Acknowledgements

This book, as its title already suggests, is concerned with time in its various linguistic manifestations in poetry; expressions that are more or less creative, albeit always figurative, in which the human experience of time is compressed. However, this book is a time compression in itself; it is the output of my long and ongoing research on time in language and thought, a landmark (yet not an endpoint, I hope) in this venture that spans over the years, crosses different academic institutions and countries, and, not least, voices my long-standing interactions with various authors, teachers and colleagues. Yet, there are some people that enabled the preparation of this book and made its completion possible. I would like to take this chance and acknowledge their contribution here.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Sophia Marmaridou and Kiki Nikiforidou, the advisors of my PhD thesis on which this book is based. Both of them have (jointly and individually) formed my academic thinking and, not least, my academic practices in ways that would be hard to summarize here. I am also ever so grateful for their support, which has been unfailing throughout time.

The book was written while I was doing research at the Swiss Center for Affective Science in Geneva; I am particularly thankful to Patrizia Lombardo and Cristina Soriano for giving me the time to focus on the preparation of this book. I would also like to warmly thank Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas, with whom our collaboration on time, creativity and poetry has been developing over time into a fruitful and fascinating endeavor.

I owe many thanks to all the Greek publishers, as well as to the poets Nikos Sideris and Maria Daskalaki, who granted me permission for reprinting the poems analyzed in this book. I am especially indebted to Daniel Mendelsohn for generously allowing me to use his translations of Cavafy’s poems. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for taking the time to read an earlier version of my manuscript and providing me with comments and suggestions for improvement. This book has also benefited from the feedback provided by the book series editors, Angeliki Athanasiadou and Herb Colston. I thank them for that but also for their patience and support while I was working on the manuscript. Needless to say, I am the only one responsible for any shortcomings, errors and omissions contained in the final outcome.

Last, but not least, a book about time is also a book in time. On a more personal note, I would like to wholeheartedly thank Ioanna Tzortzi and Maria Psoma for their friendship, love and support beyond time; and Antonis Agapitos for new ventures into time. Finally, I want to express my deep gratitude to my parents, Lela and Dimitris, and to my sister, Ioanna. Our time is no longer bound to physical space but is still hard to compress into words. This book is deservingly dedicated to them.