5th Floor's Story
Nikos Kavvadias

A famous Greek poet, writer and a sailor by profession.

All his work is about sailors’ life at the sea and much of his work is about his own experience and feelings as he travelled as a sailor worldwide seeking for adventure. Using his experience in his work he tries to describe people who escape outside the boundaries of reality.
Although in his time sailors had a hard life on the open seas, whenever on land, they longed for this life and experience.

The film with the title “Li” or “Between the devil and the blue deep sea” by Marion Hansel (1995) is based on his novel with the title “the shift”, in Greek “Vardia”.
As his poetry is biographical he gives a lot of information about shipboard life.
Many of his poems have been set to music. This contributed to making Kavvadias’ poetry widely known in Greece.