"Yiannis Vardas, our Lyrarogiannis," the President of the Appendix, Paroula Koutsaki, writes in the introductory note of the book, "not only keeps the shepherd's bitch, but also the bow of his lyre. He holds a helmet. He does not only sit in the passage of the Torah, with his flock, nor with his mother to make cheese. He sits with books that he is studying and studying, paper that fills verses and mantinades. He listens not only to his sheep's scabbling, the airlessness of the air in the foliage, the roaring of the birds, the hidden whims of the rosy trees, but he hears the agony of his soul. It is not only guided by its rich poetic talent, which is like a cool water vein from the root of a rock of the Torah. It is also guided by memories, traditions and trekking in the plains and the mountains of Lassithi, in cobblestone streets and wildlife, in places of amalgam.
In short, Giannis Vardas is not the shepherd-lyrar as he is self-assimilated in his writings, but the manthinologist, the poet, the philosopher. The housewife who welcomes us in his mantra with his comrades Sophia, always good-hearted, polite and hospitable and there, with rakas, balsamic stew, freshly crafted myzithra and the Croatian sarcophagus, confesses with enthusiasm that he became a shepherd in order to be able to ... play a lyre and read.
Considering that, in the harsh times of mediocrity we live in, the presentation and promotion of people with work and offer like Yannis Bardas, besides imperative and indispensable, is first and foremost valuable to everyone, the Lyceum of Greek Women Agios Nikolaos with particular feelings of joy and gratitude makes the a version that includes the poems of Yannis Bardas and some of his poems. "
