Luigi Ballerini

Born in Milan in 1940, Luigi Ballerini taught modern and contemporary Italian Literature at the University of California (Los Angeles).  Ballerini’s poetry has appeared under the following titles: eccetera. E (Guanda, 1972), Che figurato muore (Scheiwiller, 1988), Che oror l’orient (Lubrina, 1991), Il terzo gode (Marsilio, 1994), Stracci shakespeariani (Quasar 1996), Uscita senza strada (Edizioni della Battaglia, 2000) e Uno monta la luna (Manni, 2001). His Cefalonia 43 e altre poesie will be published by Mondadori in February of 2005. His anthologies of American and Italian Poetry include La rosa disabitata (Feltrinelli, 1981), Shearsmen of Sorts (Forum Italicum 1992) and The Promised Land (Sun & Moon, 1999). He has translated into Italian several books by American authors including Herman Melville, Henry James, William Carlos Williams, James Baldwin, Kurt Vonegut. His anthology of Gertrude Stein’s poetry, La sacra Emilia e altre poesie, was published by Marsilio (Venice) in 1999.

He has written extensively on avant-garde literature and poetry (La piramide capovolta, Marsilio 1975), Guido Cavalcanti (Colui che vede Amore, Olschi, 2004) and on poetics (La legge dell’ingratitudine), and on gastronomy: his edition of Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well is scheduled for publication in the Fall of 2003 (University of Toronto Press), while his Maestro Martino: The Book of the Culinary Art, will be published by the University of California Press, in the Spring of 2004. He contributes to Gastronomica and the Italian TV Program Il gambero rosso. He is also, and is the general editor of Cum grano salis a series of books dedicated to Historical Gastronomy published in Milan by Guido Tommasi Editore. His edition of F.T. Marinetti’s Gli indomabili has been issued by Mondadori in the year 2000, followed in the Spring of 2003 by that of Mafarka il futurista.

He has curated exhibitions of Contemporary Italian Art including Italian Visual Writing, (New York, Finch Museum and Torino, Galleria civica d’arte moderna, 1973) and Spelt from Sybil’s Leaves (Sydney, Power Gallery, 1984). He has also convened a number of conferences: The Disappearing Pheasant I (New York, NYU, 1991) and The Disappearing Pheasant II (Los Angeles, UCLA, 1994).
A number of his publications have been realized in cooperation with Artists. Among them: La parte allegra del pesce (with Paolo Icaro, Telai del Bernini 1984), Leggenda di Paolo Icaro (Essegi, 1985), La torre dei filosofi (with Eliseo Mattiacci and Remo Bodei, Essegi, 1986), Selvaggina (with Angelo Savelli, Scheiwiller, 1988), Una più del diavolo (with Marco Gastini, Noire 1994), Navi di terra e di mare (with Marco Gastini, Montanari, 1999), Vademecum per il Carro solare di Eliseo Mattiacci (Scheiwiller, 2004).

In 1992 he was awarded the Feronia Prize for Poetry.

Today, Luigi Ballerini lives in New York.