A poet, literary translator, educator and broadcaster who was an early ecopoet and whose work in ecological creative writing stimulates environmental projects in education and arts.
Mario Petrucci (London) is a British-Italian poet, literary translator, educator, and broadcaster. He is widely recognised as a progenitor of ecopoetry in the UK, and was among the earliest poets to publish the kind of ecologically-centred collection that poetry lists now readily identify as 'ecopoetry'. His pioneering work in science poetry, ecopoetry, eco-film and ecological creative writing in schools did much to stimulate the current diversity of environmental projects in education and arts.
Trained as a physicist at Cambridge, he later earned a PhD in crystal growth at University College London. He also studied, and taught, environmental science at Middlesex University before turning fully to literature, becoming a significant poetry facilitator in London as well as the first poet-in-residence at both the Imperial War Museum and BBC Radio 3.
His debut collection 'Shrapnel and Sheets' (1996) won a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and, over his career, he has won more than 20 national and international poetry competitions, with themes ranging from love and loss to war and environmental crisis. Petrucci’s work extends into translation (including Hafez, Montale, Catullus, Sappho, Rumi and Saadi) and film, notably the award-winning 'Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl', based on his Arvon-winning poetry collection, 'Heavy Water: a poem for Chernobyl'. He also created 'Tales from the Bridge', a large-scale poetry soundscape for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, experienced by millions.
Petrucci has contributed to cross-disciplinary projects linking science, ecology, and the arts, delivering research articles and popular talks for organisations such as the British Council and the United Nations. His archive is held by the British Library, and his recordings are preserved in The Poetry Archive. He is currently the UN-aligned Planetary Arts Movement's 'Ecopoetry Network Coordinator'.