Maria Chessa Lai (born 1922 in
Monti, Italy, died 2012 in
Alghero, Italy) was a poet writing in the
Catalan Algherese dialect
Algherese or Alguerese (Algherese: ) is the variant of Catalan spoken in the city of Alghero ( in Catalan), in the northwest of Sardinia, Italy.
The dialect has its roots in 1372, when Catalan-speaking colonists were allowed to repopulate ...
. She was three times winner of the
Premio Ozieri
The and its twin the are sedans sold in Japan from 2001 to 2021 by Toyota. The sedans are designated as a compact car by Japanese dimension regulations and the exterior dimensions do not change with periodic updates. Unlike Toyota's other v ...
awarded annually for the best new poetry written in a Sardinian
minority language. As a
bilingual
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...
poet she published her poems simultaneously in Algherese and
Italian. The majority of her work was collected together and published in the volume ''La Mia Mar'' in 2005.
Sixty nine of her poems translated into english were published in 2021, in a bilingual Catalan/English edition, under the title: ''Collected Poems/ Recull de poesies de l'Alguer''—including this extract from the poem called ''Marçanella Helichrysum Golden Sun''
... Within its flowers
the reflection of clear light.
And when in the quiet of those hours
the flower that bloomed then desists
upon the path at the rim
of the crumbling abyss
it yet persists intenser in strength
within its aromatic existence.
Maria was the mother of the journalist, academic, and author Pasquale Chessa.
Bibliography
* ''La Mia Mar'', Edes, Sassari, 2005
* ''Collected Poems/ Recull de poesies de l'Alguer'' 2021
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Notes
External links
* http://www.luigiladu.it/poesias/Elenco_poeti/chessa_lai_maria.htm Biography and poetry in original languages.
* http://fch.uniss.it/pen/Prizes/PortNimfeu.html Trilingual version of the prize winning ''Bay of Nymphs''
1922 births
2012 deaths
Catalan-language poets
People from Alghero
Italian women poets
Poets from Catalonia
Italian poets
20th-century Spanish poets
20th-century Italian women writers
Sardinian women
{{Italy-poet-stub