Original Manuscript

PASSPORTS ‘I have seen better days,’ said this summer, and hurried to leave. But I have seen none so harsh and hasty in all these fifty-odd years. Passing sorrows, passing times passing human endeavours, passing summers. You end up as stones and shells and silica in a slow-moving procession through the dust.

Yannis Karatzoglou has published five collections of poetry: A Summer (privately published, Thessaloniki 1970), Δ Ξ Θ (privately published, Thessaloniki 1975), Petrol Station (Barbounakis, Thessaloniki 1982), Depreciation (Diagonio Publications, Thessaloniki 1987), Financial Results (Ikaros, Athens 2006). This edition includes a carefully selected collection from the above poetry collections, as well as new, previously unpublished poems from the period 2005–2009. His poems have been published in anthologies, special issues, periodicals and newspapers, and have been posted online. He has regularly published texts on literary, political and social commentary and criticism in literary journals, either under his own name or the pseudonym Yannis Makedonitis, and has published studies on the literature and history of Thessaloniki. He was a co-founder and member of the executive committee of the Northern Greece Society of Letters and Arts after 1975, and is a member of the Thessaloniki Writers’ Society.