The form of Patrizia Valduga's poetry--its most striking component--attracts the attention of critics and readers. Her rich, ponderous, minutely examined language has been full of philological refinements and neologisms since the publication of her first fourteen sonnets in the Almanacco dello Specchio (1981). In composing her poetry, she borrows from contemporary and classical Italian poetry, and various sources in between. After she won the Premio Viareggio in 1982, Valduga's work began to be examined for more intrinsic values and meanings. She is now regarded in a more complex and profound light, as more than just a stylist and the author of a collection of erotic lyrics--Medicamenta (Medicine, 1982).

Patrizia Valduga was born on 20 May 1953 in Castelfranco Veneto, a small town in the northern Italian region of Treviso, not far from Venice. Soon she moved with her large family to Belluno, a nearby city. In the mid 1970s Valduga attended medical...