Mary di Michele: Biography

Mary di Michele

bio

Mary di Michele was born in Lanciano, Italy, in 1949 and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1955. She was raised and educated primarily in Toronto where she completed an honours B.A. in English literature at the University of Toronto (1972) followed by an M.A. in English and creative writing at the University of Windsor (1974). In the eighties she worked as a freelance writer and editor for Toronto Life, Poetry Toronto, and The Toronto Star. She is a currently a full professor in the English Department of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, where she teaches in the creative writing program.

Her book publications include one previous work of prose fiction, Under My Skin, a Harper's Magazine Notable Book for 1994, and eight books of poetry. The 1990 poetry collection, Luminous Emergencies, was short-listed for the Trillium Prize. She has won numerous awards including the Air Canada Writing Award and first prize for poetry in the C.B.C. literary competition. She has held a number of writer-in-residencies including posts at the University of Toronto (1985-86) and the University of Bologna (May-August 2003). Her poems have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and Chinese.

There are three films where Mary di Michele is interviewed: That's Why I'm Talking (1984), Enigmatico (1994), and Mediterraneo Sempre (NFB) as well as a documentary portrait in Telelatino's Persona series. A monograph on her work, Mary di Michele, Canadian Writers and Their Works. Vol. 11, was published by ECW Press in 1995. A collection of essays on her writing is forthcoming from the Guernica Writers Series.

Her novel about the women in Caruso's life, Tenor of Love, was published by Viking in Canada, and Simon and Schuster in the U.S.A. in 2005.

Mary di Michele's latest book The Flower of Youth, is a collection of poems about the great writer and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini. It was published by ECW Press in 2011. This book is shortlisted for the 2012 A.M. Klein prize for poetry.

Mary is part of a women's collaborative writing group "Yoko's Dogs".

Mary di Michele read at the 2012 Irving Layton Centenary: video

Critical comments about Mary di Michele's writing:

It's because di Michele places her own integrity so clearly on the line, because the poems do not lose sight of the mud in which they stand, that we follow her narrative, with trust
-- Rosemary Sullivan, Books in Canada
Global, tender yet sardonic, and perfectly in tune with a current, very sophisticated sense of the texture of ethnicity, di Michele never yields to simple notions or easy images
-- Eric Folsom, Quill and Quire
As with opera, it's all in the voice, the lyrics, the inflection, the phrasing, the lack of false notes - and the passion. Most important, di Michele gives us a biographer's sense of intimacy with her central character
-- Pat Donnelly, Montreal Gazette
Lyrical, metaphorical, yet also interrogative and unsettling, di Michele's poetry explores the transformative powers of language, memory, and love
-- The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English

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