Lee Cataldi

Lee Cataldi (born 1942) is a contemporary Australian poet and linguist.

{{Infobox person

| name = Lee Cataldi

| image =

| alt =

| caption =

| birth_name = Lee A. Sonnino

| birth_date = {{birth year and age|1942}}

| birth_place = Sydney, Australia

| death_date =

| death_place =

| nationality = Australian

| other_names =

| occupation = Poet, linguist

| years_active =

| known_for =

| notable_works =

| spouse = Gianni Cataldi

}}

Biography

Cataldi (née Sonnino) was born in Sydney during World War II when, owing to her father’s Italian heritage, she was technically an 'enemy alien'.{{cite web

|title=Lee Cataldi (1942 - )

|publisher=Thylazine

|url=http://www.thylazine.org/directory/directc/

|accessdate=2007-03-11

|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20061004081035/http://www.thylazine.org/directory/directc/

|archivedate=2006-10-04

|url-status=dead

}} As a child she lived in Hobart, moving back to Sydney for university. She won the University Medal, publishing her thesis as A Handbook to Sixteenth Century Rhetoric (by Lee A. Sonnino). She studied at Cambridge before meeting her future husband Italian Gianni Cataldi. Since returning to Australia in the 1970s Cataldi has worked as a teacher and a linguist, on Indigenous Australian languages in Halls Creek, Alice Springs and Balgo. In the late sixties she travelled to Italy and England where she became a socialist, inspired by the May 1968 uprising in France.{{cn|date=February 2021}}

Cataldi's first book of poems, Invitation to a Marxist lesbian party, was published in 1978, winning the Anne Elder Memorial Prize in that year. Women who live on the ground (1990) received the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Poetry Award; it was also short-listed for the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Race against time (1998) won the 1999 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry.{{cite web| title =1990 Human Rights Medal and Awards| publisher =Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission| url =http://www.hreoc.gov.au/hr_awards/1990.html| accessdate =2007-03-11| url-status =dead| archiveurl =https://web.archive.org/web/20070216121137/http://www.hreoc.gov.au/hr_awards/1990.html| archivedate =2007-02-16}}

In 1998 Cataldi travelled to Madras, India, for an Asialink Literature Residency.{{cite web

| last =

| first =

| author-link =

| title = Literature Past Residents - India

| publisher = Asialink (University of Melbourne)

| date = 2006-11-24

| url = http://www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/our_work/arts/literature/residencies/past_residents/literature_past_residents_-_india#cataldi

| archive-url = https://archive.today/20070617060404/http://www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/our_work/arts/literature/residencies/past_residents/literature_past_residents_-_india#cataldi

| url-status = dead

| accessdate = 2007-03-11 | archive-date =2007-06-17

}}

{{As of|2023}}, she lives in South Australia.{{Cite web |title=Mourning is Women’s Business |url=https://newsouthbooks.com.au/books/mourning-is-womens-business/ |access-date=2025-03-22 |website=NewSouth Books |language=en-AU}}

Bibliography

=Poetry=

Invitation to a Marxist lesbian party, Wild & Woolley, 1978
Women who live on the ground: Poems, 1978-1988, Penguin Australia, 1990
Race against time: Poems, Penguin Australia, 1998
Mourning is Women's Business, Puncher & Wattmann, 2023

=Non-fiction=

Warlpiri Dreamings and Histories: Newly Recorded Stories from the Aboriginal Elders of Central Australia. Coll. and trans. with Peggy Rockman Napaljarri, Schwartz, 2003. {{ISBN|0-7619-8992-7}}