Kyriakos Charalambides studied History and Archaeology at the University of Athens. He attended courses in Theatre at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece and specialised in Radio Broadcasting at the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation (Munich). He worked as a philologist in secondary education and, for three decades, at the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC), from which he retired in 1998 as Head of the Radio Programmes Department.
He has published thirteen collections of poetry, included in the comprehensive volume Poems 1961–2017 (Ikaros, 2019). His collection Snail and Moon (Saligkari kai fengari, Kaleidoskopio, 2018) received the Literary Book Award for Children by the journal Anagnostis in 2019. In 1997, Agra Editions published his work Romanos the Melodist: Three Hymns, which received the Award of the Hellenic Society of Literary Translators, as well as two volumes of essays entitled Slippery Web (Olisthiros istos, 2009). His publications also include the anthology of texts on Nicosia, which he edited (Metaichmio, 2010), and the essay collection Leaning on the Spear (En dori keklimenos, Sokolis, 2019).
He has received the Cyprus State Poetry Award (1974, 1978, 1983) for his works The Vessel with the Shapes, Achaean Coast and Famagusta the Royal City, as well as the Greek State Poetry Award (1996) for Metahistory. The Academy of Athens awarded him the Meropi Economou Prize (1989) for The Dome and the Kostas and Eleni Ouranis Prize (2003) for his overall literary contribution. He has also received the Cavafy International Prize in Egypt (1998), the Teucer Anthias–Thodosis Pierides Award for Cultural Contribution (2006), and the Aristeion of Letters, Arts and Sciences of the Republic of Cyprus (2007).
In 2013, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Department of Philology of the University of Athens and was elected Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens in the field of Literature (Poetry), Classof Letters and Fine Arts. The University of Palermo (Chair of Modern Greek Language and Literature) honoured him in 2017 as an “outstanding figure of Greek Letters for his overall contribution”. In 2019, he received the George Philippou Pierides Award from the Union of Cypriot Writers.
Translations of his poetry have been published in eighteen separate editions in English, French, German, Swedish, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Albanian.
