Nail Chiodo was born in Padua, Italy, in 1952. The son of Italian biologists who immigrated to the United States, he lived in America for more than twenty years, over a period of time that spanned from when he was of kindergarten age until he was 36 years old. He also spent some years in Paris, first while at elementary school and then as a university student. In 1974, he majored in philosophy at Yale. In 1977, he began to make a feature-length film, “The Insignificant Other”, which was completed, after surviving every sort of vicissitude, only in 2000. From 1978 onwards, however, his primary creative activity was the writing of verse in English. More recently, he founded and directed the professional international poetry translation initiative “Lyrical Translations”. Having fallen terminally ill in the spring, he died serenely in Zurich, Switzerland, on 31 October 2014.