Amelia Rosselli (Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, March 28, 1930 - Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, February 11, 1996) was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

. She was the daughter of Marion Cave, an English political activist, and Carlo Rosselli

Carlo Rosselli

Carlo Rosselli was an Italian political leader, journalist, historian and anti-fascist activist, first in Italy then abroad...

, who was a hero of the Italian anti-Fascist Resistance—founder, with his brother Nello, of the liberal socialist movement "Justice and Liberty." He and his brother were assassinated by La Cagoule

La Cagoule

La Cagoule , officially called Comité secret d'action révolutionnaire , was a violent French fascist-leaning and anti-communist group, active in the 1930s, and designed to attempt the overthrow of the French Third Republic...

, secret services of the Fascist regime, while the extended family was living in exile in France in 1937. The family then moved between England and the United States, where Rosselli was educated. She continued to speak Italian with her grandmother, Amelia Pincherle Rosselli, a Venetian Jewish feminist, playwright, and translator from a family prominent in the Italian Risorgimento, the movement for independence. Rosselli returned to Italy in 1946, eventually settling in Rome. She spent her life studying composition, music, and ethnomusicology and taking part in the cultural life of postwar Italy as a poet and literary translator. Her extraordinary, highly experimental literary output includes verse and prose in English and French as well as Italian. She committed suicide in Rome in 1996.

Rosselli has been translated into English by Lucia Re, Jennifer Scappettone, Diana Thow, Deborah Woodard

Deborah Woodard

Deborah Woodard is an American poet, translator and teacher. She was born in New York City and grew up in Vermont. She is the author of four collections of poetry, including one-full length collection, Plato's Bad Horse, and three chapbooks...

, Paul Vangelisti

Paul Vangelisti

Paul Vangelisti is an United States poet and broadcaster. He graduated from the University of San Francisco in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy...

, and Cristina Viti.

Poetry collections in English

• Locomotrix: Selected Poetry and Prose of Amelia Rosselli, edited and translated by Jennifer Scappettone (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming in 2012)
• The Dragonfly, translated by Giuseppe Leporace & Deborah Woodard (Chelsea Editions, 2010)
• War Variations, translated by Lucia Re and Paul Vangelisti (Green Integer, 2003)
• Sleep: Poesie in inglese, translated by Amelia Rosselli (Garzanti, 1992)

Poetry collections in Italian

• Primi scritti (1952–63) (1980)
• Variazioni belliche (1964)
• Serie ospedaliera (1969)
• Documento (1976)
• Impromptu (1981)
• Appunti sparsi e persi (1966–1977) (1983)
• La libellula (1985)
• Antologia poetica (1987)
• Sleep. Poesie in inglese (1992)

Critical writings

• Spazi metrici (1964)
• Una scrittura plurale. Saggi e interventi critici (2004, postumo)