About

Manolis’s first major ‘writing’ occurred at age 12 when his father brought back a book of poetry featuring a play of 350 pages. In the next few days, Young Manolis dedicated himself to a secret project where he began to re-write the whole book in his handwriting and on the paper of his choosing. The book was an epic titled ‘Erotokritos‘ by Vitsentzos Kornaros, ‘considered to be the greatest of all the Cretan poets and one of the most significant and influential figures in the entire course of Greek poetry’. And here is the first page of Kornaros’s play in Manolis’s handwriting.

It took Manolis over 6 months to finish the book. It is beautifully written with blue ink on pale yellow lined paper. The headings are in red, the text in blue – even some art work appears below the title.

By copying the whole book in Crete at 12, Manolis had manifested his interest in three areas: writing, publishing and poetry. Years later, in British Columbia, this is who is: a writer, publisher and a poet. And this is what has happened to the literary work he did at 12:

EROTOKRITOS
Poetry by Vitzentzos Kornaros
Longhand by Manolis
Hardbound, 8.5×11.5.
Collectible. Rare book.
ISBN: 978-1926763-36-1
Libros Libertad 2014
$5,000.00

His first book-length work took shape in 1975 when he was 28, ‘Stratis Roukounas‘, a novel, that was published and launched in Athens in 1981. His first collection of poetry ‘The Orphans‘ appeared in 2005 in Vancouver, and he established his publishing house Libros Libertad in 2006 in Surrey.

Manolis has written novels and done translations and published books but his passion resides with poetry. From 2005 to now, he has published over 20 collections of his poetry, and is coming out with more. View details at his website:
https://manolisaligizakis.com/about/

Rooted in the fascinating literary and philosophic traditions of Greek language and literature, Manolis’s poems allow us to branch into a dense new vocabulary and to capture different rhythms of being.

After raising two wonderful sons, and working at many different jobs, Manolis lives with his wife in White Rock working as an author, publisher and investor, and at this time, this is the most demanding member of his family:

Elvis, Elvis, Elvis!
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Email
info@libroslibertad.ca
Website
manolisaligizakis.com
Personal Blog
authormanolis.wordpress.com
Greek Canadian Literature Blog
vequinox.wordpress.com
Facebook
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Twitter
@aligizakis
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