Maria Polydouri

Maria Polydouri
Polydouri in 1920.
Native name	Maria Polydouri
Born	Kalamata, Greece
Died	Athens, Greece
Occupation	poet
Language	Greek
Nationality	Greek
Alma mater	National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Literary movement	neo-romanticim

Maria Polydouri (Greek: Μαρία Πολυδούρη; 1 April 1902 – 29 April 1930) was a Greek poet that belonged to the school of Neo-romanticism.

Polydouri was born in Kalamata. She was the daughter of the philologist Eugene Polydouris and Kyriaki Markatou, a woman with early feminist beliefs. She completed her high school studies in Kalamata, and had also gone to school in Gytheio and Filiatra, as well as in Arsakeio in Athens for two years. She was a contemporary of Kostas Karyotakis, with whom she had a desperate but incomplete love affair. Although she wrote poetry from an early age, her most important poems were written during the last four years of her life, when, suffering from Consumption (disease), she was secluded in an Athens Sanatorium, where she died in 1930.

She first appeared in the Literary world at age 14 with the prose poem “The Pain of the Mother”, which refers to the death of a sailor who was washed up on the shores of Filiatra and is influenced by the lamentations heard in Mani Peninsula. At sixteen she was appointed to the Prefecture of Messenia and also expressed keen interest in The woman question. In 1920, during the time period of forty days, she lost both her parents.

In 1921 she was transferred to the Prefecture of Athens while enrolled at the Law School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Kostas Karyotakis, a fellow poet of the time was working at the same service sector. After their encounter, a fierce love developed, which did not last long but decisively influenced her life and work.

They first met in January 1922. Polydouri was then 20 years old, while Karyotakis was 26. She had published some juvenilia poems while he had published two poetry collections - “The pain of Men and things” (1919) and “Nepenthe” (1921) - and had already won the respect of some critics and fellow-craftsmen.