Bio:Menotti Lerro

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Menotti Lerro (born in Omignano -Salerno- February 22, 1980) is an Italian author. Writer of poetry, aphorisms, criticism, novels and short stories, Lerro has been the subject of a critical book by Andrew Mangham, from the University of Reading, entitled The Poetry of Menotti Lerro (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), (paperback edition, 2012). Lerro was born in Omignano, Salerno, as first son of Pietro Lerro and Rosanna Pinto; he also has three sisters: Melinda, Romina and Lucrezia. The last is a popular writer, author of five novels with the publisher Bompiani and one with Mondadori. After getting a diploma in Vallo della Lucania (1999) Lerro gets his first scholarship and starts a course in foreign language at the University of Salerno and also begins to work for the periodical "il Salernitano". In 2003 Lerro lives and studies in Oxford for seven months and one year later he gets his degree with a final dissertation on the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Eugenio Montale. In the same period he gets the official status of “Journalist Pubblicista” and starts to work for Mondadori, Italy’s main publishing house. In 2006 he gets a Scholarship from the University of Salerno to study abroad. In 2008 completes his Masters’ studies (degree in “The Body and Representation” at the University of Reading, UK) and graduates with merit. Begins a PhD programme at the University of Reading. Gets a grant to study for his PhD at the University of Salerno; leaves the University of Reading and completes his PhD in English and Spanish literature in Italy with very good results. It is possible to get many information about Lerro's childhood through his autobiographical novel Augusto Orrel: Memories of Horror and Poetry (2007). In this text, the author describes young Orrel’s experiences of becoming a man. The latter (whose name is “Lerro” spelt backwards) is a character that the author admits to having based on himself. In Augusto Orrel we find a modern manifestation of Goethe’s Werther: a melancholy and passionate young man whose sorrows are outlined in a language that is both striking and raw. Lerro describes how Augusto is forced to play the role of father to his own father due to the latter’s increasing level of psychological delusion. Unsurprisingly, the protagonist begins to feel an enormous and disproportionate amount of responsibility on his young shoulders. Indeed, the idea of a difficult and unconventional childhood is a force that drives much of Lerro’s poetry – especially those pieces featuring recollections of the father.