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Dominic Siracusa

Dominic Siracusa is an advanced doctoral student, currently completing his PhD dissertation on the experimental poet Emilio Villa (1914-2003).  Before coming to UCLA, Dominic received his MA in Italian from Middlebury College.

In addition to his academic work, Dominic is a literary translator. His translations have appeared in The Chicago Review, TheJournal of Italian Translation, The American Poet  and various literary journals throughout Europe and the US. He has also contributed a number of translations to the anthology of 20th century Italian poetry Those Who from Afar Look Like Flies Vol. I(edited by Luigi Ballerini and Beppe Cavatorta, and to be published by the University of Toronto Press in 2014).

He is also co-translator, with Lucia Re, of the futurist novel Una donna con tre anime (A Woman with three Souls) by Rosa Rosà, which appeared in the California Italian Studies Journal in 2011.

In 2011, Dominic was awarded by the Academy of American Poets the Raiziss/de Palchi Fellowship to work on his translations of Emilio Villa. The award is given every other year to enable an American translator to travel, study, or otherwise advance a significant in-progress translation of modern Italian poetry. The Selected Poems of Emilio Villa is forthcoming with Contra Mundum Press.

Publications

Dominic’s scholarly publications include “Violence, Repetition and Utopia in Balestrini’s Vogliamo tutto” (Carte Italiane 2,4, 2008) and “Casanova, Marinetti and the Art of Seduction” (Carte Italiane, 6, 2010). His article “Emilio Villa: Novissimo di dimensioni bibliche” will appear in the Italian literary journal Autografo in the spring of 2013. He has presented several conference papers, including “La natura poetica di Angelo Lumelli” “Poesie ‘delfini’ del mondo,” “Afasia e poesia nel V canto dell’Inferno” and “An Incredible Game of Telephone: Translating the Bible.”