Background
Fokas was born in Cephalonia in 1927 and educated in Athens.
Fokas was born in Cephalonia in 1927 and educated in Athens.
In the 1960s he lived in London and worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation World Service. On his return to Greece he worked as a free-lance journalist for the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation until his retirement in 1982. Fokas is a unique and singular presence in our postwar poetry.
His poetic work - dense, solid, unpredictable - distinguishes itself from the plethora of poems by his peers through its depth of reflection, its poetic clarity, the precision of its design, and its stringent antilyrical tone.
According to the literary critic Alexis Ziras, "Fokas’ work, from his early collections to his latest pieces, is pervaded by an endeavour to crystallise marginal emotions – an endeavour which we might say traces a parallel path to that of contemporary painting", while Thanasis Valtinos, a member of the Academy of Athens, has said:.