An overview of contemporary Italian women’s poetry from 1970 to the present day.
The event will feature the poetry of seven Italian authors, Maddalena Bergamin, Maria Borio, Carmen Gallo, Giulia Martini, Laura Pugno, Francesca Santucci, who will be reading some of their poems along with others by poets who had an important role in the development of their poetic voices. Elisa Donzelli‘s poems from her recent collection Album (Nottetempo, 2021), which was awarded the Premio Alma Mater Violani Landi Opera Prima and the Premio di Poesia Città di Legnano-Giuseppe Tirinnanzi, will be read by Adele Bardazzi. In addition, poet and translator Geoffrey Brock will read some of the poets’ texts in English translations created specifically for this occasion.
This poetry reading results from a research project, Non solo muse: panorama della poesia femminile contemporanea italiana dal 1970 a oggi, co-ordinated by Dr Adele Bardazzi (Trinity College Dublin) and Roberto Binetti (University of Oxford) and funded by the John Fell Fund at the University of Oxford. The project aims to examine and problematise the notion of women’s writing within the Italian poetic context by interviewing more than fifteen poets, among whom are Elisa Biagini, Maria Grazia Calandrone, Giovanna Frene, Mariangela Gualtieri, Franca Mancinelli, Dacia Maraini, Gabriella Sica, and Sara Ventroni.
The project aims to propose a better understanding and appreciation of contemporary Italian women’s poetry by creating a dialogue with the poets themselves. We aim to problematise the current view on Italian women’s poetry by demonstrating the richness and complexity of this literary phenomenon. This goes against the grain of current scholarship, which often tends to identify poetry written by women as not sufficiently engaged with history and society and limited to their personal experience. This characterisation is often problematically designated as ‘confessional’.
More information about the project can be found on nonsolomuse.com
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