," mainly inspired by his cat of the same name. He is a member of the Society of Hispanists of Greece and an honorary member of the Institute of Higher Studies and Peruvian Research of the University of San Marcos in Lima Raul Porras Barrenechea.