Poet, performer, translator, essayist, born in 1964 in Florence, where she lives. She has published the fol- lowing collections of poetry: L’estro, Vrusciamundo, Comedia, Penelope, Lo dittatore amore. Melologhi, Crolli. Her work has been published in many Italian and foreign magazines and anthologies. She has translated the American poets Anne Sexton and Erica Jong into Italian. Poet-Actress, Rosaria Lo Russo has been performing poetry for the last twenty years, reading and playing, in many public occasions, not only her poems but also the Italian and European classical and contemporary poets, like Dante Alighieri, Mario Luzi, Josif Brodskij, Arthur Rimbaud and many others. She also runs poetry workshops where she teaches vocal and metrical techniques of poetry reading-performance.

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We who made the revolution that did not work, take smoke like poisoned
milk. The new pope made a clean sweep even of limbo. Even an unbaptised

child will aspire no more for
semi-immortality. In this glade that suspends heavy metals we inhale, so to speak, the toxic residues of civil rights. I read with unutterable pleasure, in a sweet old translation
of Saint Theresa about the incomparable
value of a modicum of mortification

Translated from Italian by William Wall and Serena Todesco