Diaries of Exile: Yannis Ritsos’s Diaries 1948–50; 2013; 2026

The night of 11 April was cold and rainy. Down at Poets’ House the wind blowing in from the Hudson was fierce. I’d thought this particular evening of poetry was in March, not April, of 2013, but the programme I’d providentially held onto and tucked into the copy of Yannis Ritsos’s Diaries of Exile – the copy I’ve just pulled off my shelf – tells me differently.

It was on 11 April, then, that Edmund Keeley and Karen Van Dyck read from their newly published translation of selections from the diaries the Greek poet (1909–1990) kept when he was imprisoned between 1948 and 1950, first on the island of Limnos and then on Makronisos. Whatever the conditions, which were worse on the second island, Ritsos never stopped writing.

Even if I’d misremembered the date of the Poets’ House reading, I remember the evening well, for several reasons. For one thing, the date was close to the day my beloved – the man I’d been seeing in intense snatches since late January – was planning to move in with me. But the logistics of a speedy and discreet move were challenging enough without the weather. More patient than I, S. put the move off for what turned out to be only two more weeks. Meanwhile I was a broth, a froth, of impatience, longing, joy and anxiety.

To attend this reading, then, was something of a distraction. But it was more meaningful than that. Mike Keeley, my teacher back when I was a doctoral student in the comparative ...