Adriano
Spatola (b. Yugoslavia / Italy)
1941-1988
Born
in Sapjane (formerly Yugoslavia) in 1941, Adriana Spatola was one of the major
contemporary Italian poets.
Early in his career, Spatola served on the
editorial board of the journal Quindici before he and Giulia Niccolai
founded the poetry magazine and press, Tam Tam.
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For many years his isolated homes, first
in Mulino di Bazzano and then in Saint' Ilario, Spatola invited poet friends,
celebrating with them what he described as the "republic of poetry"
and encouraging them not only to write, but to produce books, create poetic and
artistic exhibitions, perform their works, and to discuss poetry in the context
of social life. His influence was immense, as he himself created books of
poetry, sounds poems, magazines, concrete works and visual pieces, along with
other texts. As Beppe Cavatorta has described these locations:
They
become places, not only to live and write, but to be written: life and writing,
writing and poetry, unified and indissoluble, self sufficient and
self-sustained. ...First at the Molino, then at Ca' Bianca...it was possible
for him to recreate that situation, to initiate a '"poetocrazia," a
country of poetry....
Spatola's first books of poetry, L'ebreo
negro and Majakovskiiiiiiij both raised the battle cry for a new
kind poetry. And for the rest of his life, the poet devoted himself to numerous
poetic and literary activities, including writing essays, a novel (recently
translated as The Porthole, Otis Books/Seismicity Editions), and study of
sound, visual, and concrete poetry, Verso la poesia totale.
With his friend and translator Paul
Vangelisti, Spatola edited a 1982 anthology Italian Poetry 1960-1970: From
Neo to Post-Avantgarde.
Spatola died at Saint' Ilario, near Parma
in 1988.
BOOKS
OF POETRY
L'ebreo
negro
(Milan: Feltrinelli, 1966); Majakovskiiiiiiij (Turin: Edizioni Geiger,
1971); Diversi accorgimenti (Turin: Geiger, 1975); La piegatura del
foglio (Naples: Guida, 1982); La definizione del presso (Milan: TAM
TAM-Edizioni Martello/Libreria, 1992)
ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Various
Devices,
trans. by Paul Vangelisti (San Francisco/Los Angeles: Red Hill, 1978);
selections in Shearsmen of Sorts: Italian Poetry 1975-1993, trans. by
Paul Vangelisti (special issue of Forum Italicum, 1992); Material,
Materials, Recovery of, trans. by Paul Vangelisti (Los Angeles: Sun &
Moon Press/20 Pages, 1993); selections in The Promised Land: Italian Poetry
After 1975, trans. by Paul Vangelisti (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press,
1999); The Position of Things: Collected Poems 1961-1992, trans. by Paul
Vangelisti (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2008)
Some concrete poems:
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