Let a Thousand Hands Reach Out to Pick Up The Gun by Nanni Balestrini

40 pages, 2 colour cover, perfect-bound

Published August 2010 by Bandit Press & Shortfuse Press

“Women with guns at their side women who rob who kidnap who attack prisons who shoot representatives of the law and of the state women who have followed their road to the end going from the role of support and consoler of their male colleagues to that of protagonists”

Nanni Balestrini was born in Milan in 1935 and lives in Paris. He has been one of the principal editors of the literary magazine Il Verri and has contributed to many periodicals and journals. From 1966 to 1968 he edited, together with Alfredo Giuliani, the magazine Quindici. Balestrini’s poems were included in the celebrated anthology I Novissimi (1961). One of the propelling forces of the Gruppo ’63, he has organized many conferences and exhibitions. His book publications include Il sasso appeso (1961), Come si agisce (1963), Tristano (1966), Ma noi facciamone un’altra (1968),Vogliamo tutto (1971), La violenza illustrata (1976), Le ballate della signorina Richmond(1977), Ipocalisse (1986), Il ritorno della Signorina Richmond (1987), L’editore (1989), and Il pubblico del labirinto (1992).

Nanni Balestrini's work represents one of the major expressions of the Neo-avant-garde movement that swept through Italian literature in the 1960s. Through his writing Balestrini strives to revive language in a world in which he believes the social structure, with its ever-increasing alienation of classes and compartmentalization of individual roles, has irremediably destroyed meaningful communication. To counter this trend Balestrini seeks to affirm language as the object of artistic expression. Hence the daring technical experimentations that mark his literary career: from the device of collage to the use of the computer Balestrini aims to create an art product that is new and revolutionary with respect to both its syntax and its affinity with the spoken language.

Born in Milan on 2 July 1935, Balestrini enrolled in the school of engineering at the Università Cattolica in that city. Later he broadened his interests by studying economics and political science. He was also reading the Dadaists as well as Guillaume Apollinaire, Bertolt Brecht, Ezra Pound, as well as Carlo Emilio Gadda and the writers of the linea lombarda (Lombard line), as Luciano Anceschi had come to define that literary tendency.