Amelia Rosselli

Amelia Rosselli was an Italian poet. She was the daughter of Marion Cave, an English political activist, and Carlo Rosselli, who was a hero of the Italian antifascist resistance. Influenced by writers such as Giuseppe Ungaretti, Cesare Pavese, Sandro Penna, and Eugenio Montale, Rosselli, by the late 1950s, was already writing some the work included in her two major early books, Variazioni belliche (1964, War Variations, 2003) and Serie ospedaliera. These two early works were championed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and others. Her third major collection, Documento (1976), was followed by a hiatus from poetry for several years, until she published Impromptu (1981) and Appunti sparsi e persi (1983). Her extraordinary, highly experimental literary output includes verse and prose in English and French as well as Italian. She committed suicide in Rome in 1996. (Photo credit: Dino Ignani)