The Ministry of Culture has named 2013 Kavafis Year to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth.
Kavafis was instrumental in the revival and recognition of Greek poetry both at home and abroad. His poems are, typically, concise but intimate evocations of real or literary figures and milieu that have played roles in Greek culture. Uncertainty of the future, sensual pleasures, the moral character and psychology of individuals, homosexuality, and a fatalistic existential nostalgia are some of his defining themes.
Besides his subjects, unconventional for the time, his poems also exhibit a skilled and versatile craftsmanship, which is almost completely lost in translation. Kavafis was a perfectionist, obsessively refining every single line of his poetry. His mature style was a free iambic form, free in the sense that verses rarely rhyme and are usually from 10 to 17 syllables. In his poems, the presence of rhyme usually implies irony.
The General Directorate of Modern Culture, The Department for the Protection and Development of Greek Letters, and the National Book Centre are responsible for the main schedule of the action project, which has the full archive of Kavafis, as well as foreign Embassies in Greece, the seats of Modern Greek and Culture of universities abroad where Kavafis’ work is being taught to students, the Library of Alexandria, the European Culture Center of Delphi, literature organizations and other associations.
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