The natural son of an army surgeon general (1903-1985) and of the marchesa Giuseppina Camardi Polizzi (1916-1966), Sebastiano Grasso was born in Sicily in 1947. He attended the San Michele grammar school in Acireale run by the Philippine Fathers. In 1963 he began to contribute to the cultural pages of the Corriere di Sicilia, the daily newspaper of Catania. His first collection of poems was published the following year. In 1968, while still at university, he attended journalism courses at the University of Navarra, in Pamplona.
In 1970 he was director of the Il Mondo foreign literature series published by Giannotta Editore in Catania. In this period he also made many translations from French (Apollinaire, Baudelaire, Senghor, Valéry, Cendrars) and from Spanish (Machado, Jiménez, Neruda).
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In 1971, with Antonio Corsaro and Anna Di Stefano, he founded the bimonthly magazine Questioni di letteratura, of which he was the editor-in-chief. Contributors included Rafael Alberti, John Berryman (a few months before his suicide), Renato Guttuso, Mario Luzi, Eugenio Montale, Pablo Picasso, Giuseppe Prezzolini and Leonardo Sciascia.
After taking his degree in Modern Literature, he lectured in Italian Literature for a couple of years.
Since June 1971 he has been working for the Corriere della Sera. Currently he is a special correspondent and head of the Art pages of the Milanese daily.
Nel 1976 a new collection of poems came out in Nuovi Argomenti, the quarterly edited by Attilio Bertolucci, Alberto Moravia and Enzo Siciliano; in 1977 other poems were published in La Fiera letteraria and in L’Osservatore politico letterario.
He has published about twenty books and has won several literary prizes (the Calabria prize for foreign literature, in 1977; the Castiglione di Sicilia prize for literature, in 1981; the Ada Negri prize for unpublished works, in 1985; the Instituto Cervantes prize for translation from Spanish, in 2003).
Published books of poems include: Orizzonti lontani (1964); Plaquette (1968, with an introduction by Carlo Bo); Poesie fuori stagione (1970); Il giuoco della memoria (1973, introduction by Mario Luzi), translated into Spanish for the Adonais series; La stagione del clown (1978, short-listed for the Viareggio prize, placed in the Biella prize, and winner of the Ceppo-Pistoia prize); Il poeta e il fantasma (1980).
This was followed by a twenty-year silence, apart from a few poems written to accompany several art books such as Dove migrava il primo vento (1980), Fra i sentieri delle lepri (1989), Il numero del vincitore (1997) and Spesso di notte (1998, etchings by Piero Dorazio, Gianfranco Ferroni, Zoran Music, Mimmo Paladino and Gio’ Pomodoro). In 2000 he published Il tuo pube nero befferà la morte (with a critical essay by Carlo Bo and drawings by Renzo Vespignani); in 2002, Sul monte di Venere (with an introduction by Mario Luzi and drawings by Mimmo Paladino); in 2004, La preghiera di una vergine (with a critical essay by Ermanno Krumm and drawings by Georg Baselitz); in 2006, Il talco sotto le ballerine (essay by Ezio Raimondi and drawings by Fernando Botero, Nicola De Maria, Mimmo Paladino, Arnaldo Pomodoro and Walter Valentini, International award Lerici-Pea, shared with Lawrence Ferlinghetti); in 2007, La cenere ringrazia della brace e della favilla. ; in 2009, Tu, in agguato sotto le palpebre (foreword by Jacqueline Risset and drawings by di Jgor Mitoraj). Other publications: during 2007, in Spain El talco bajio las bailarinas (foreword by José Saramago), in Sweden Sinfonietta for Juliana, in Poland Listy z ulicy Nowy Swiat (foreword by Otto von Krauss and drawings by Baselitz); in 2008, in Russia Ninfa in jeans (foreword by Evgenij Evtushenko); in 2010, in Sweden Du, i bakhall under ogonlocken (foreword by Jesper Svenbro) e, in Arab L’alfabeto si spoglia (foreword by Adonis).
In addition, he edited Teatro breve by Federico García Lorca (1970, with a commemorative text by Rafael Alberti ); Ritorni del vivo lontano by Rafael Alberti (1976); Spade come labbra by Vicente Aleixandre (1977); Dalí by Ramón Gómez de la Serna (1978 and 2002); Canción del amor herido by Rafael Alberti (1979); Montale, lettere a Quasimodo (1981, prologue by Maria Corti); Doña Rosita la zitella by Federico García Lorca (1987, texts by Rafael Alberti and Carlo Bo); Vedute di Roma by Giovan Battista Piranesi (1991); Ballate gitane by Federico García Lorca (1993); Il bicchiere di giada (2001, with Stella Ku Pan, etchings by Hsiao Chin); I piaceri proibiti by Luis Cernuda (2002, with Margherita Alverà); Canzoni per Altair e altre poesie d’amore by Rafael Alberti (2002); Destino España. Una crónica cultural a través del «Corriere della Sera»(2004, with Marina Cotelli); Beethoven davanti al televisore by José Hierro (2006, with María Cristina Blais di Braganza).[/su_spoiler]
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