THE EZRA POUND CENTER FOR LITERATURE

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This program is a 4-week poetry seminar/poetry workshop and immersion into Italian culture. It grew out of the Tirolean History classes taught at UNO's International Summer School in Innsbruck, Austria. The Summer School has operated successfully for more than twenty-five years and has generated many productive and rewarding collaborations throughout Europe, of which the UNO Ezra Pound Center for Literature is one of the finest. The program provides the unusual opportunity for a limited number of undergraduates, graduate students and others interested in modern poetry and/or creative writing to write poetry and study the works of Ezra Pound at the historic castle in northern Italy where Pound lived late in his life and where his daughter, Mary de Rachewiltz, now resides.

Brunnenburg Castle is situated in the province of South Tirol in northern Italy. It graces a hillside near the mountain village of Dorf Tirol, with spectacular vistas of the Adige Valley and the Italian Alps. South Tirol, which borders Austria and Switzerland, is an area of both Germanic and Italian influences. The South Tirol or Alto Adige province, together with the neighboring Trentino province, today forms an autonomous region within Italy that enjoys a high degree of administrative and cultural independence from Rome. Brunnenburg Castle, originally built about 1250, exists reconstructed today as a viable working estate and vineyard. castleIt neighbors Schloß Tirol, the twelfth-century castle which gave the region its name. The Counts of Tirol played a central role in the history and development of all of Tirol. Today, both Brunnenburg and Schloß Tirol are keepers of history, as well as centers of cultural and scholarly activity. Since World War II, Brunnenburg has been the residence of the de Rachewiltz family, relatives of the poet Ezra Pound, who also lived and wrote there. Pound's grandson, Dr. Siegfried de Rachewiltz, is Director of both Brunnenburg and Schloss Tirol. An ethnologist with degrees from Rutgers and Harvard, Dr. de Rachewiltz established a museum at Brunnenburg dedicated to the ceremonial and agricultural life of South Tirol. Brunnenburg also houses an extensive artifact collection from Africa, as well as a collection of some of Pound’s original publications, papers, and personal items.