Currently my primary project is a poetry manuscript, Flower of Youth, the Pasolini Poems. It focuses on Pasolini during the war years and the German occupation of Italy. My research sources for this project include biographical sources, his autobiographical fiction, Atti Impuri and Amado Mio, and the poetry he wrote in the Friulano dialect collected as La Nuova Gioventu and published in 1974 shortly before his death.
My secondary on going project is a collection in the elegiac mode that also includes poems adapting translation techniques to creative work. My working title is After. I have been using the work of Italian poets such as Giorgio Caproni and Dino Campana as sources.
A third poetry project is collaborative; I work with a group called Yoko’s Dogs in the renga form.
I have an idea for a fiction project. Its seed is in my interest in Sappho’s poetry. My working titles are, After Life, or Hotel Immortality, the story of a woman, a classical scholar who, upon the death of her 16-year-old daughter, has retired to live in a village near Syracuse in Sicily where she dreams a parallel life in ancient Sicily, Sappho’s exile there. This leads her to discover, buried within the walls of an ancient villa, the complete scrolls of the poet’s work. I hope to do some travel and begin research for this project during my half sabbatical, January-June 30, 2009.
Education
Honours BA, English Language and Literature, University of Toronto, 1972
MA, English Literature and Creative Writing, University of Windsor, 1974
Research and teaching interests
PoetryProse
FictionGenre
Cross-genre
Grants / research projects
General Research Fund Competition, SSHRC, Jan. 2000 ($2500.00)
Concordia Aid To Scholarly Activities, Jan. 2003-June 2004 ($4500.)
Senior Visiting Fellowship, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Bologna, May 1, 2003- July 31, 2003 (4500. euros plus return air travel to Bologna)
