poems & pictures
Alessio Zanelli, born in 1963, is an Italian poet who has long adopted English as his creative writing language.
His work has appeared in over 200 international literary journals, anthologies and charity publications, often alongside that by famous poets such as Maya Angelou, Simon Armitage, Pier Luigi Bacchini, John Maxwell Coetzee, Imtiaz Dharker, Rita Dove, Carol Ann Duffy, Bob Dylan, Luciano Erba, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Nikki Giovanni, Seamus Heaney, Mimi Khalvati, John Kinsella, Valerio Magrelli, Dacia Maraini, Mario Petrucci, Jo Shapcott, Maria Luisa Spaziani, Natasha Trethewey, John Hartley Williams, Banana Yoshimoto and Andrea Zanzotto.
He has published nine poetry books: six original collections, a chapbook and two bilingual selections. His latest collection, The Invisible (Greenwich Exchange Publishing, UK, 2024), includes the best poems that appeared in international magazines in the period 2019-2023. His third collection, Straight Astray, received an Honorable Mention at the 2008 London Book Festival.
Zanelli is the former poetry editor of Private Photo Review (an international review of photography and short writings), the Italian Stanza Representative for the Poetry Society of London and a featured poet in the 2006 edition of Poet’s Market.
Among his many interests and hobbies are music (from rock to classical, his greatest heroes being Deep Purple and Beethoven), history, modern physics, cosmology and scenic photography, even though his greatest passion is probably long-distance running, having he completed over 100 marathons and ultramarathons plus countless various-distance races on every kind of terrain across Italy and Europe.
He lives with his wife Jane, also a poet, and works as a wealth consultant in his pretty, tranquil, understated hometown Cremona, along the banks of the Po River, in Lombardy, northern Italy.
