On July 7, 2000, YIP. YALE ITALIAN POETRY received the following announcement by Schoolzone,the most used education portal site in the United Kingdom (click on the link to visit Schoolzone's Web site at: www.schoolzone.co.uk):

"Your site, Yale Italian Poetry (at http://pantheon.yale.edu/~yip2), has been awarded a Five Star rating by Schoolzone's panel of over 400 expert teachers. This is in recognition of the fact that it is an outstanding educational site: useful for teaching and learning and easy to navigate.

YIP. YALE ITALIAN POETRY wishes to express its thankfulness and appreciation to any of Schoolzone's representatives, assistants and readers for this award.

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Luisa Rossina Villani of Pittsburgh with her manuscript titled, Running Away from Russia, has been chosen first place winner 2000 of the annual Bordighera Bilingual Poetry Book Publication Prize by W.S DiPiero, distinguished poet judge of California. She will receive one thousand dollars at a ceremony scheduled for November 2nd, Thursday evening, 7pm at Poets House, 72 Spring St. in New York City. Another thousand dollars will be awarded to her commissioned translator Luigi Fontanella, accomplished poet of Italian.

Peter Covino of New York City was praised as first runner-up with sample pages from his manuscript, Cut Off the Ears of Winter, and Margot Fortunato Galt of St. Paul, Minnesota, was celebrated as second runner-up with sample poems from The Annunciation. Two other poets were given honorable mention by W.S. DiPiero for their manuscripts: Ed Smith of New Jersey, whose grandfather was born in Salerno, Italy, was applauded for his manuscript pages titled, A Postcard from the Shore, and Mary Crescenzo of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was complimented for her manuscript pages from Art in the Alzheimer's Wing.

Winner, Luisa Rossina Villani was born on a vineyard in Tujunga, California in 1964. She holds degrees in Business Administration from the University of Southern California, English from California State University Northridge, and a Masters in Fine Art in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh. She has taught English in Russia and the Ukraine, and in 1997 was the coordinator for Project Chiapas, a nonprofit organization which conducted a field study of indigenous politics at the Na-Bolom Cultural Museum in San Cristobal, Mexico. Ms. Villani's short stories have appeared in The Literary Review, The Lullwater Review, and her novel, The Battle for the Red June was semifinalist for the James Fellowship for the Novel-In Progress from the Heekin Group Foundation in 1999. Her poetry chapbook, On the Eve of Everything, was published by WECS Press in 1998 as winner of their annual competition. Her poems have appeared in The New England Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Hiram Poetry Review, and other journals, and she has been a finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize. Among her other awards are included the Suzanne Brabant Memorial Award, An Academy of American Poets Prize, an Associated Writing Programs Intro journals Award and a Masters Poetry Series Award. She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her son, D. Alessandro. About Luisa Rossina Villani's poems from Running Away from Russia, W.S. Di Piero wrote: "I liked this submission, Running Awar from Russia, quite a bit. The poems are dense with complex intimacies -- personal, cultural, social. This is the one manuscript where I felt the poet was making a raid upon the inarticulate. Formally, the poems are really written in lines. I mean, you don't know what the poem will discover as it makes its way, line by line, through or towards its subject. This poet knows what he or she is after. A passage in the first poem says: 'Sometimes I think it's a race/ between what I know/ and what the poem can tell me.' That kind of self-consciousness runs through many of the poems, and it's a liberating quality, not an inhibiting one. There are superb transformational moments; my favorite comes at the end of 'Watching the Mayan Woman:' ...'until the sky goes threadbare with stars,/ he'll divine his way home/ in shirtsleeves aglow with torchlight.'"

Celebrating the second place winner, Peter Covino's poems from Cut Off the Ears of Winter, W.S. DiPiero wrote:" These poems, like the winner's, are acts of... discovery. They deal with tough, seamy, risky -- what academics now call 'transgressive' -- subject matter. There's a strangely exhilarating desperation in most of these poems that's compelling. This poet uses words as a medium, as materials, not as descriptive or narrative vehicles. I also like the angular, unsettling humor threaded into nearly every poem."

In praising Margot Fortunato Galt's poems from The Annunciation, our distinguished judge said: "These poems are rather elegant struggles to recover and understand the past -- a personal past. certainly, but also the past represented in art. Tonally, they're candid and declarative, not muted or indirect. I admire that. The poems address difficult questions, usually about cultural and familial legacies, but they refuse easy answers."

