Poet, playwright, actor. Born in Monemvasia, Laconia to landowner Eleftherios Ritsos, in 1924 he had his first poems published in Diaplassi ton Pedon. In 1925 he finished school in Gythion and left with his sister Loula for Athens. After his father’s financial ruin, Ritsos was employed as typist and then copyist at the National Bank. In 1926 he enrolled in the Law School of Athens but he never attended, having been stricken by tuberculosis. He worked as assistant librarian and clerk for the Athens Bar Association. In January 1927 he was hospitalized at the Papadimitriou Clinic and then at the Sotiria sanatorium, where he ended up staying for three years, meeting Maria Polydouri and other contemporary intellectuals and Marxists. After another year of hospitalisation in Chania, Crete, he returned to Athens in October 1931 and ran the art department of the Workers’ Club, directing and performing in theatrical plays. His health gradually improved, as did his finances with the aid of his sister. In 1933 he collaborated with the Protoporoi magazine of the Left. He worked in the commercial theatre for four years. In journalism he first appeared in Rizospastis, where he published his first poetry collection, Tractor, under the name I. Sostir. In 1934 he was hired by Govostis Publications as editor, and joined the Communist Party. He spent 1937 at the sanatorium of Parnitha; the next year he was hired by the Royal Theatre and in 1940 by the National Opera. He was bedridden throughout the War and the Occupation yet still participated in the activities of EAM’s educational section. Between 1948 and 1951 he was exiled to Lemnos, Makronissos and Ai-Stratis for his left-wing action; in 1952 he returned to Athens and joined EDA. In the general election of 1964 he was a candidate for EDA. In 1967 he was exiled again, first to Giaros and Leros and then to Samos. In 1973 he participated in the student uprising events. After the dictatorship he lived mainly in Athens. He was awarded for his oeuvre in Greece and other countries around the world. He died in November 1990 and was buried in his birthplace. The poet’s dramatic monologue Philoctetes was presented by ANALOGIO in Athens and then in a tour around Greece and at international festivals.