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Laura Accerboni is an observer. Her work is known to be as cool as it is lucid: she writes texts filled with bizarre occurrences that are reported in a subtle, controlled manner. It’s not surprising that Accerboni is not only known as a poet, but also a recognized photographer; her work was shown in several solo and group exhibitions in Italy. In her photographical tribute to Italo Calvino a capricious, stylized and attentive way of seeing is discernible - a gaze that is also apparent in her poems.
Accerboni was born in 1985 in Genoa, where she studied Modern literature. She currently lives in Lugano. Her first book of poems, Attorno a ciò che non è stato (Around that what she was not) was published in 2010. It was hailed as a remarkable debut and was lauded with several prizes, such as the Achille Marazza Prize in 2012. Her second book La parte dell’annegato (The play of the drowning) was published in 2015.
In these books Accerboni creates a bizarre, sadistic universe of massacres, mass-murder and extreme violence. Contrary to her dramatic themes, her writing style is very sober. Her poems consist of short, calculated sentences that do not attribute to the pathos of her worldview, but register events in a non-emotional way. The compact lines tear through the intense images like bullets. This fusion of extreme stylistic modesty and powerful imagery produces fast and menacing poetics - poems that display their accurate vision, without ever showing everything that could have been seen.
Besides poet and photographer, Laura Accerboni is the editor of the literary journal Steve. She has translated the poetry of American writer Taje Silverman with Elio Grasso. Her poems were published in numerous journals, of which Italian Poetry Rewiew, Poesia, Specchio della Stampa, Gradiva, Steve en Loch Raven Review are a few examples.
Bibliography
Attorno a ciò che non è stato, Edizioni del Leone, 2010.
La parte dell’annegato, Nottetempo, 2015.
