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Mary di Michele

  • Professor, English

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Biography

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)

Research activities

Selected publications

Books

Tree of August. Toronto: Three Tree Press, 1978.

Bread and Chocolate. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1980. (along with Bronwen Wallace, Marrying into the Family.)

Mimosa and Other Poems. Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1981, reprinted 1983.

Necessary Sugar. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1984.

Anything is Possible: A Selection of Eleven Women Poets. ed. Mary di Michele. Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1984.

Immune to Gravity. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986.

Under My Skin, a novel, Kingston: Quarry Press, 1994.

Luminous Emergencies. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990.

Stranger in You: Selected Poems and New. Toronto: Oxford U.P. 1995.

Debriefing the Rose. Toronto: Anansi, 1998.

Tenor of Love, a novel, Viking, Canada, Simon & Schuster, U.S.A, 2005

Books in translation

Pain et chocolat: Poemes choisis , choix et traduction par Frank Caucci, Editions du Noroit,  Quebec, 1996

Tenor Ljubavi, Lugano, Belgrade, Serbia, 2006

Canto D’amore, Cava de’ Tirreni (SA) - Italy, 2007

Poetry, recent reprints

“Angel of Slapstick,” poem, pp.24-29, Common Magic, The book of the new, ed. Greene & Gugler, Artful Dodger Press, 2008

“Engimatico”, poem & translation into French, pp.138, 139, Pluriel, Une Anthologie, Des Voix/ An Anthology of Diverse Voices, Charron, Mayne, and Melancon, Univeristy of Ottawa Press, 2008

Recent essays

“Your Own Heart A Satire,” The Capilano Review, pp.132-138, Series 3, No.5, Winter 2008

Participation activities

Conference papers / readings / talks

Il Dio di Mio Padre, John Fante Literary Festival, Torricella Peligna, Italy, presentations August 24, 25, 2007.

Common Magic: The Legacy of Bronwen Wallace, Queen’s University, paper: “Snowsuits and Headbands: the feminist lyric, Sappho and Bronwen Wallace” March 8, 2008 (publication forthcoming in conference proceedings)

Reading: Bishop’s Univeristy, Sherbrooke, Qc., October 1, 2008

Inspiring Collaborations: A Symposium in Honour of Barbara Godard, Toronto, December 5 & 6, poetry reading, December 6.

Other activities

QWF/AELAQ: Raising the Profile Selection Committee, meeting March 19, 2008 Manitoba Arts Council, Jury, July 10, 2008
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