Her father, Nemo Merini, was an employee working at the insurance company "Vecchia Mutua Grandine ed Eguaglianza il Duomo".

Little is known about her childhood, other than what she wrote in the short autobiographical notes on the occasion of the second edition of the Spagnoletti Anthology: "[I was] a sensitive girl, with a rather melancholic character, quite excluded and little understood by my parents but very good in school ... because studying has always been a vital part of my life".

[2] After graduating from primary school with very high marks, she attended the three-year school-to-work transition programme at the Istituto Laura Solera Mantegazza in via Ariberto in Milan, while trying to be admitted to Liceo Manzoni.

After being discharged, her friend Giorgio Manganelli, whom she had met at the house of Spagnoletti together with Luciano Erba and David Maria Turoldo, tried to help her by recommending her to the psychoanalysts Franco Fornari and Cesare Musatti.

In 1950, Giacinto Spagnoletti published Merini's work for the first time in Antologia della poesia italiana contemporanea 1909–1949 (Anthology of Contemporary Italian Poetry 1909–1949).

In the time following her wedding, she wrote twenty poems-portraits called La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie), later to be released in the volume Vuoto d'amore (Empty Love), together with some works by Pierri.

Diario di una diversaIn July 1986, after a brief spell in the psychiatric hospital in Taranto, Merini moved back to Milan and initiated a therapy cycle with the doctor Marcella Rizzo, to whom she dedicated more than a poem.

Diario di una diversa, her first book written in prose that, as Giorgio Manganelli stated in the preface, "it is neither a document nor a testimony on the ten years spent by the writer in a mental institution.

The prize significantly elevated her status within the Italian literary community, and Merini was rated together with writers such as Giorgio Caproni, Attilio Bertolucci, Mario Luzi, Andrea Zanzotto and Franco Fortini.

On 17 October 2007, Merini received an honorary degree in Theory of Communication and Language at the School of Educational Sciences at the University of Messina, giving a lectio magistralis on the meandering twists and turns of events that constituted her life.

[11] In 1994, Merini's collection of poems Sogno e Poesia (Dream and Poetry) was published as a special limited edition featuring engravings by twenty contemporary artists.

In 1995 she published La Pazza della porta accanto (The Mad Woman from Next Door) with Bompiani and Ballate non pagate (Unpaid Dances) with Einaudi.

She also put together a small publication for La Vita Felice publishing house made of old and new poems, a confessional diary, a selection of short stories and an interview entitled Un'anima indocile (A Restless Soul).

They began to collaborate and in 1997 Girardi published the collection of poems La volpe e il sipario (The Fox and the Curtain) with illustrations by Gianni Casari.

In 1997 Bonaldi drew five illustrations for a collection of poems and epigrams of Merini entitled Salmi della gelosia (Psalms of Jealousy), published by Ariete.

The film, produced by Angelo Tumminelli for Star Dust International, included portions of Merini's poems read by Mariangela Melato, with cinematography by Giuliano Grittini.

Merini wrote a poem, "Una donna sul palcoscenico," specifically for the purpose of including it in the film: One day I lost words/ I came here to tell you this and not because you responded/ I don't love conversations or questions: I noticed that I once sang in a voiceless choir/ I meditated a long time on the silence, and to silence there is no response./ I threw away my poems/ I didn't have paper to write them on./ Then I noticed that strange animals like ancestral beasts in the form of men from asylums were coming close to me/ some of them helped me feel unique, looked at me.

Roberta Bottari wrote in Il Messaggero: "With a voice that betrays her childlike candor, a smile that illuminates her eyes and the unmistakable fire-red lipstick, Alda Merini abandoned herself to Cosimo Damato.

And while the director stands with the still camera, waiting for a look, a twitch, a word from the woman, she seduces him speaking of poetry, mysticism, philosophy, music, of foolishness poured out in verse, of Christ and passion, without censuring family pain and the experience of the asylum.