italy "Petrucci is of interest as one of the few contemporary poets exploring explicitly Italian themes and experiences in the mainstream of British literature."      Il Punto 65 Winner of a 2016 PEN Translates Award    click here        Shortlisted: 2018 John Florio Prize    click here   Mario has published numerous poems concerned with Italy's recent history, his childhood experiences of rural life in Lazio, and Italian emigration following the IIWW. Anglo-Italian themes feature prominently in his award-winning collections Shrapnel and Sheets and Flowers of Sulphur. Securing a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, Shrapnel and Sheets was praised by the judge John Fuller for its "sensitive poems" about Italian family life. His long sequence Contadine won the prestigious Sheffield Thursday Poetry Prize. Mario has also transated Catullus, and his version of Montale's famous Xenia sequences secured a PEN Translates Award and a John Florio shortlisting. He was subsequently invited by the Society of Authors to co-judge the John Florio Prize (co-sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute and Arts Council England) in 2022, the same year in which his work was featured in the groundbreaking Anglo-Italian anthology Alibi: Prima antologia bilingue di poesia italiana nel Regno Unito (Ensemble Edizioni). He is currently working on a full-length collection entitled Monte Cassino.

For Mario's detailed comments on the translation process and the shortlisted authors [John Florio Prize for Italian translation, 2022] click here

 
Click here to read an interview with Mario in the Italian journal Il Punto           Click here for the Italian Wikipedia entry on Mario

 
"Already, this new century seems as deafened by ideological clamour as the last, plagued by residues of cultural and literary separatism sometimes bordering on a kind of 'aesthetic apartheid'. For nations increasingly brought face-to-face across cultural divides - chasms that are now as much internal as external - the need for conversation, on its many levels, has never been more essential. Poetry, with its potential for radical openness and self-revelation, is an ideal prompt and vehicle for that conversation. Many kinds of voice continue to lie dormant in the English-speaking world; but we have at least begun to witness, in more recent times, some breakings of silence."

Mario's views on cross-cultural discourse.  
 
 
"Mario Petrucci stands among the most thought-provoking figures in the late 20th century lineage of Italian poets. Though he writes in English, his poetic ethos is steeped in Italian values: the seriousness of thought, the depth of feeling, and the elegance of expression. In comparing him to poets like Montale, Pasolini, and Rosselli, we see both continuities and departures. Petrucci’s voice is singular, yet it carries the echoes of a long and distinguished tradition. As Italian poetry continues to evolve in the 21st century, Petrucci’s work offers a model for future poets—one that honors the past while speaking to the challenges of the present. In the hands of poets like him, the legacy of 20th century Italian poetry remains alive, vibrant, and profoundly necessary."

James Miller (2025)    https://www.nevermorepoem.com/archives/19694   full article archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20250809060437/https://www.nevermorepoem.com/archives/19694

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