Indies

Dimitrios Antoniou was born in Beira, Mozambique, and came from a prominent shipping family in Kasos. He spent his early childhood in his birthplace and in Suez, and completed his general education in Athens, where he settled with his family in 1912. He studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Athens and, at the same time, devoted himself to learning foreign languages and, as a hobby, to mineralogy, botany, entomology, zoology and music. From 1928, he pursued a career in the merchant navy, rising to the rank of captain. He retired in 1968. During the Greco-German War, he served as a reserve officer on the destroyer Keios.

As a young man, he joined Palamas’s circle and became acquainted with Konstantinos Tsatsos, Giorgos Seferis, Odysseas Elytis and the other writers of the so-called Generation of the Thirties, with whom he worked together to revitalise Greek poetry. He made his literary debut in 1936 in the pages of Nea Grammata with the publication of poems that were favourably received by Giorgos Seferis. He published three collections of poetry (Poems, Indies [2nd State Poetry Prize – 1967], Haiku and Tanka [1st State Poetry Prize – 1972]), whilst many of his works (poems, literary essays, translations) have been published in newspapers and magazines.