[5] Cavafy's poetic canon consists of 154 poems, while dozens more that remained incomplete or in sketch form weren't published until much later.

He consistently refused to publish his work in books, preferring to share it through local newspapers and magazines, or even print it himself and give it away to anyone who might be interested.

His friend E. M. Forster, the novelist and literary critic, first introduced his poems to the English-speaking world in 1923; he referred to him as "The Poet",[7] famously describing him as "a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe.

[a] Originating from the Phanariot Greek community of Constantinople (now Istanbul), his father was named Petros Ioannis (Πέτρος Ἰωάννης)—hence the Petrou patronymic (GEN) in his name—and his mother Charicleia (Χαρίκλεια; née Georgaki Photiades, Γεωργάκη Φωτιάδη).

In 1876, the family faced financial problems due to the Long Depression of 1873 and with their business now dissolved they moved back to Alexandria in 1877.

Cavafy attended the Greek college "Hermes", where he made his first close friends, and started drafting his own historical dictionary at age eighteen.

[b][12][6] In 1882, disturbances in Alexandria caused the family to move, though again temporarily, to Constantinople, where they stayed at the house of his maternal grandfather, Georgakis Photiades.

Upon his arrival in Constantinople, the nineteen-year old Cavafy first came in contact with his many relatives and started researching his ancestry, trying to define himself in the wider Hellenic context.

A conscientious worker, Cavafy held this position by renewing it annually for thirty years (Egypt remained a British protectorate until 1926).

It was only twenty years later, after the Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), that a new generation of almost nihilist poets (e.g. Karyotakis) found inspiration in Cavafy's work.

A biographical note written by Cavafy reads as follows: I am from Constantinople by descent, but I was born in Alexandria—at a house on Seriph Street; I left very young, and spent much of my childhood in England.

[15] In 1966, David Hockney made a series of prints to illustrate a selection of Cavafy's poems, including In the dull village.

His poems are, typically, concise but intimate evocations of real or literary figures and milieux that have played roles in Greek culture.

Some of the defining themes are uncertainty about the future, sensual pleasures, the moral character and psychology of individuals, homosexuality, and a fatalistic existential nostalgia.

The poem influenced literary works such as The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati (1940), The Opposing Shore (1951) by Julien Gracq, and Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) by J. M.

[18] In 1911, Cavafy wrote "Ithaca", often considered his best-known poem,[19] inspired by the Homeric return journey (nostos) of Odysseus to his home island, as depicted in the Odyssey.

", "The God Forsakes Antony", "In a Township of Asia Minor", "Caesarion", "The Potentate from Western Libya", "Of the Hebrews (A.D. 50)", "Tomb of Eurion", "Tomb of Lanes", "Myres: Alexandrian A.D. 340", "Perilous Things", "From the School of the Renowned Philosopher", "A Priest of the Serapeum", "Kleitos' Illness", "If Dead Indeed", "In the Month of Athyr", "Tomb of Ignatius", "From Ammones Who Died Aged 29 in 610", "Aemilianus Monae", "Alexandrian, A.D. 628-655", "Kaisarion (poem)", "In Church", "Morning Sea" (a few poems about Alexandria were left unfinished at his death).

As poet George Kalogeris observes:[21] He is perhaps most popular today for his erotic verse, in which the Alexandrian youth[s] in his poems seem to have stepped right out of the Greek Anthology, and into a less accepting world that makes them vulnerable, and often keeps them in poverty, though the same Hellenic amber immures their beautiful bodies.

Another poem is the Epitaph of a Greek trader from Samos who was sold into slavery in India and dies on the shores of the Ganges: regretting the greed for riches which led him to sail so far away and end up "among utter barbarians", expressing his deep longing for his homeland and his wish to die as "In Hades I would be surrounded by Greeks".