'One of the most prolific, versatile and, at his best, penetrating of our poets.' - Magma 30

biography

For interviews with Mario Petrucci, click here.

Mario's biography is complex, to say the least. He was originally a Natural Sciences graduate and moved into freelance writing after a stint at teaching, a PhD in optoelectronics at UCL, organic farming / goat-herding in Ireland, and a further BA in Environmental Studies at Middlesex University.

Currently Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, his poetry performances attract international recognition (for example, with the British Council). Mario has received many awards for his poetry: he is four times winner of the London Writers Competition and recipient of the 2002 Arvon/ Daily Telegraph International Poetry Prize.

He now works as an educator and creative writing tutor for all ages, and as a radio/tv broadcaster. Co-founder of writers inc., Mario teaches widely in adult contexts and in schools, lecturing students at the Imperial War Museum and much in demand as a visiting writer specialising in war poetry and the curriculum. He has also brought into being a host of resources linking the humanities and the sciences, not least his remarkable creative writing pack Creative Writing <-> Science.

The collaborative performance poetry group he co-founded, ShadoWork, swept the board in terms of awards and ran voice training seminars and acclaimed performances across the country. Diorama is developing that impetus into innovative multi-vocal and multimedia contexts for poetry.

'Imaginative, sophisticated and effortlessly masterful... draws on the nature of raw experience
and revives it in an incredibly accurate, poignant way.' - Cambridge Student