Biagio Cepollaro (b. Napoli, 1959) is a poet and a visual artist. He was one of the main actors in Italian experimental literature during the eighties and the nineties. His poems from those years mix medieval Italian with dialects and mass media languages. Today, his poetry centres on the connection between perception and thought. Even when he paints, Cepollaro continually concentrates on writing, bringing the ancient close to the modern. He engraves his word-signs by scratching tar, plaster, cement, tile adhesive and making his colours with pigments, following medieval recipes for tempera paints using egg yolk. His work searches for a synthesis between ancient and modern, between natural and artificial, pointing to a possible equilibrium among different and conflicting experiences. His word-signs are born together with the making of the painting, but the meaning of the texts used for the scratching eventually gets lost. It is a sort of sacrificial act of the memory, which, though forgiving the meaning, traces the energy of the engraved text. It is the gesture of writing that is important for him, and its becoming, together with the different matters and colours, a part of the world.
Among his exhibitions are: Da strato a strato, curated by Giovanni Anceschi, Antiquum Oratorium Passionis- Basilica di S. Ambrogio, Milano 2010; La materia delle parole, curated by Elisabetta Longari, Galleria Ostrakon, Milano, 2011; Da verso. transizioni arte-poesia, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, ex chiesa S. Carpoforo, Milano 2011; Le tre vie, Voyelles et Visions, Torino, 2014.
Many of his poems have been translated and included in collective works: The Promised Land, Italian Poetry after 1975, Sun &Moon Classics, Los Angeles, 1999; Twentieth-Century, Italian Poetry, Toronto University of Toronto Press, 1993; Italian Poetry, 1950-1990, Dante University Press, Boston, 1996; New Italian Writing,Chicago Review, n.56, 2011, Chijô no utagoe – Il coro temporaneo, Shichôsha, Tokyo, 2001; Nouveaux poètes italiens, «Action Poétique», n. 177,2004. Among his poetry books, let us mention the following: Scribeide, Manni, 1993; Luna persciente, Mancosu, 1993, Fabrica, Zona, 2002, Versi nuovi, Oedipus, 2004 e Le Qualità, La Camera Verde, Roma 2012.
