Lee Cataldi

Lee Cataldi (born 1942) is a contemporary Australian poet and linguist.

Life, education and work Cataldi (née Sonnino) was born in Sydney during World War II. Due to her father’s Italian heritage, she was briefly interned. As a child she lived in Mosman and Hobart.

As an adult, she moved back to Sydney to study a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney. She graduated with Honours in 1962 and won the University Medal. In May 1964, Cataldi moved to Oxford to study Renaissance Literature, later receiving a Bachelor of Letters from Oxford University in 1968. While in the UK, she met and married her now-husband, Italian Gianni Cataldi, and lived in Italy for a year.

After returning to Australia in the 1970s, Cataldi gained a Diploma in Education. Since then, she has worked as a teacher.

In 1998 Cataldi travelled to Madras, India, for an Asialink Literature Residency.

Published works Poetry Invitation to a Marxist lesbian party, Wild & Woolley, 1978 Women who live on the ground: Poems, 1978-1988, Penguin Australia, 1990 Race Against Time: Poems, Penguin Australia, 1998 Mourning is Women's Business, Puncher & Wattmann, 2023

Non-fiction A Handbook to Sixteenth Century Rhetoric, Routledge, 1967. Warlpiri Dreamings and Histories: Newly Recorded Stories from the Aboriginal Elders of Central Australia. Coll. and trans. with Peggy Rockman Napaljarri, Schwartz, 2003.

Work history

1967-1973: Lecturer of English at the University of Bristol. 1975-1981: Teacher at Tempe High School and several other Sydney schools. 1981-1982: Coordinator of the Poets in Schools Project in Sydney, for the Australia Council. 1983-1991: Teacher/linguist at Lajamanu School in Northern Territory. 1991-1994: Co-collected and co-translated Warlpiri traditional narratives with Peggy Rockman Napaljarri, collating them into the text Walpiri Dreamings and Histories (1994). 1993: Joint consultant with Christine Nicholls of Flinders University, in delivering the 3rd stage of the AIDAB project 'Vernacular Publishing, Creating a Literature' for the Education Departments of the Republic of Kiribati and the Cook Islands. 1998: Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of Adelaide ASIALINK Writer's Residency in Delhi, India