Antonio Porta

Antonio Porta (pen-name of Leo Paolazzi) was an Italian author and poet and one of the founders of the Italian literary movement Gruppo 63.

Biography Antonio Porta was born Leo Paolazzi in Vicenza in 1935. In 1958, he became an editor of the literary magazine Il Verri under Luciano Anceschi. During his time as an editor, he wrote a collection of poems to be included in the anthology I novissimi (1961), which included works by Elio Pagliarani, Edoardo Sanguineti, Alfredo Giuliani, and Nanni Balestrini.

Gruppo 63 From his experience with Il verri, Porta began collaborating with an avant-garde Italian movement called Gruppo 63. While working to develop their ideas, he travelled to the conventions they held in Palermo, Reggio Emilia, "La Sapienza", and Fano.

From 1963 to 1967, Porta was actively involved in the editing of another avant-garde magazine Malebolge from Reggio Emilia. In these years he also began working in visual poetry, participating in exhibitions in Padua, Rome, Milan, and London. His work which is most associated with this period is Zero (1963).

Later career

He contributed as a literary critic for renowned Italian newspapers such as Corriere della Sera and Il Giorno and collaborated on Tuttolibri, Panorama, and L'Europeo. He was the director and active editor of the monthly Alfabeta and La Gola.

From 1982 to 1988, he taught at the D'Annunzio University of Chieti–Pescara, then at Yale, the University of Pavia, the Sapienza University of Rome, and the University of Bologna.