[Local events] Spare Room reading: Amelia Rosselli read by Deborah Woodard and others, Sunday 8/6

[Sam Lohmann]

*Spare Room presents a reading by*
*Deborah Woodard (and others) to launch*
*The Dragonfly / La Libellula by Amelia Rosselli (translated by Roberta
Antognini and Deborah Woodard)*

Passages Bookshop <https://www.passagesbookshop.com/>, 1801 NW Upshur St.
#660, Portland
Sunday, August 6, 2023
Doors at 7:00p, reading at 7:30p, ending around 9:30p
Admission free; no late entry


Please join us for this unique celebration of an important new translation.
Translator Deborah Woodard will be accompanied by multiple voices to read
the complete English translation of Rosselli's book-length poem
(approximately 90 minutes; complete list of readers TBA).

*The Dragonfly *was published this year by Entre Ríos books.
<https://entreriosbooks.com/products/dragonfly>

A trilingual writer who described herself as “a poet of exploration,” *Amelia
Rosselli* has only recently been recognized as one of the major European
poets of the twentieth century. Born in Paris in 1930, she was the daughter
of the martyred anti-fascist philosopher Carlo Rosselli and the British
political activist Marion Cave. Raised in exile, in France, Switzerland,
England, and the United States—in interviews, Rosselli remembered her years
in the US with great fondness—she finally settled in Italy after the war,
first in Florence and then in Rome. Except for a year she spent in London
in the mid-seventies, Rosselli never left Rome, where, devastated after
years of struggling with mental illness, she took her own life in 1996. The
tragedy of her father’s death and the loss of her mother when she was only
nineteen were central to Rosselli, defining her in many ways: from her
“trilingual language” and cosmopolitan upbringing—though she thought of
herself more as a refugee—to her political engagement and deep social
consciousness. Rosselli was the author of eight collections of poetry (one,
*Sleep*, in English), a translator of Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath,
among others, and an accomplished musicologist and musician who played the
violin, the piano, and the organ. *The Dragonfly* was first published in
its present format as the opening section of the collection *Hospital
Series* (Milano: Il Saggiatore, 1969).

*Deborah Woodard* holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine,
and a PhD from the University of Washington. She is the author of *Plato’s
Bad Horse *(Bear Star Press, 2006), *Borrowed Tales *(Stockport Flats,
2012), and *No Finis: Triangle Testimonies, 1911* (Ravenna Press, 2018).
Her chapbook *Hunter Mnemonics* (hemel press, 2008) was illustrated by
artist Heide Hinrichs. She has translated Amelia Rosselli with Giuseppe
Leporace in *The Dragonfly: A Selection of Poems: 1953– 1981* (Chelsea
Editions, 2009) and with Roberta Antognini in *Hospital Series *(New
Directions, 2015), *Obtuse Diary *(Entre Ríos Books, 2018), *The
Dragonfly *(Entre
Rios Books, 2023), and *Notes Scattered and Lost* (Entre Rios Books,
forthcoming 2024). Woodard teaches at Hugo House in Seattle and co-curates
the reading series Margin Shift.
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