Nuances is a transformative and elegant book, featuring sure-handed lines and vivid images rendered with delicate clarity. Manolis, a prolific poet, possesses a distinctly Mediterranean flavour, as would a poet schooled on Cavafy or Elytis, aromatic, tangy, like freshness of an olive grove in the morning. Nuances revels in the vitality of the sensuous motion of language on a sea of thought. The poems move in a transparent and openhearted gesture, subtle images intersecting with revealing philosophical meanings and benevolent meditations on the human condition. They provide insight into the mysterious act of writing iteself and, open to the moment of creation, Manolis discovers, within the foliage of one poem, the next poem.

Manolis (Emmanuel Aligizakis) was born in the small village Kolibari west of Chania on the Greek island of Crete in 1947. At a young age his family moved first to Thessaloniki and then to Athens where he was educated, achieving a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Sciences at the Panteion University of Athens. He served in the armed forces for two years, and emigrated to Vancouver in 1973, where he worked in several different jobs over the years. He attended Simon Fraser University for a year, taking English Literature in a non-degree program. He has written three novels and a large number of collections of poetry, which are slowly appearing as published works. Various articles, poems and short stories in Greek as well as in English have appeared in various magazines and newspapers in Canada, United States, Australia and Greece. After working as an iron worker, train labourer, taxi driver and stock broker, he now lives in White Rock where he spends his time writing, gardening and traveling. In 2006 he founded Libros Libertad, an unorthodox and independent publishing company in Surrey, BC with the goal of publishing literary books.

Manolis Aligizakis' profile page