Maria Laina

Maria Laina (; 1947 – 27 December 2023) was a Greek poet. She studied Law at the University of Athens, but she did not practice it, and worked instead as a translator, critic, screenwriter, copy editor, professor of Greek, and radio producer.

Laina belonged to the so-called Genia tou '70 (i.e. '70's Generation), which is a literary term referring to Greek authors who began publishing their work during the 1970s, especially towards the end of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974 and at the first years of the Metapolitefsi.

Laina was awarded the State Prize for Poetry for her collection Rodinos Fovos (Ρόδινος φόβος) in 1993, and the Cavafy Prize together with Giorgos Markopoulos in 1996. Her poetry has been translated into English,

Selected works

Poetry Ενηλικίωση (Coming of Age), 1968 Επέκεινα (Hereafter), 1970 Αλλαγή τοπίου (A Change of Landscape), 1972 Σημεία στίξεως (Punctuation Marks), 1979 Δικό της (Of her own), 1985 Ρόδινος φόβος (Rose fear), 1992 and in English translated by Sarah McCann Εδώ (Here), 2003

Translations Pound, Ezra, Η Αλφαβήτα της μελέτης (ABC of Reading), 1974 Mansfield, Katherine, Μακαριότητα (Bliss), 1981 Eliot, T. S., Για την ποίηση (On Poetry and Poets), 1982