Luigi Ballerini

Luigi Ballerini (UCLA, Emeritus) was born in Milan, and studied in Milan, London and Bologna. Before joining the Italian Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, he taught at City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and at New York University, where in 1976 he became the director of Italian Studies. He now lives between New York and Milan. In New York he has collaborated with both visual artists and poets. In 1973 he organized the exhibition Italian Visual Poetry from 1912 to 1972 at the Finch College Museum. In 1991 he organized the meeting of Italian and American poets The Disappearing Pheasant. His publications include: literary criticism (La piramide capovolta, 4 per Pagliarani); translations (of, among others, Gertrude Stein, Lionel Abel, Leslie Fielder, Herman Melville, Benjamin Franklin, James Baldwin, Henry James, Charles Olson, LeRoy Jones); poetry collections, such as Il terzo gode (1994), Che figurato muore (1988), Shakespeherian rugs (1996), Uno monta la luna (2001), Cefalonia ’43 (reissued in 2005 and awarded with the Brancati and Lorenzo Montano prize); the plaquette Uscita senza strada ovvero come sbrinare una bandiera rossa (2000) and the plaquette Se il tempo è matto (2010). He edited, among others, Marinetti’s Gli indomabili and Mafarka il futurista, and Melville’s Benito Cereno, and published the anthologies La linea longobarda (1996), Shearsmen of Sorts: Italian Poetry 1975-1993 (1992), and The Promised Land (1999), Those Who Look Like Flies from Afar (2013). His 1991 volume Che oror l’orient, a collection of bilingual poems in Italian and Milanese dialect, was awarded the Feronia Prize for poetry. After collaborating with American publishing houses, in 2000 he founded Agincourt Press, which publishes experimental poetry, psychoanalysis, philosophy and literature. He is also known as a culinary historian, and is the founder of the library Chiesa Rossa, where he organizes the annual meeting Latte e Linguaggio (Milk and Language). With Massimo Ciavolella, he is General Editor of the Da Ponte Italian Library, a series published by the University of Toronto Press.