Helle Busacca
1915–1996 · Italian poet, writer and, to a lesser extent, painter
Helle Busacca (San Piero Patti, Messina, 1915 – Florence, 1996) was an Italian poet, writer and, to a lesser extent, painter. She is placed in Italian poetry of the second half of the twentieth century, although her work was read for years within a small circle. Her painting remains secondary to her writing.
She was born into a well-off family in San Piero Patti, in Sicily, and spent part of her youth there. She then moved with her parents to Bergamo and later to Milan, where she graduated in classical letters from the Royal University of Milan. She taught literature in various high schools, moving from Varese, Pavia, Milan, Naples and Siena to Florence, where she died in 1996.
Her poetry relies on a spoken language that is simple and immediate, with a strong charge of protest. The suicide of her brother Aldo, an unemployed scientist, shaped much of her later output, which centres on works such as I quanti del suicidio (1972), I quanti del karma (1974) and Niente poesia da Babele (1980). Critics have linked her voice to T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, although her language departed sharply from the experimentation of her contemporaries.
Her legacy rests today on her papers, kept at the State Archives of Florence, and on the Municipal Library of San Piero Patti, which has borne her name since 2015.