Maria Polydouri (1 April 1902–1930) was a Greek

Greeks

The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

.

Polydouri was born in Kalamata

Kalamata

Kalamata is the second-largest city of the Peloponnese in southern Greece. The capital and chief port of the Messenia prefecture, it lies along the Nedon River at the head of the Messenian Gulf...

. She was a contemporary of Kostas Karyotakis

Kostas Karyotakis

Kostas Karyotakis is considered one of the most representative Greek poets of the 1920s and one of the first poets to use iconoclastic themes in Greece. His poetry conveys a great deal of nature, imagery and traces of expressionism and surrealism...

, with whom she had a desperate but incomplete love affair. Although she wrote poetry from at an early age, her most important poems were written during the last four years of her life, when, suffering from consumption

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

, she was secluded in an Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 sanatorium

Sanatorium

A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...

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Unintentionally she became a literary legend in early 20th century Athens, and a link between the pre-war poetry of Karyotakis and the post-war poetry of Yiannis Ritsos

Yiannis Ritsos

Yiannis Ritsos was a Greek poet and left-wing activist and an active member of the Greek Resistance during World War II.-Early life:...

 and Angelos Sikelianos

Angelos Sikelianos

Angelos Sikelianos was a Greek lyric poet and playwright. He wrote on national history, religious symbolism, and universal harmony in poems such as The Light-Shadowed, Prologue to Life, Mother of God, and Delphic Utterance...

. Her poetry is full of sadness and sincere feelings. Love seems to be the strongest motive for Polydouri whose poems are lyric and spontaneous. Her language seems to be part of an oral conversation with her love interest. K. Sergiopoulos said: Maria Polydouri used to write her poems as if she was writing her personal diary. The transmutation happened automatically and effortlessly. To Polydouri, expression meant straight transcribing from the facts happenning in her emotional world to the poetic language with all the idealizations and exaggerations her romantic nature dictated to her.

Polydouri died of Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

in Athens in 1930.

Works

Collections:

• The trilles that faint (1928)
• Echo over chaos (1929)