In complimenting the work of Ed Smith and Mary Crescenso, DiPiero offered: "These poems give testimony, in clear honest language, to a particular kind of experience. They are, I think, more given over to testimony, to bearing witness, than they are to interpretation, but they deserve recognition for that. I have to admit to a special feeling for Postcard from the Shore, because it gives an accurate and passionate sense of living in a culture very familiar to me. Maybe there's some way of letting these two other poets know that I value their work and am sorry they didn't make the cut?"

Luigi Fontanella has been commissioned to translate the manuscript of Luisa Rossina Villani. Fontanella is a distinguished poet, professor of Italian at The State University of New York at Stony Brook, editor of Gradiva, and author of several books, the most recent being The Transparent Life,translated by the prize winning poet/translator, Michael Palma.
Look for sample works of the winners and runners up on the internet www.ItalianAmericanWriters.com coming on line winter 2001, a new electronic archive and anthology edited and published by Daniela Gioseffi. Alfredo dePalchi, and Daniela Gioseffi, co-founders and co-coordinators of The Bordighera Prize, sponsored by the Sonia Raiziss Charitable Foundation since 1996, wish to thank all those who took the time and effort to enter the contest. They are grateful to both Felix Stefanile who chose the 1997 and 1998 winners: Lewis Turco, translated by Joseph Alessia, and Joe Salerno, translated by Emanuel di Pasquale, and to W.S. Di Piero who served as judge from 1999 to 2000.
In order to vary the taste and style of poetry written by the adjudicator of the competition, an accomplished poet serves for a two year term. Our new judge for 2001-2002 will be distinguished poet and teacher of creative writing and literature at California State University, Dorothy Barresi. Barresi is author of the Barnard Women's Poets Prize book, All of the Above , 1990, and the American Book Award Winning collection: The Post-Rapture Diner, 1997. Barresi has published her poetry and poetry criticism in many distinguished journals.

Note the new address:

Bordighera Poetry Prize
c/o Daniela Gioseffi & Alfredo dePalchi
Box 8G
57 Montague St.
Brooklyn, NY 11201-3356
Send an S.A.S.E. for complete guidelines for entry.
E-mail: daniela@garden.net

The Academy of American Poetsand The New York Community Trust announced in February that Geoffrey Brock has been selected as the second recipient of the Raiziss/De Palchi Translation Fellowship. The fellowship, which carries a cash award of $20,000, will enable Mr. Brock to complete his translation of Cesare Pavese's Poesie del disamore.
The judges for the fellowship were Alfredo De Palchi, Jonathan Galassi, and William Jay Smith.
Geoffrey Brock is a poet and translator. His poems have appeared in The New England Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review,and The Hudson Review. His translation of French and Italian poetry appear in Modern Poetry in Translation, International Quarterly, Poetry Miscellany, and The New Criterion. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Brock lives in Overland Park, Kansas.
The Raiziss/De Palchi Translation Fellowship is presented in alternating years with the Raiziss/De Palchi Book Prize for the translation into English of a significant work of modern Italian poetry; together, the two prizes compose the Raiziss/De Palchi Translation Award.
The Raiziss//De Palchi Translation Award was established by a bequest of $400,000 to The New York Community Trust by Sonia Raiziss-Giop, a poet, translator, and long-time editor of the literary magazine Chelsea. The Trust has selected the Academy to administer the award. The fellowship is awarded to an American citizen to enable him or her to travel, study, or otherwise advance a significant work in progress. In alternating years, a $5,000 book prize is awarded to the translator of a significant work of modern Italian poetry into English. The next book prize will be announced in 2000; the next fellowship will be presented in 2001.
The New York Community Trust has been the community foundation of the New York metropolitan area for the past seventy-two years. An aggregate of charitable funds created by individuals, families, and corporations to benefit the world around them, the Trust makes grants to meet the changing needs of children, youth, and families; aid in community development and improve the environment; promote health and assist people with special needs; and support education, the arts, and the humanities. The Trust has also taken the initiative in responding to new crises and abiding problems in the City, such as child abuse, the AIDS epidemic, the needs of recent immigrants, and housing shortages. In 1995, the Trust made grants of $58 million from assets of about $1 billion.

