2006 Presenter Full Presenter List

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco

Toronto’s Poet Laureate

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco has authored 17 collections of poetry since 1976. He was a seminal figure in Canadian Multiculturalism with his edition of the first anthology of Italian-Canadian writers and through his collaborative work with the Multiculturalism Directorate, the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. Born in Arezzo, Italy, and raised in Montreal, Baltimore and Toronto, Pier Giorgio did his post-graduate work at the University of Toronto. In 1984, he removed himself from the world of letters to become an Augustinian Brother. He was subsequently ordained to the Roman Catholic Priesthood. He returned to the world of literature and education in 2000 with four successive volumes of verse, including The Dark Time of Angels, which was nominated for the Trillium Award in 2004. In 2004, Pier Giorgio was the Emilio Goggio Visiting Professor in Italian Studies at the University of Toronto and was appointed by the City of Toronto as its second Poet Laureate. He has extended the role of Poet Laureate beyond the area of arts advocacy and into the realm of “civic aesthetic,” a term coined to define the building of a city by citizenship, civic ethic and urban psychology. Di Cicco’s urban philosophy has influenced municipal policy in Canada, The U.S. and the United Kingdom and has move the role of the Poet Laureate into the forum of global engagement on issues that address the urban aesthetic and its relationship to livable and sustainable cities.