Luigi Ballerini

Luigi Ballerini (born 1940, Milan) is an Italian writer, poet, and translator. Biography Son of Umbertina Santi, a seamstress, and Raffaele Costantino Edoardo, known as Ettore, himself a tailor who died in combat against the Germans on the island of Cephalonia in 1943, Luigi Ballerini was born in Milan and grew up in the district of Porta Ticinese. Since 2010, he has divided his time between New York, Milan, and Otranto. He studied literature at the Università Cattolica in Milan, lived for a time in London, and graduated from Bologna with a thesis on the American writer, Charles Olson. His first poems, Inno alla terra, debuted in Inventario in 1960. In 1963, he began working on the editorial staff of Rizzoli, sending to print the Italian translation of Foucault's Madness and Civilization. In 1965, he moved to Rome, where he met neo-experimental artists and poets such as Adriano Spatola, Giulia Niccolai, Nanni Cagnone, Eliseo Mattiacci, Magdalo Mussio, Emilio Villa, Alfredo Giuliani, Giovanna Sandri and, in particular, Elio Pagliarani, with whom he became a collaborator. Through Pagliarani, he met the founder of publisher Marsilio Editori, Cesare De Michelis, with whom he maintained a deep friendship. Through Marsilio, he published his first volume of literary criticism (Ila piramide capovolta, 1975), La sacra Emilia, an anthology of selected poetry by Gertrude Stein, which he translated himself, and several poetry collections (Il terzo gode, 1993, and the reissue of Cefalonia 1943-2001, in 2013). Meanwhile, he wrote book reviews in the newspapers Avanti! and l'Unità, and the journal Rinascita; he taught in secondary schools; and he translated American critics and writers such as Lionel Abel, Leslie Fiedler, Herman Melville, Benjamin Franklin, James Baldwin, and Henry James. In 1971, for the publisher Guanda, he translated Kora in Hell by William Carlos Williams. Balleriniana, a collection of essays, reminiscences, anecdotes, and other writings dedicated to Ballerini and his work, edited by Giuseppe Cavatorta and Elena Coda, was published in honor of his seventieth birthday.