Alda Merini

Alda Merini

March 21, 1931 – November 01, 2009
Countries: Italy
Place of Birth: Milan, Italy
Place of Death: Milan, Italy

Alda Merini (Milan, 21 March 1931 – Milan, 1 November 2009) was an Italian writer and poet. Merini was quite young when, as a poet, she gained the attention and the admiration of other Italian writers, such as Giorgio Manganelli, Salvatore Quasimodo and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Her writing style is described as intense, passionate and mystic, and it bears an influence from Rainer Maria Rilke.
Some of her poems concern her time in a mental home (1964 to the late 1970s) and are often of a long and dramatic nature. She explores the "otherness" of madness as part of creative expression. The poem "The other truth. Diary of a dropout" (L'altra verità. Diario di una diversa) is considered by some as her masterpiece, Scheiwiller, 1986.
In 1996 she was nominated by the "Académie Francaise" as candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 2007 she won the Elsa Morante Ragazzi Award with Alda e Io – Favole written in cooperation with the fable writer Sabatino Scia. Giorgio Napolitano then President of the Italian Republic described her, at her death, as an "inspired and limpid poetic voice."