(Exerpted from American Poet, Spring 1999, p. 47)

La Bottega di Poesia "Fernando Pessoa" organizza una rassegna di narrativa breve con le seguenti caratteristiche:

* da 1 a 3 racconti;
* ognuno di massimo 5 cartelle (30 righe per 60 battute), compresi titoli e righe bianche;
* 3 copie dattiloscritte o manoscritte in modo leggibile;
* si prega di indicare, su un foglio a parte, nome, cognome, indirizzo e telefono.

I racconti verranno esaminati dalla commissione di lettura de La Bottega di Poesia e quelli ritenuti pi interessanti verranno pubblicati sulla rivista Il Foglio Clandestinodi poeti e narratori, sulla Rivista de La Bottega di Poesia "Fernando Pessoa", o in antologie edite dal gruppo.
Non e' richiesta alcuna quota di partecipazione. E' gradito un libero contributo per le spese di realizzazione, da versare sul C/C postale numero 37 47 62 07 intestato a Gilberto Gavioli.

I testi dovranno pervenire entro il 31 dicembre 2000:

* per posta al recapito: C. P. 67 - 20099 Sesto San Giovanni, Milano, Italy;
* via fax ai numeri: 02 26227506 e 0362 629577 (ore ufficio);
* via email all'indirizzo: Bottega_2G@compuserve.com

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Obiettivi:

Crezione di un centro culturale di ricerca, studio, formazione e produzione in campo letterario e teatrale intorno alla figura e all'opera di Antonin Artaud.

Strumenti:

1. CENTRO RACCOLTA DATI
Raccolta, selezione, archiviazione di materiali artaudiani:
- testi originali e tradotti (in collaborazione con Serge Malaussena, nipote ed erede di Artaud);
- testi critici (in collaborazione con Evelyne Grossman, Universita' Paris VII, curatore della nuova edizione delle opere complete di Antonin Artaud);
- materiale audiovisivo originale (registrazioni, filmati di spettacoli teatrali su temi artaudiani e/o messe in scena di testi artaudiani).
Il Centro si relazionera' con altri soggetti aventi finalita' similari, presentandosi pubblicamente nei principali paesi europei: in Francia (Marsiglia) nella primavera del 2001.

2. CONFERENZE, SEMINARI E LETTURE
- Ciclo di seminari, conferenze e letture sulla figura e l'opera di Antonin Artaud e la sua influenza sul Teatro contemporaneo in collaborazione con docenti universitari europei di Storia del Teatro Drammaturgia, Letteratura ffancese e Letterature comparate.

3.TRADUZIONE: FORMAZIONE, PERFEZIONAMENTO E PUBBLICAZIONE
- Costituzione di gruppi formati da studenti universitari europei, ai quali verranno concesse borse di studio per la formazione e il perfezionamento nello studio e nella ricerca delle opere di Antonin Artaud e delle opere di drammaturgia post-artaudiana;
- Elaborazione e produzione di testi critici sull'opera di Antonin Artaud;
- Attivita' di traduzione delle opere di Antonin Artaud dell'ultimo periodo, di drammaturgia contemporanea post-artaudiana e di testi critici;
- Realizzazione di un periodico informativo.

4. CREAZIONE Dl UN SITO WEB E Dl UN DATABASE PER LA DIVULGAZIONE DEI MATERIALI RACCOLTI E SELEZIONATI

5. REALIZZAZIONE DEL PRIMO FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE DI TEATRO DELLA CRUDELTA' - Firenze SAN SALVI: la citta' negata, autunno 2001)

6. PREMIO INTERNAZIONALE Dl DRAMMATURGIA CONTEMPORANEA ANTONIN ARTAUD
Una giuria internazionale qualificata selezionera' la migliore opera inedita. Il vincitore ricevera' un premio in denaro per la realizzazione di uno spettacolo, che sara' rappresentato al Festival di TEATRO DELLA CRUDELTA' e circolera' successivamente in ambito europeo.

7. REALIZZAZIONE DI LABORATORI DI RICERCA TEATRALE FINALIZZATI ALLA COPRODUZIONE Dl SPETTACOLI Dl OPERE ARTAUDIANE E Dl NUOVA DRAMMATURGIA

8. IL VALORE TERAPEUTICO DELL ARTE - Incontri, conferenze, seminari sul valore catartico del teatro e dell'arte;
- Collaborazione con soggetti impegnati sui temi del disagio e delle differenze;
- Realizzazione di mostre d'arte visiva, pittura, scultura, fotografia, ecc.