Casa della poesia was founded in Baronissi in 1996, out of a simple, stubborn idea: that poetry — real poetry, international, often uncomfortable — needed a home. Our first event, Lo spirito dei luoghi (“The spirit of places”), took place in November of that year. We haven't stopped since.
We are a project that is at once real and virtual. Real, because since 21 March 2008 we have had a home of our own: a library of around 15,000 volumes, an audio archive — Le voci della poesia (“The voices of poetry”) — collecting over 15,000 recordings from more than 700 authors from around the world, and a guest house that over the years has welcomed poets arriving from every continent, often from difficult places, opening our doors to them and asking only that they meet the city in return: students, readers, other poets.
Beyond these walls, we have taken poetry on the road: major events held in many Italian cities and abroad, and a network of relationships with cultural institutions in other countries that, over the years, has made Casa della poesia a point of reference recognised beyond national borders too. Virtual, because what we gather — voices, texts, encounters — doesn't stay locked away in an archive: it travels, it is shared, it reaches places we could never reach on our own.
Working alongside Casa della poesia is Multimedia Edizioni, the publishing house that gives book form to what is encountered and translated here.
Along the way, we carry with us names that are more than memories: Izet Sarajlić, honorary president until his death in 2002, to whom we dedicated the Sarajevo meetings for many years; Jack Hirschman, our foremost fellow traveller of these decades, after whom we named our library; Etel Adnan, the grande dame of Middle Eastern culture, godmother of our project. These are presences that taught us what it means to make culture as an act of relationship, not only of production.
In 2026 we turn thirty. We celebrated in May with La Poesia Resistente (“Resistant poetry”), three days that tried to tell what poetry has always been for us: r/esistenza — resistance and existence together, because writing and reading verse, in certain places and certain times, is a way of staying on your feet.
Casa della poesia is directed by Raffaella Marzano and Sergio Iagulli.