Maria Chessa Lai (born 1922 in Monti, Italy, died 2012 in

Alghero Alghero (; ca, label= Alguerese, L'Alguer ; sc, S'Alighèra ; sdc, L'Aliera ) is a city of about 45,000 inhabitants in the Italian insular province of Sassari in northwestern Sardinia, next to the Mediterranean Sea. The city's name comes from ...

, Italy) was a poet writing in the

Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...

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 Alg ...

. She was three times winner of the Premio Ozieri awarded annually for the best new poetry written in a Sardinian

minority language A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 196 sovereign states recognized internationally (as of 2019) a ...

. As a bilingual poet she published her poems simultaneously in Algherese and

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

. 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 ''Collected Poems/''
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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