At eight months old she was left on a blanket in the Villa Borghese, Rome. More than 50 years later, prize-winning poet Maria Grazia Calandrone set out to discover the truth behind her abandonment

On 24 June 1965 a young woman sat her eight-month-old baby girl on a blanket in the gardens of the Villa Borghese in Rome, and walked quickly away. Within minutes, a passerby spotted the tiny child, alone, with no identifying documents, no note, not even a name. When the mother did not return to claim her that evening, the baby was handed over to the nuns at Rome’s adoption services. Three days later, the mother’s body was found floating in the Tiber.

Before she died, the woman had sent a letter to the press, containing a brief account of the terrible choice she had made. The letter, handwritten, gave the baby’s name and date of birth, and concluded: “Finding myself in a desperate situation, I have no other choice than to leave my daughter to the compassion of all, And I with my friend will pay with our lives for what we did, or, got right or, got wrong.” The letter was signed “Lucia Galante, now Greco”. Her “friend” was presumed to be the baby’s father, whose body surfaced in the river a week later.

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© Photograph: Valeria Scrilatti

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© Photograph: Valeria Scrilatti

"Machinery will tend to lose its sensational glamour and appear in its true subsidiary order in human life as use and continual poetical allusion subdue its novelty. For, contrary to general prejudice, the wonderment experienced in watching nose dives is of less immediate creative promise to poetry than the familiar gesture of a motorist in the modest act of shifting gears." 'Hart Crane and the Machine Age'. 1933.

The Scottish writer, whose career spanned more than 35 years, was one of only three people to have won both of the UK’s most prestigious poetry prizes for the same book

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Though mainly known for his poetry, the Scottish writer wrote in many forms, including fiction and memoir, across a career that spanned more than three decades. In 2011 he won the TS Eliot prize and the Forward prize for his poetry collection Black Cat Bone, making him one of only three poets to have won both of the UK’s most prestigious poetry prizes for the same book (the others being Ted Hughes and Sean O’Brien). Last year, he won the David Cohen prize, which is given in recognition of an author’s entire body of work.

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© Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

"In the life of a poet, of course, there is no Election Day to distinguish the visionaries from the also-rans. So Stevens's response, when it came, trickled down in dribs and drabs. Scholars argue over this: some see him as returning, defensively, to conservatism, particularly since in a 1940 letter he declared that "Communism is just the new romanticism," and referred to "my rightism."" 'What Mitt Romney Might Learn From Wallace Stevens' [archive link]

‘All that hatred, that anger, can only blossom into a miracle’: the prize-winning author calls for a bigger response to the tragedy

I don’t know how many have died
Or how many died before war flared up.
There must be a way to listen to all
The pain that burns in a people
Must be a way to hear all that anguish.
Pain creates pain creates deadness
Of heart. Distance makes all that suffering
Unreal. How else can great powers
Add bombs and missiles to an agony
That’s engulfing the world in fire and rage?
How did we become so deaf to the death
Of innocent children and their mothers?
How did we get to measure the value
Of one death against another, with one
Worth a thousand of the other?

Ben Okri is a Booker prize-winning author and poet. His book Tiger Work, a collection of stories, essays and poems about the climate crisis, is published by Head of Zeus, and in the US by Other Press

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© Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/REX/Shutterstock

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© Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/REX/Shutterstock

Even in a labyrinth with terrifying tall walls, where the ocean is no longer visible, a minotaur still needs a hummingbird, essential company in the endless journey through dead-ends, restarts, and new beginnings – as well as a reminder of the beauty of the world, the power of the sun, the rain, love, and life, all packed inside the body of a creature that weighs less than an ounce. A sign that within the smallest detail, the whole world is present, and just as the gravity and magnificence of life is present in the mountains, oceans, stars, and everything larger than life, it is also brilliantly present in its smallest bird. from Hummingbirds Are Wondrous by Zito Madu [Plough]