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Alex Caldiero

Poet

About the artist:

Alex Caldiero: Born in 1949, in the ancient town of Licodia Eubea, near Catania, Sicily, he immigrated to the United States at age nine and was raised in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York. He attended Queens College in Flushing, New York, and was apprenticed to the sculptor Michael Lekakis and the poet-bard Ignazio Buttitta. Caldiero has traveled through Sicily, Sardinia, Turkey, and Greece collecting proverbs, tales, and folk instruments. He is co-founder of Arba Sicula, the society for the preservation of the Sicilian language and traditions, and is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Utah Performing Arts Tour, and the Best Poetry Award from the Association for Mormon Letters. Caldiero has lived in Utah since 1980 with his wife and children, and is Poet/Artist in Residence at Utah Valley University. Considered one of Utah's major poets, Caldiero received the 1998 AML Award for Poetry from the Association for Mormon Letters for his 64-page book Various Atmospheres: Poems and Drawings (Signature Books: Salt Lake City, 1998).