Biancamaria Frabotta

Frabotta was born in Rome, in the same month of the proclamation of democracy in Italy.[4] As a child, she grew up in the capital, with frequent sojourns in the port-city of Civitavecchia which will later appear in her poetry.[5] After graduating at the Liceo Classico, she started studying Literature at the University of Rome La Sapienza. Her Laurea dissertation is dedicated to the writings of Carlo Cattaneo and won the Carlo Cattaneo prize of the Fondazione Ticino Nostro in Switzerland. In Rome, Frabotta also studied modern poetry (especially Eugenio Montale's work) with Walter Binni.[6]

As a university student, she took part in the protests of the 1968, becoming a relevant figure in the students' movement and showing a specific engagement (both as a writer and as an activist) for women's issues and gender theory.[7] During the late Sixties and the Seventies, she developed strong personal and intellectual connections with artists and writers based in Rome such as Alberto Moravia, Dacia Maraini,[8] Amelia Rosselli [9] and Dario Bellezza. In 1972 she dubbed one of the characters in the much discussed Italian version of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris.

After publishing her Laurea dissertation as a book in 1971, she wrote an essay on Feminism and Class struggle (1973) and edited the first anthology of modern Italian women poets (Donne in poesia) which has been later translated in English. In the same year, 1976, she published her first poetry book, Affeminata, with the independent avantgarde press Geiger — founded by Adriano Spatola and Giulia Niccolai. The preface was written by Antonio Porta, an eminent figure in the Gruppo 63.

A contributor and cultural journalist for many Italian newspapers and journals over the years (Poesia, Alfabeta, Il Manifesto, Orsa minore), Frabotta is also an academic critic and a professor at the University of Rome La Sapienza, where she mainly teaches contemporary Italian poetry.[10]

Her main poetic publications are usually preceded by thematic plaquettes that, combined and made interacting with each other, eventually form the body of her books.[11] After publishing the first major book, Il Rumore Bianco, with Feltrinelli in 1982, she started an editorial collaboration with Mondadori, publishing three books (La Viandanza, La Pianta del Pane, and Da Mani Mortali) in the prestigious collection Lo Specchio, which had previously published protagonists of the Italian Modernism such as Eugenio Montale, Giuseppe Ungaretti, and Umberto Saba. Frabotta has received numerous literary prizes, including Premio Tropea (1989),[12] Premio Montale (1995),[13] Premio Dessì (2003),[14] Premio L'Olio della Poesia (2015) [15]

Critics such as Stefano Giovanardi argue that Frabotta's poetic language has evolved from an initial experimentalism to a more cohesive, recognizable voice developed towards the end of the millennium. Such a transition, in opposition with the mainstream tendencies of European postmodernism, led her poetry to a style that is, at the same time, harmonically classical and yet marked by sudden stridencies, rhythmic gaps, and unexpected turns of the imagery.[16] However, Frabotta's work as a writer, an particularly as a poet, remains interdigitated with her political and academic experiences. According to Keala Jewell: "Frabotta weaves into her female poetic web the fragments of a tradition in which, as a literary scholar, she is steeped yet which she also refuses." [17]

• Affeminata (Geiger: Turin, 1976)
• Il Rumore Bianco (Feltrinelli: Milan, 1982)
• Appunti di volo (La Cometa: Rome, 1985)
• Controcanto al Chiuso (Rossi&Spera: Rome, 1991)
• La viandanza (Mondadori: Milan, 1995)
• Terra Contigua (Empirìa: Rome, 1999)
• La Pianta del Pane (Mondadori: Milan, 2003)
• Gli Eterni Lavori (San Marco dei Giustiniani: Genova, 2005)
• I Nuovi Climi (Stampa: Brunello, 2007)
• Da Mani Mortali (Mondadori: Milan, 2012)
• Per il Giusto Verso (Manni: Bari, 2015)

• Tensioni (Eidos: Milan-Venice, 1989)
• Controcanto al Chiuso (La Cometa: Rome, 1994)
• Trittico dell'Obbedienza (Sellerio: Palermo, 1996)

• Velocità di Fuga (Reverdito: Trento, 1989), novel.
• Quartetto per Masse e Voce Sola (Donzelli: Rome, 2009), non-fiction.

• Carlo Cattaneo (Fondazione Ticino Nostro: Lugano, 1969)
• La Letteratura al Femminile (De Donato: Bari, 1980)
• Giorgio Caproni, il Poeta del Disincanto (Officina: Rome, 1993)
• L'Estrema Volontà (Giulio Perrone Editore: Rome, 2010)