London – On April 19th, at 6 pm, five Italian poets, Maddalena Bergamin, Carmen Gallo, Giulia Martini, Laura Pugno, and Francesca Santucci, will be reading some of their poems along with others by authors who had an important role in the development of their poetic voices. This poetry reading results from a research project, Non solo muse: panorama della poesia femminile contemporanea italiana dal 1970 a oggi, co-ordinated by Dr Adele Bardazzi (Trinity College Dublin) and Roberto Binetti (University of Oxford) and funded by the John Fell Fund at the University of Oxford. The project aims to examine and problematize the notion of women’s writing within the Italian poetic context by interviewing more than fifteen poets, among whom are Elisa Biagini, Maria Borio, Maria Grazia Calandrone, Elisa Donzelli, Giovanna Frene, Mariangela Gualtieri, Franca Mancinelli, Dacia Maraini, Gabriella Sica, and Sara Ventroni. The project aims to propose a better understanding and appreciation of contemporary Italian women’s poetry by creating a dialogue with the poets themselves and to problematize the current view on Italian women’s poetry by demonstrating the richness and complexity of this literary phenomenon. This goes against the grain of current scholarship, which often tends to identify poetry written by women as not sufficiently engaged with history and society and limited to their personal experience. This characterization is often problematically designated as ‘confessional’. (red)