Mario Petrucci

Mario Petrucci is a poet and educator of international standing, and a leading exponent for site-specific and public poetry in the UK. Since pioneering the first-ever poetry residency at the Imperial War Museum, he has fulfilled literary commissions and residences across numerous institutions, including the Royal Festival Hall, Southwell Workhouse, North Middlesex Hospital and the Dickens Museum. As the station’s first resident poet, Mario engaged with orchestras and their ‘endangered instruments’ for BBC Radio 3’s Listen Up! festival.

Distributed widely through such avenues as the Spectator, the Independent, BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service, Mario’s work embraces transnational and multimedia interests. His Arvon-winning Heavy Water: a poem for Chernobyl (Enitharmon, 2004) led to an internationally acclaimed film (Seventh Art Productions, 2006), while i tulips (Enitharmon, 2010) breathes American modernism without abandoning British timbres. Shortlisted for the 2012 Ted Hughes award, his Tales from the Bridge was the world’s largest 3D poetry soundscape and a centrepiece of the London Cultural Olympiad.

A tireless explorer at the science–arts interface, Mario generates educational resources that combine science and ecological awareness with creative writing. He is a PhD physicist, a qualified ecologist and schoolteacher, and an innovative cross-disciplinary researcher. His Visualisations project, for instance, galvanises literary studies via visual analogies attractively drawn from science and mathematics. His own poetry and prose emerge from science organically. Immersed in poetry collections, soundscapes and films, Mario continues to freelance in schools, universities and literary organisations as a creative-writing tutor and study skills specialist.