Roberto Piumini

Roberto Piumini was born in Edolo, in the province of Brescia, on 14 March 1947. He has lived in Edolo, Varese and Milan. In 1970 he graduated in Pedagogy at the Catholic University of Milan, with a thesis on La persona del poeta in Emmanuel Mounier. He attended the Scuola Superiore di Comunicazioni Sociali in Milan. From 1967 to 1973 he was a teacher of literature in middle and high schools in the province of Varese. He has led numerous courses in expressive dynamics, body expression, poetic and theatrical writing. He was an actor for three years with the companies Teatro Uomo of Milan and La Loggetta of Brescia. He gained experience for a year as a puppeteer. Since 1978 he has published many books of fairy tales, short and long stories, novels, nursery rhymes, poems, theatrical texts, song texts, texts for musical theatre and choirs, translations, adaptations, extracurricular texts, with about 70 Italian publishers. He has written about thirty poetic texts (poems, ballads, narrative poems, songs) on research and memory materials of groups of children, young people and adults, in various locations, including Omegna, Alessandria, Scandiano, Milan, Imola, Reggio Emilia, Rome, Modena, Castel del Rio, Turin, Mestre, Lugano (Switzerland). He has about fifty translations abroad. Since 1990 he has published four novels, five collections of short stories, texts of literary parody, songbooks, narrative poems, with a dozen publishers. He has written poetic and narrative texts on illustrations and in art catalogues. He has translated into verse poems by Browning, Shakespeare's Sonnets and Macbeth, John Milton's Paradise Lost and Plautus' Aularia, with the addition of apocryphal endings. He has written in collaboration with musicians several books on authors, instruments, musical styles, with audio material. He has recorded audio books of his own and other authors' poems and stories. He was one of the authors and creators of the RAI television programme L'Albero Azzurro. He has written and presented the radio programmes Radicchio and Il Mattino di Zucchero. He has written and continues to write lyrics for musical works, in collaboration with Italian and foreign musicians. He has written subjects and scripts for cartoons and short fiction films. He has written accompanying texts for visits to museums, including the Marino Marini Museum and the Palazzo Strozzi Museum in Florence. With choral groups, instrumentalists, singers and actors, or accompanied on the guitar by his son Michele, he offers reading and acting performances of his own texts, for children, young people and adults, as well as theatrical and musical animation shows.