Among the Pale Spires

David Smart traces the life of Italian poet and climber Antonia Pozzi, whose writing was shaped by the Dolomites and the pressures of fascist Italy. Born in 1912, Pozzi came of age during a period of political repression and restrictive expectations for women. She found a measure of freedom in climbing and in writing, developing a body of poetry closely connected to mountain landscapes even as her work was constrained by the world around her. Among the Pale Spires places Pozzi within the climbing culture and literary history of interwar Italy. Smart follows her relationships, her engagement with the mountains and the circumstances surrounding her brief life, while also examining the censorship and neglect that complicated the reception of her work. The biography is interwoven with a curated selection of Pozzi's poetry in English translation, allowing the poems to sit beside the life that produced them. For readers of literary biography, European history and mountain writing, the book restores attention to a writer for whom climbing and poetry were deeply connected.