Mario Petrucci is a freelance writer, broadcaster and award winning poet.

Mario Petrucci has recently been awarded a New London Writers Award by the London Arts Board and a placement at the Imperial War Museum.

Petrucci's first collection of poetry, Shrapnel and Sheets, was published by Headland in May 1996 to wide acclaim. Selected by Liz Lockhead and John Fuller as a Poetry Book Society recommendation for the spring quarter, the book was subsequently featured in the Voice Box's "New Voices" series at the Royal Festival Hall. A brace of poems were extracted for inclusion in last year's Forward anthology.

Petrucci received the Edith Kitt Memorial Award in 1995 for outstanding competition performance. Prominent scalps include the 1993 London Writers, the 1996 Frogmore, two years running for the Ouse Valley, and the 1997 Irish Times Perpetual Trophy. He has had poems in the Independent and on BBC Radio. In an interview on "Night Waves" Michele Roberts described his work as having "all the big things in it. Just explodes off the page!"

Petrucci is an experienced and exciting performer of his work. He has appeared on national television, and was featured at the Covent Garden event for the 1994 and 1996 National Poetry Days. His poems have appeared worldwide - in Canada, New York and Italy - while in the UK over the last decade he has placed over 300 poems in magazines and anthologies. Collins anthologised his work in "New Christian Poetry" (1990), and prose and poetry were accepted for "An Idea of Bosnia" (Autumn House, 1996).

Petrucci is a major progenitive force behind ShadoWork, the experimental performance group launched this summer at the Poetry Society, which brings innovation to the festival and poetry circuit in a unique collaborative project. ShadoWork challenges preconceptions about poetry readings and breaches the boundaries of the single poetic voice to question and tease the authorial presence and set up dramatic new resonances. Bookings and further information are available through The Bound Spiral, 79 Lincoln Crescent, Bush Hill Park, Enfield EN1 1JZ. Telephone 0181 348 6440.

Petrucci is well-known as co-founder and editor of the poetry magazine, The Bound Spiral, which has run successfully since the eighties. He reviews for Ambit magazine and co-organises the Blue Nose poetry venue in London which promotes large-scale literary events throughout the year under the aegis of the LAB. In 1993 he conceived and co-organised the Blue Nose International Poetry Competition, which he has since judged annually with the Blue Nose group. He is founder of Calliopia, and an active member of the Poetry Society and Friends of Arvon.

Click to read some of Mario Petrucci's poetry.