Terra Santa

In 1979, Merini started putting together a particularly intense body of work based on her experience at the psychiatric ward. On 7 July 1983 her husband suddenly died and Merini, without any support from the literary community, worked hard to get more of her poems published to support herself and her family but to no avail.^[7] However, in 1982, Paolo Mauri,^[8] had offered to publish thirty of her poems, chosen from a typewritten document of about one hundred, in his journal (n. 4, Winter 1982-Spring 1983). In 1984 Scheiwiller republished Merini's forty poems in the collection Terra Santa (Holy Land). Maria Corti called the book "a masterpiece", and Merini went on to win the Librex Montale Prize.^[9]

During that time, Merini started a relationship with the poet Michele Pierri, who had been very supportive of her poems during a very difficult time. In October 1983 Alda and Michele got married and moved to Taranto. In the time following her wedding she wrote twenty poems-portraits called La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie), later to be released in the volume Vuoto d'amore (Empty Love), together with some works by Pierri. During her time in Taranto she also finished L'altra verità. Diario di una diversa (The Other Truth. Diary of a Misfit).

L'altra verità. Diario di una diversa

"I couldn't have written anything about the flowers in that moment because I myself had become a flower, I myself had a stem and I myself produced sap." - Alda Merini, from L'altra verità. Diario di una diversa

In July 1986, after a brief spell in the psychiatric hospital in Taranto, Merini moved back to Milan and initiated a therapy cycle with the doctor Marcella Rizzo, to whom she dedicated more than a poem. In the same year she started writing again and got newly in touch with Vanni Scheiwiller, who published L'altra verità. Diario di una diversa, her first book written in prose that, as Giorgio Manganelli stated in the preface, "it is neither a document nor a testimony on the ten years spent by the writer in a mental institution. It is a 'reconnaissance' through epiphanies, deliria, tunes, songs, revelations and apparitions, of a space - not a place - where, failing every habit and everyday perspicacity, the natural hell and the numinuous nature of human being burts out."^[10] The book was followed by Fogli bianchi (White sheets of paper, 1987), La volpe e il sipario (The Fox and the Curtain, 1997) and Testamento (Testament, 1988). In 1987 she was a finalist for the literary prize Premio Bergamo.

Caffè sui Navigli

Alda Merini on the way to Caffé Chimera in Milan, c. 1990

Merini's years in Milan were very productive. During the winter of 1989 she started spending time at the cafe/bookshop Chimera, not far from where she lived, offering typewritten poems to her friends. Chimera proved to be a particularly inspirational setting, and it was there that Merini wrote her next two books, Delirio amoroso (Love Delirium, 1989) and Il tormento delle figure (The Figure's Torment, 1990). In 1991 she published Le parole di Alda Merini (The Words of Alda Merini) and Vuoto d'amore (Empty Love). These were followed by Ipotenusa d'amore (Hypothene of Love, 1992), La palude di Manganelli o il monarca del re (The Manganelli Swamp or the King's Monarch, 1993), Aforismi (Aphorisms, with photographs by Giuliano Grittini, 1993) and Titano amori intorno (Titan's Loves Around, 1993). In 1993 she won the Premio Librex Montale for poetry. The prize significantly elevated her status within the Italian literary community, and Merini was rated together with writers such as Giorgio Caproni, Attilio Bertolucci, Mario Luzi, Andrea Zanzotto and Franco Fortini. In 2007 Alda e Io – Favole, written in collaboration with the fable writer Sabatino Scia, won the Elsa Morante Ragazzi prize. On 17 October 2007 Merini received an honorary degree in Theory of Communication and Language at the School of Educational Sciences at the University of Messina, giving a lectio magistralis on the meandering twists and turns of events that constituted her life.^[11]

Reato di vita: Autobiografia e poesia

In 1994, Merini's collection of poems Sogno e Poesia (Dream and Poetry) was published as a special limited edition featuring engravings by twenty contemporary artists. It was followed by Reato di vita: Autobiografia e poesia (Life Crime: Autobiography and Poetry) published by Edizioni Melusine. In 1995 she published La Pazza della porta accanto (The Mad Woman from Next Door) with Bompiani and Ballate non pagate (Unpaid Dances) with Einaudi. The same year Apulian musician Vincenzo Mastropirro put to music some of Merini's verses from Ballate. In 1996 she received the Viareggio Prize for the volume La Vita Facile (The Easy Life). She also put together a small publication for La Vita Felice publishing house made of old and new poems, a confessional diary, a selection of short stories and an interview entitled Un'anima indocile (A Restless Soul). In the same year Merini met the artist Giovanni Bonaldi with whom she formed a genuine and strong friendship. They began to collaborate and in 1997 Girardi published the collection of poems La volpe e il sipario (The Fox and the Curtain) with illustrations by Gianni Casari. In this collection it becomes evident the technical finesse of Merini's improvisational poetry that others would then transcribe. This development in her work led to the composition of shorter texts and simple aphorisms. In November of the same year, Ariete published Curva di fuga (The Vanishing Curve), which Merini presented at Castello Sforzesco in Soncino, where she was presented with the honorary citizenship. In 1997 Bonaldi drew five illustrations for a collection of poems and epigrams of Merini entitled Salmi della gelosia (Psalms of Jealousy), published by Ariete. The same year she was awarded the Procida Prize.

Alda Merini: una donna sul palcoscenico

In 2009, the documentary Alda Merini: una donna sul palcoscenico (Alda Merini: A Woman on Stage) directed by Cosimo Damiano Damato, was presented on Author's Day at the 66th Venice Film Festival. The film, produced by Angelo Tumminelli for Star Dust International, included portions of Merini's poems read by Mariangela Melato, with cinematography by Giuliano Grittini. Merini and Damato became great friends during the filming and Merini gave him unpublished poems to include in the film. Merini wrote a poem, "Una donna sul palcoscenico," specifically for the purpose of including it in the film:

One day I lost words/ I came here to tell you this and not because you responded/ I don't love conversations or questions: I noticed that I once sang in a voiceless choir/ I meditated a long time on the silence, and to silence there is no response./ I threw away my poems/ I didn't have paper to write them on./ Then I noticed that strange animals like ancestral beasts in the form of men from asylums were coming close to me/ some of them helped me feel unique, looked at me. / For them, I thought, there were no stoplights, buildings, streets./ This ramshackle place, my mind has found solitude./ Then a saint with something to give arrived/ a saint that was not chained, that was not an evildoer,/ the one thing that I had had during all these years./ I would have followed him / but I forgot how to fall in love./ He came, a saint that illuminated me like a star./ A saint responded to me: why don't you love yourself? My indolence was born./ I no longer see people that hit me, and I no longer visit the nuthouse./ I have died in indolence.

The film received positive reviews. Roberta Bottari wrote in Il Messaggero: "With a voice that betrays her childlike candor, a smile that illuminates her eyes and the unmistakable fire-red lipstick, Alda Merini abandoned herself to Cosimo Damato. She trusts him, she 'feels' that she will not be betrayed. And while the director stands with the still camera, waiting for a look, a twitch, a word from the woman, she seduces him speaking of poetry, mysticism, philosophy, music, of foolishness poured out in verse, of Christ and passion, without censuring family pain and the experience of the asylum."^[12]