Emilio Villa

Born in Affori, Italy on September 21, 1914, Emilio Villa spent most of his life in Rome.

Villa's numerous collections of poetry include Adolescenza (La Vigna Editrice, 1934), Oramai (Chart Tiberino Institute, 1947), E ma dopo (Argo, 1950), 17 variazioni su temi proposti per una pura ideologia fonetica (Origin, 1955), Le mûra di t, éb, é (Multimedia Gallery, 1981), and 12 Sibyllae (Castelvetro Piacentino, 1995), among others.

His many translations include a prose rendition of Homer's Odyssey (1964) as well as selections from The Bible. He also translated from Sumerian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, Portuguese, Spanish, and numerous dead languages.

Villa's interest in philology informed his work heavily, and he preferred to write in a dialect of Milan rather than in what he thought of as the problematically academic "Ytaglya" of the post-war period. He also commonly inserted ancient Greek, Provençal, French, and many other languages into his poems to create a complicated network informed by his studies.

In 1950, Villa moved to São Paulo where he fell in with the Brazilian concrete poets Haroldo and Augusto de Campos. Those involved with the "Noigandres" group were strongly influenced by writers such as Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and the visual poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire—all of which had a strong effect on his own writing.

Villa collaborated with a number of writers and artists in Italy and abroad, including Alberto Burri, Marcel Duchamp, as well as William Burroughs. He also had a strong influence on the next generation of neoavanguardia Italian writers—including those involved in Group 63, such as Umberto Eco and Adriano Spatola.

He died in Rietti, Italy in 2003.