Francesco Benozzo (born 22 February 1969) is an Italian poet, musician and philologist. He works as a Professor in Philology at the University of Bologna, Italy, and is a Visiting Professor at the Bath Spa University, UK.[1] He is known for being an active dissident against the mass surveillance, with concrete protest actions that even led to his suspension from work for his rebellion against the power and in the name of freedom.[2][3][4] His suspension from work due to his rebellion against the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic by the Italian Government had a huge resonance on Italian media, as he was one of the only two university professors (among 70.000) suspended in Italy for this reason.[5][6][7][8] He is the founder of the Observatory Against State Surveillance, sponsored by the European centre for Science, Ethics, and Law.[9]
Biographical notes
Poetry
In Benozzo's conception, poetry is essentially an instrument of dissidence capable of debunking habitual perceptions of the world and restoring individual freedom to each human being.[10] He is the author of long epic poems about natural landscapes and the origin of universe,[11] which have been collected in 2023 in a bilingual edition (Italian and English) titled Sciamanica. Poems from the Borders of the Worlds.[12] Benozzo usually composes them orally and then performs them with his bardic harp.[13][14][15] Since 2015 he has been present in the List of nominees for the Nobel Prize in Literature, with nominations made public by the PEN International[16][17] for his poetry in defence of natural places and Indigenous peoples, and for his peculiar use of poetic techniques belonging to the ancient tradition of oral poetry and shamanism.[18] In 2016, on the official webpage of the Swedish Academy, he was consecrated by the international readers' jury as the most worthy author for the prize itself.[19] In 2024 other international scientific academies have officially nominated him announcing this nomination on their official websites: among them, the "Partnership Studies Group" and the "Global Academy for Liberal Arts".[20] In 2022 he was awarded with the International Prize "Poets from the frontiers":[21] the committee for the prize describes Benozzo’s poetry as follows: “Visionary, unsettling, epic, windy, Benozzo has the inimitable capacity to recapture the original word when it first named the world. […]. Poem after poem, unfailingly and amazingly this poet enacts a revolution of the very idea of poetry: with his atemporal and universal dimension, he is the Homer of post-modernity”[22]
Philology and Linguistics
In his book Speaking Australopithecus (written together with the archaeologist Marcel Otte) he argues for a much greater antiquity of human language than has usually been presumed in recent research (according to which it was born with Homo sapiens at the end of Middle Paleolithic – 50.000 years ago – or at the most with some Neandertal, 200.000 years ago), providing linguistic and archaeological evidence for seeing the appearance of human language with Australopithecus, between 4 and 3 million years ago.[23][24] He is considered the creator of Ethnophilology, "a new approach and an indiscipline which still maintains the emotions of meeting with texts and words".[25] He is the author of more than 800 publications, including academic works on oral poetry, Medieval literatures, Celtic traditions, dialectology, shamanism, anarchism, the Paleolithic continuity theory, and the problem of landscape in literature.[26] He has recently created the category of Homo poeta, intended as the archetype of our way of perceiving the world before we were able to speak.[27]
Music
As a songwriter and harpist, he released 17 CDs, produced in Italy, Denmark and UK, reaching an international wide appeal (two special mentions at the Edinburgh Folk Awards, one prize as "Best album of the month" assigned by the magazine "RootsWorld", and for two times the National Italian Musical Prize "Giovanna Daffini").[28][29][30][31] He represented Italian poetry and music in different international happenings, including the Rich Text Literature Festival in Cardiff (Wales), the Tradicionarius Festival in Barcelona (Spain), the Stanza Poetry Festival in St. Andrews (Scotland), the Festival Literario de Madeira (Portugal), the Printemps des poètes (France), and the Summartonar Festival (Faroe Islands, DK). He gave concerts in theatres and musical festival outside Europe, mainly in the USA (Los Angeles, Boston, New York), in Canada (Calgary, Montréal, Québec), and in Cuba.[32][33][34] In 2003 he performed in Rome at the Teatro Valle together with the Nobel Prize Wislawa Szymborska.[35]
Main discography
In'tla piola (Sain records, Wales/UK, 2000)
Llyfr Taliesin (Frame Events, ITA, 2004)
Arpa celtica (Live Concert, Centro Campostrini, ITA, 2005)
Terracqueo (Tutl Records, DK, 2009)
Libertà l'è morta (Tutl Records, DK, 2013) (with Fabio Bonvicini)
Ponte del diavolo (RadiciMusic, ITA, 2014) (with Fabio Bonvicini)
L'inverno necessario / The Necessary Winter (Tutl Records, DK, 2016)
Un Requiem Laico (ARCI RE, ITA, 2016) (with Fabio Bonvicini & Fratelli Mancuso)
