Photo from the Corriere di Chieri website
Pietro Tartamella (born April 1948, Camporeale, Sicily, Italy; died February 25, 2022), Italian writer, storyteller, poet, voice artist for films, and cultural activist. Tartamella founded the literary and poetry magazine La Tenda. A troubadour and proponent of haiku from the 1970s, he arranged events to promote the genre. Beginning in the 1990s he cofounded and served as artistic director of the Cascina Macondo cultural association and supporter of the association’s International Haiku Poetry Contest in Italian. He wrote poetic manifestos on composition and syllabification of Italian-language haiku and devised a number of variant haikai-like forms. He taught reading aloud, creative writing, and haiku composition in a variety of venues, notably the European project PAROL! Scrittura e arti nelle carceri, oltre i confini, oltre le mura (WORD! Writing and the Arts in Prisons, Beyond Borders, Beyond Walls). He published 13 books on a variety of topics. Tartamella last lived in Turin, Italy.
Note: This is an abstract of a longer biographical article to come.