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From Crete to Canada to Craiova

October 06th, 2017

The poet’s road can be very long, and it is never straight.

Born in Kolibari on Crete in 1947, Manolis Aligizakis moved with his family at a young age to Thessaloniki and then to Athens, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Sciences from the Panteion University of Athens.

After graduating from the Panteion Supreme School of Athens, he served in the armed forces for two years and immigrated to Vancouver in 1973. Towards the end of 2006 he founded Libros Libertad, an independent publishing company in Surrey.

Under his pen name Manolis, now he has won the top poetry prize from the Mihai Eminescu Academy in Craiova, Romania. The Academy gives First and Second Poetry Prize awards during an annual literary festival that usually lasts about a week.

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