Italian Poetry in the World

Contemporary Italian poetry outside Italy or seen from abroad: this is the common denominator, beyond the variety of perspectives, of a number of recent publishing initiatives in different countries, from Switzerland to France, from Spain to the United Kingdom.

The latest issue of the Swiss periodical La Revue de Belles-Lettres devotes an entire section, entitled ‘Ouvertures italiennes’ and edited by Francesco Deotto, to authors of Italian or Ticino origin born between 1975 and 1987. This wide-ranging selection, accompanied by a French translation, focuses on a number of new voices, where lyrical tension and experimental research coexist: Prisca Agustoni (tr. Anita Rochedy), Yari Bernasconi (tr. Anita Rochedy), Maria Borio (tr. Florence Courriol), Francesco Brancati (tr. Lucie Tardin), Laura Di Corcia (tr. Véronique Volpato), Tommaso Di Dio (tr. Christian Viredaz); Carmen Gallo (tr. Martin Rueff), Federico Italiano (tr. Florence Courriol), Franca Mancinelli (tr. Thierry Gyllibœuf).

Ensemble de Rome has published three anthologies, all original in conception, in the ‘Bilingue’ collection directed by Gëzim Hajdari.

The first, edited by Gëzim Hajdari himself, Alibi. Prima antologia bilingue di poesia italiana nel Regno Unito brings together the voices of Italian poets who live or have lived in Great Britain. A transcultural and bilingual project bringing together poets and translators of different ages, cities, professions and styles, Alibi gives voice to the language ‘of postcolonialism, of animal and cosmic otherness, of nostalgia for other worlds, of migrations and departures’.

The second, edited in Paris by Ilena Antici and Monica Battisti, is entitled Altrove. Antologia bilingue della poesia italiana in Francia, offers a selection of poetic texts by Italian authors living in France. The result of two years’ research, the anthology consists of three hundred pages of texts in Italian and French. There are twenty-five poets, from Jean-Charles Vegliante (b. 1947) to Maddalena Bergamin (b. 1986), from Pascal Gabellone (b. 1943) to Alfonso Maria Petrosino (b. 1981), via the intermediate generation of Mia Lecomte, Andrea Inglese and Flaviano Pisanelli (b. 66, 67 and 73 respectively) – right up to the threshold (linked to age) of the year 2000.

The third, Alias. Antologia translinguistica di poesia contemporanea italo-spagnola, is defined by Dalila Colucci and Leonarda Trapassi , who edited it, as ‘a volume of infinite substitutions, lunar parentheses and fantastic pseudonyms, mute transcriptions and apocryphal versions’. It brings together the voices of seventeen Italian and Spanish poets, who operate in a linguistic context of ubiquity and wandering: Roberta Buffi, Sebastiano Burgaretta , Ignacio Cartagena, Dalila Colucci, Miguel Ángel Cuevas, Gaia Danese, Francisco Deco, Matteo Lefèvre, Marisa Martínez Pérsico, José María Micó, Alessandro Mistrorigo, Ángelo Néstore, Rocío Nogales Muriel, Raffaele Pinto, Begonya Pozo, Laura Pugno, Bernardo Santos.

newitalianbooks will be reporting on some of these anthologies in greater detail over the coming months.