Antonia Pozzi

Biography: Alessandra Cenni, In riva alla vita, Storia di Antonia Pozzi poetessa, Milano, Rizzoli, 2001

On 2 December 1938, following a barbiturate suicide attempt, she was found unconscious in a ditch in front of Chiaravalle Abbey, a suburb of Milan. She died the next day and was buried in the small cemetery of Pasturo. The family refused to admit it was a suicide, attributing her death to pneumonia. Antonia's will was destroyed by her father. Her poems, written in notebooks and unpublished before her death, were also heavily edited by him for publication.

Pozzi is considered to be one of the most original voices in modern Italian literature. In her lifetime she wrote 300 poems, all published after her death in 1938, aged 26. Although Pozzi did not gain recognition for her work in her own lifetime, her poems have later been published many times in Italy, and she has been translated into several languages.

She entered the Manzoni High School in 1922. She became romantically involved with her Classics teacher at the Manzoni school, Antonio Maria Cervi; the relationship ended in 1933, possibly due to her parents' intervention. In 1930 she enrolled in the Faculty of Philology of the University of Milan, where she became friends with the poet Vittorio Sereni and other writers of her own generation. In 1935, she received a degree in literature, based on a thesis about Gustave Flaubert.

Antonia Pozzi (13 February 1912 – 3 December 1938) was an Italian poet.

Antonia Pozzi was born in 1912 in Milan. She was the daughter of the lawyer Roberto Pozzi and Countess Lina Cavagna Sangiuliani di Gualdana.