POET MERINI TO GET STATE FUNERAL

POET MERINI TO GET STATE FUNERAL

(updates previous). (ANSA) - Milan, November 2 - Italian poet Alda Merini is to receive a state funeral in her native Milan, Mayor Letizia Moratti said Monday.

Wednesday's funeral in the Duomo would pay tribute to a writer whose importance was both local and national, the mayor said.

''Alda Merini charted a course through the history and culture of our city, providing important reflections for the rest of the country,'' Moratti said.

The poet's house in the city's Navigli district - a port of call for eccentrics and refuge for outsiders - will be marked with a plaque, officials said.

Merini died in Milan Sunday at the age of 78.

Her wide-ranging, lyrical work, marked by erotic and religious motifs and peopled by lonely, marginalised characters, was at first little known outside Italian poetry circles but reached a wider audience in her later years when she emerged from a long period of mental illness.

Merini's death claimed front-page headlines in the Italian press Monday, with Corriere della Sera calling her ''the poet who sang of love and madness''.

Championed as a youthful prodigy by Eugenio Montale, Merini frequented another Italian Nobel prize winner, Salvatore Quasimodo, and was ranked among Italy's finest 20th century poets.

Among her works translated into English are A Rage of Love (1996), Unpaid Ballads (2001) and The Holy Land (2002).