Alessandro Gallenzi

Publisher, literary translator, poet and writer Alessandro Gallenzi uncovers the story behind the last five months of Keats’s life when the poet set off for Italy in a desperate bid to restore his health.

Gallenzi says those last five months when Keats headed for Naples and then on to Rome are full of significant biographical detail and worth a closer examination. The poet was broken in body and mind and troubled by money worries. He reveals new detail about Keats’s journey, which ended in a harrowing death in his lodgings near the Spanish Steps. And he says that they enhance our understanding of the man and the poet.

Gallenzi is founder of Alma books and a literary publisher. He is a prize-winning translator, poet, playwright and novelist. He edited John Keats’s Complete Poems for Alma and he has recently published a translation of Keats’s Letters, La valle dell’anima.

This event is part of Italian day at the festival.