Maria Chessa Lai

{{Short description|Italian poet}}

File:Front cover of La Mia Mar by Maria Chessa Lai.jpg

Maria Chessa Lai (15 February 1922 in Monti – 7 February 2012 in Alghero) was an Italian poet[http://notizie.alguer.it/n?id=47650] Celebrated in her home city 2012[http://lanuovasardegna.gelocal.it/regione/2012/02/10/news/poesia-in-catalano-addio-a-maria-chessa-lai-1.3660891] Italian newspaper article 2012 writing in the Catalan Algherese dialect. She was three times winner of the Premio Ozieri awarded annually for the best new poetry written in a Sardinian minority language. As a bilingual poet she published her poems simultaneously in Algherese and Italian. The majority of her work was collected together and published in the volume La Mia Mar in 2005.

Sixty nine of her poems translated into english were published in 2021, in a bilingual Catalan/English edition, under the title: Collected Poems/ Recull de poesies de l'Alguer—including this extract from the poem called Marçanella Helichrysum Golden Sun

{{poemquote|... Within its flowers

the reflection of clear light.

And when in the quiet of those hours

the flower that bloomed then desists

upon the path at the rim

of the crumbling abyss

it yet persists intenser in strength

within its aromatic existence.

[Collected Poems 2021]

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Chessa Lai was the mother of the journalist, academic, and writer Pasquale Chessa.{{Cite web|url=https://www.alguer.it/notizie/n.php?id=54064|title=Premi in trasferta per Alghero Donna|website=Alguer.it|access-date=2020-04-25}}