Manolis Anagnostakis was born on March 10, 1925 in Salonica, Greece and died on June 23, 2005 in Athens, Greece. He was a Greek poet and critic at the forefront of the Marxist and existentialist poetry movements arising during and after the Greek Civil War in the late 1940s. Anagnostakis was a leader amongst his contemporaries and influenced the generation of poets immediately after him. His poems have been honored in Greece's national awards and arranged and sung by contemporary musicians. In spite of his accomplishments, Philip Ramp notes that Anagnostakis "is the least known, to an English speaking audience, of the major Greek poets of his generation."