Listen in as University of Chicago professor Jennifer Scappettone presents four Italian poets “of research” for an evening of poetry, translation and conversation.

Maria Attanasio is the author of five collections of poetry and four works of historical fiction. Her latest work, Il Falsario di Caltagirone, was awarded the prestigious Premio Vittorini. She was born in Caltagirone, Sicily in 1943, where she still lives.

Giovanna Frene, alias Sandra Bortolazzo, was born in Asolo in 1968. Her books of poetry are Immagine di voce (1999), Spostamento (2000), Datità, with an afterword by Andrea Zanzotto (2001), Stato apparente (2004) and Sara Laughs (2007). Her poems have appeared in a range of anthologies and journals in Italy, Germany, Mexico, Spain and the U.S.

Marco Giovenale is a poet, translator, curator, editor, cultural critic and winner of the 2009 Delfini Prize. He lives in Rome. His books of poetry include Il segno meno (2003), Double click (2005) and La casa esposta (2007). He edits and contributes to the periodicals il manifesto, Nuovi Argomenti, Poesia, Action Poetique, The Black Economy and Atelier. He blogs on slowforward.wordpress.com and gamm.org, and his work has been featured and translated in a range of magazines and anthologies in Italy, France and the U.S.

Milli Graffi was born in 1940 in Milan. She has produced works of sound poetry and four poetry collections, most recently embargo voice (2006). She’s written a novella called Centimetri due (2004). She has translated Lewis Carroll and Charles Dickens, and has written on nonsense and the comic function of the early avant-gardes. She is editor-in-chief of the pioneering journal Il Verri.

Jennifer Scappettone is the guest-editor of Aufgabe 7 and the author of From Dame Quickly. She’s written several chapbooks, including Ode oggettuale, and a book for Belladonna’s Elders Series with Lyn Hejinian and Etel Adnan (#5: Poetry, Landscape, Apocalypse, 2009). She is working on the pop-up opera Exit 43 for Atelos, as well as a critical study of Venice within the modernist and postmodern imaginary. She is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.

This event was co-sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, Ether Sea Projects/Litmus Press, Poets House, St. Mark’s Poetry Project, UChicago Arts Council, University of Chicago Creative Writing and Romance Languages and Literatures program, Northwestern University Department of French and Italian and the Chicago Poetry Center.

Recorded Friday, May 29, 2009 at ThinkArt Salon.