Pier Giorgio Di Cicco

Last updated

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco (July 5, 1949 - December 22, 2019) was an Italian-Canadian poet. [1] In 2005 he became the second Poet Laureate of Toronto.

Born in Arezzo, Italy, his family immigrated to Canada in 1952. Di Cicco was brought up in several North American cities, among them Baltimore, Maryland, Montreal, Quebec and Toronto, Ontario. In the early 1970s he attended the University of Toronto, earning a B.A. and B.Ed. in 1973/76). While working part-time as a bartender at the university, he began to publish poems in little magazines. He has since written 13 books of poetry and in 1978 edited a volume of verse by Italian-Canadian poets, Roman Candles which became a seminal volume for the birth of Italian-Canadian literature.

His poems, consisting of deep images in stanzas of free verse - with lines consisting of irregular numbers of syllables and (hypothetical) feet - often referred to di Cicco's immigrant and Italian-family experiences. In books like Flying Deeper Into the Century (1982) and The Tough Romance (1979) he communicated a modern, sensitive awareness of the confusing welter of 20th-century life. Di Cicco's unmetrical but imagistic lines flowed on, often with cumulative power, to release their tension at the end of their stanzas. His edited a collection of Italian Canadian poetry entitled Roman Candles (1978) that inaugurated "the phenomenon of Italian Canadia writing." [2]

Di Cicco gradually felt called to a Catholic religious life. Reducing his output of verse, he spent a period in the Augustinian monastery of Marylake, in King City, north of Toronto. He obtained a M.Div. in 1990 and was ordained a priest in 1993, subsequently serving in a number or parishes in Toronto. In the 2000s he resumed writing and publishing poems, producing Living in Paradise: New and Selected Poems (2001) and several others. In 2004, he was chosen Poet Laureate of Toronto; he published a poem weekly in The Toronto Star Sunday newspaper. In 2004-5 he taught at the University of Toronto. "There is a marked difference between Di Cicco's early personal poems, which deal with ethnic identity, social conflict and family relationships, and his later poems about philosophical questions, spiritual ideas and broader global problems." [2] The writer and critic Joseph Pivato edited, Pier Giorgio Di Cicco: Essays on His Works (2011), an important analysis of his poetry.

His latest book (2018) is entitled Wishipedia. [3]

Selected bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hendecasyllable</span> Poetic line of eleven syllables

In poetry, a hendecasyllable is a line of eleven syllables. The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical poetry, and the newer of which are syllabic or accentual-syllabic and used in medieval and modern poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry Callaghan</span> Canadian author, poet and anthologist

Barry Morley Joseph Callaghan is a Canadian author, poet and anthologist. He is currently the editor-in-chief of Exile Quarterly. Born in Toronto, Ontario, he is the son of late Canadian novelist and short story writer, Morley Callaghan. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto.

Canadian poetry is poetry of or typical of Canada. The term encompasses poetry written in Canada or by Canadian people in the official languages of English and French, and an increasingly prominent body of work in both other European and Indigenous languages.

Rhyme royal is a rhyming stanza form that was introduced to English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. The form enjoyed significant success in the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth century. It has had a more subdued but continuing influence on English verse in more recent centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Elliott Clarke</span> Canadian poet, playwright and literary critic (born 1960)

George Elliott Clarke, is a Canadian poet, playwright and literary critic who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2012 to 2015, and as the 2016–2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. His work is known largely for its use of a vast range of literary and artistic traditions, its lush physicality and its bold political substance. One of Canada's most illustrious poets, Clarke is also known for chronicling the experience and history of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, creating a cultural geography that he has coined "Africadia".

Mary di Michele is an Italian-Canadian poet and author. She is a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec where she teaches in creative writing.

Tail rhyme is a family of stanzaic verse forms used in poetry in French and especially English during and since the Middle Ages, and probably derived from models in medieval Latin versification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dennis Lee (author)</span> Canadian poet, teacher, editor, and critic

Dennis Beynon Lee is a Canadian poet, teacher, editor, and critic born in Toronto, Ontario. He is also a children's writer, well known for his book of children's rhymes, Alligator Pie.

Thomas Robert Edward MacInnes was a Canadian poet and writer whose writings ranged from "vigorous, slangy recollections of the Yukon gold rush" to "a translation of and commentary on Lao-tzu’s philosophy". His narrative verse was highly popular in his lifetime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poet Laureate of Toronto</span>

The Poet Laureate of Toronto is the city's literary ambassador and advocate for poetry, language and the arts. The poet laureate's mandate includes the creation of a legacy project that is unique to the individual. They also attend events across the city to promote and attract people to the literary arts.

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is a poem by Robert Frost, written in 1922, and published in 1923 in his New Hampshire volume. Imagery, personification, and repetition are prominent in the work. In a letter to Louis Untermeyer, Frost called it "my best bid for remembrance".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friulian literature</span>

Friulianliterature is the literature of the autonomous Italian region of Friuli, written in the local Friulian language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carmine Starnino</span> Canadian poet, essayist, educator and editor

Carmine Starnino is a Canadian poet, essayist, educator and editor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Wilfred Campbell</span> Canadian poet (1850- 1918)

William Wilfred Campbell was a Canadian poet. He is often classed as one of the country's Confederation Poets, a group that included fellow Canadians Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott; he was a colleague of Lampman and Scott. By the end of the 19th century, he was considered the "unofficial poet laureate of Canada." Although not as well known as the other Confederation poets today, Campbell was a "versatile, interesting writer" who was influenced by Robert Burns, the English Romantics, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Carlyle, and Alfred Tennyson. Inspired by these writers, Campbell expressed his own religious idealism in traditional forms and genres.

Links to nations or nationalities point to articles with information on that nation's poetry or literature. For example, United Kingdom links to English poetry and Indian links to Indian poetry.

Guernica Editions is a Canadian independent publisher established in Montreal, Quebec, in 1978, by Antonio D'Alfonso. Guernica specializes in Canadian literature, poetry, fiction and nonfiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Pivato</span> Canadian writer and academic (born 1946)

Joseph Pivato is a Canadian writer and academic who first established the critical recognition of Italian-Canadian literature and changed perceptions of Canadian writing. From 1977 to 2015 he was professor of Comparative Literature at Athabasca University, Canada. He is now Professor Emeritus.

The Association of Italian-Canadian Writers is a Canadian organization established in 1986 to promote the publications of Italian-Canadian authors.

Pasquale Verdicchio is an Italian Canadian poet, critic and translator teaching in the US at UCSD. Born in Naples, Italy, he moved to Vancouver BC in the late 60s. He received his BA from University of Victoria, MA from the University of Alberta, and PhD from the University of California. In the departments of Italian and Comparative Literature, he teaches Italian language, film and literature, and creative writing.

This is a list of municipal poets laureate in the province of Ontario, Canada.

References

  1. Jacob Scheier, "In memoriam: Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, 1949-2019". Now , January 1, 2020.
  2. 1 2 Pivato, Joseph (December 15, 2013). "Di Cicco, Pier Giorgio". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  3. Di Cicco, Pier Giorgio (May 2018). Wishipedia. Mansfield Press. ISBN   9781771261722 . Retrieved 12 June 2018.