Michalis Ganas (1944–2024): The Poet of Epirus Whose Words Greece Still Sings
by Stella Mazonakis · Greek City TimesThe Greek poet and lyricist Michalis Ganas (Μιχάλης Γκανάς) died in Athens on 12 November 2024, aged 80. Two years on, his verses are still heard across Greece in songs by composers such as Mikis Theodorakis, Nikos Xydakis and Dimitris Papadimitriou.
A childhood between two countries
Ganas was born in 1944 in Tsamantas, a mountain village in Thesprotia, Epirus, close to the Albanian border. As a small child he lived through the Greek Civil War. In 1948 his family was taken across the border into exile in Eastern Europe, and he spent six years in Hungary before coming home.
The memory of that uprooting runs through his work: the village, the old people’s speech, the folk songs of Epirus, and the feeling of being a stranger in your own country.
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Law student, bookseller, copywriter
He moved to Athens to study law but never practised. “Literature saved me,” he once said. “I finished law school but didn’t enjoy it. Essentially, I had no real profession.”
He worked in bookselling and publishing for about 15 years, where he met his wife, Popi. He then edited literary programmes and wrote scripts for the public broadcaster ERT, and from 1989 worked as an advertising copywriter, all while writing poems and song lyrics.
The poetry
His first collection, Ακάθιστος Δείπνος (Upstanding Supper), appeared in 1978. It was followed by Μαύρα λιθάρια (Black Stones, 1980), Γυάλινα Γιάννενα (Glass Ioannina, 1989) and Παραλογή (Ballad, 1993), which won the Second State Poetry Prize in 1994.
He also wrote prose, including the short memoir-novella Μητριά πατρίδα (Stepmother Homeland), and his collected Ποιήματα 1978–2012 came out in 2013. In 2011 the Academy of Athens honoured him for his whole body of work.
When he received a further award for his life’s work in 2022, Stavros Zoumboulakis, president of the Board of Trustees of the National Library of Greece, described his poetry as “clear and simple verse, in an unadorned language, filled with emotion”.
English-language readers can find him in A Greek Ballad: Selected Poems (Yale University Press, 2019), the first collection of his work in English, translated by David Connolly and Joshua Barley with the poet’s help. His books have also been translated into Albanian, French, German and Italian.
The songs
Many Greeks know Ganas without knowing his name, through his songs. His lyrics were set to music by Theodorakis, Xydakis, Papadimitriou, Thanasis Gaifyllias and the Armenian-American oud player Ara Dinkjian, and sung by artists including George Dalaras, Eleftheria Arvanitaki, Glykeria and Vassilis Lekkas.
May his memory be eternal.
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Sources: “, https://www.ert.gr/ert-arxeio/mixalis-gkanas-12-noemvriou-2024/; To Vima, https://www.tovima.gr/2024/11/12/society/pethane-o-poiitis-kai-stixourgos-mixalis-gkanas/; Yale University Press, https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300243529/a-greek-ballad/.
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