Yannis Livadas is one of the most prolific and innovative among the Modern Greek poets and also the most productive scholar and translator concerning modernist and postmodernist English and American poetry -mainly specialized in the Beat Generation and the first period of American postmodernist poetry (1950-1972)- in Greek. He also periodically contributes as a columnist and a freelancer to various literary magazines, both in Greece and other countries. In 1993 he invented the so-called "fusion sonnet", which first appeared in a poetry collection entitled "Οι Κρεμαστοί Στίχοι Της Βαβυλώνας" [The Hanging Verses Of Babylon].. According to Karen Van Dyck in Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry (Penguin Books 2016):
'[h]e never fulfilled his Greek military service and refused to complete his formal schooling or attend university because of his individualist and anarchist beliefs. Since 2008 in both his own poetry and his literary criticism he promotes artistic production in which indeterminacy of meaning as well as syntactical and structural innovation, what he calls organic antimetathesis, is paramount'.
His thesis on poetry and poetics is composed of quite contradictory aspects such as
'[p]oetry is a privilege. Language hosts the poet. The poet's task is apotheosis. The defloration, that is, of every evidential proof. The reason being that poetic speech is always situated, by little or by far, ahead of its most recent interpretation'.
His statement concerning his idea on poetry and poetics, in his own words: "«[1]» is based on the scaling indeterminacy of meaning, of syntactic comparisons and structural contradistinction". He is deeply connected with the jazz/avant-garde tradition and has produced important poetical works based on jazz improvisation. His poems have been translated into nine languages [English, French, Spanish, Hungarian, Bangla, Urdu, German, Croatian, Serbian]. He has travelled extensively to India, Europe and North Africa. Since 2011 he lives in Paris, France.
Notable translations of his work
My Bones In The Soup Of My Grave (Ragged Lion Press, United Kingdom 2017)
Yannis Livadas Interviewed by Ben Schot and Five Poems (Co-edition of Moloko Plus [Germany] and Sea Urchin Editions [Netherlands] 2017) ISBN 978-3-943603-33-0
Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry [is included with six poems], edited by Karen van Dyck (New York Review Books, USA 2017) ISBN 9781681371146
Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry [is included with six poems], edited by Karen van Dyck (Penguin Books, United Kingdom 2016) ISBN 0241250625
Η Πιο Όμορφη Γυναίκα στην Πόλη [ The Most Beautiful Woman in Town ] - Charles Bukowski (Ηριδανός 2012)
23 Ποιήματα και μία Συνέντευξη [23 Poems and an Interview] - Blaise Cendrars (Κουκούτσι 2012)
Σκοτώνοντας την Ώρα [ part of Portions from a Wine-stained Notebook: Short Stories and Essays ] - Charles Bukowski (Ηριδανός 2012)
Ένα Τετράδιο με Λεκέδες από Κρασί [ part of Portions from a Wine-stained Notebook: Short Stories and Essays ] - Charles Bukowski (Ηριδανός 2012)
Ποιήματα [Poems] - Harold Norse (Ηριδανός 2012)
Ο Αφυπνιστής [The Awakener] - Helen Weaver (Ηριδανός 2011)
Τα Οράματα μιας Απίθανης Γενιάς: Στοιχεία για την Beat Generation [The Visions of an Extraordinary Generation: Facts on the Beat Generation] - Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Frank O’Hara, Ted Joans, Amiri Baraka, Diane DiPrima, Peter Orlovsky, Jack Micheline, Harold Norse, Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Lew Welch, Bob Kaufman, John Wieners, Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Lamantia, Jack Hirschman, Robert Creeley, Sinclair Beiles, David Meltzer, Carl Solomon, Howard Hart, John Clellon Holmes, Charles Bukowski, Charlie Parker, Paul Bowles, Brion Gysin, Herbert Huncke and Fred W. McDarrah (Κέδρος 2011)
Ποιήματα [Poems] - Charles Bukowski (Ηριδανός 2008)
Ανθολογία Αμερικανικής Ποίησης του Εικοστού Αιώνα [Anthology of American Poetry of the 20th Century] - Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Robinson Jeffers, T. S. Eliot, Maxwell Bodenheim, e. e. cummings, Charles Reznikoff, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Louis Zukofsky, Kenneth Rexroth, Theodore Roethke, George Oppen, Charles Olson, Kenneth Patchen, William Everson, Delmore Schwartz, John Berryman, Brion Gysin, Harold Norse, Robert Lowell, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Barbara Guest, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Denise Levertov, Louis Simpson, James Schuyler, Cid Corman, Bob Kaufman, Paul Blackburn, Frank O'Hara, James Merrill, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Lamantia, John Ashbery, James Wright, Larry Eigner, Howard Hart, W. S. Merwin, Robert Creeley, Jonathan Williams, Gregory Corso, Sylvia Plath, Jack Hirschman, Peter Orlovsky, Amiri Baraka, Richard Brautigan, Charles Simic, George D. Slater, Ron Padgett, Michael Palmer, Andrei Codrescu, David Lehman, August Kleinzahler, Elaine Equi (Ηριδανός 2007)
Ποιήματα [Poems] - e. e. cummings (Ηριδανός 2007)
Ποιήματα [Poems] - William Carlos Williams (Ηριδανός 2007)
Ποιήματα [Poems] - Jack Kerouac (Ηριδανός 2007)
Ποιητές του Κόσμου [Poets of the World] - Nicanor Parra, Dylan Thomas, Miroslav Holub, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, John Fles, Antoine-Roger Bolamba, Sitakant Mahapatra, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Frelinghetti, Philip Larkin, Tsogyam Trungpa, D. J. Enright, Joy Wishart, Basil Bunting, Johannes Bobrowski, Carl Sandburg, Robert Creeley, J. P. Angold, Shinkichi Takahashi, Jean Joseph Rabearivelo, Blaise Cendrars, Pierre Reverdy, Robert Graves, Andrei Voznesensky, James Wright, Kenneth Rexroth, Dan Fante, Manuel Durán, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Charles Tomlinson (Έλευσις 2007)
Ο Γυρισμός του Ταξιδευτή [ Desolation Angels (novel) ] - Jack Kerouac (Απόπειρα 2007)
Γραφές της Αιωνιότητας - Jack Kerouac (Απόπειρα 2006)
Ανθολογία Κινέζικης Ποίησης [Anthology of Chinese Poetry] (Ροές 2005)
Ανθολογία Μπιτ Ποίησης [Anthology of Beat Poetry] - Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Frank O’Hara, Ted Joans, Amiri Baraka, Diane DiPrima, Brenda Frazer, Peter Orlovsky, Jack Micheline, Harold Norse, Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Everson, Lew Welch, Bob Kaufman, John Wieners, Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Lamantia, Jack Hirschman, Robert Creeley, Sinclair Beiles (Ροές 2003)
Ανθολογία Ιαπωνικής Ποίησης [Anthology of Japanese Poetry] (Ροές 2002)
Τζακ Κέρουακ [Kerouac: A Biography] - Ann Charters (Printa 2002)
