WORDS | SIGNS | FLOURISHES
Poetry and perspectives on the contemporary world
Writing workshop led by Simona Cleopazzo
Municipal Library | Castello Volante | Corigliano d’Otranto (LE)
Monday evenings | 6.30–8.00 pm
Poetry encapsulates everything I wish to say; it compels me to face reality head-on and, despite everything, to maintain a vital impulse towards the future.
We will bring poetry back to the level of real-life narrative, never seeking rhyme, but weaving the verse with concrete words.
We will listen to poetry as an attempt to restore truth, to try to bridge the gap between ourselves and the world.
We will respect silence and words.
We shall remove, as Kafka suggests, the city’s coat of arms from our vocabulary,
We shall stay close together to enjoy the jolts.
We shall capture small snapshots of everyday life.
We shall write:
Of time.
“I rise with burning eyelids. I rise with burning eyelids. Childhood, faded into the beard that has grown whilst I slept, into the emaciated flesh, stares back at me with the light fused into my parched eyes”, we shall explore the concept of time through the poetic works of Pier Paolo Pasolini, who, with disarming terror, recounts the passing of time and its effects upon us. For Pasolini, writing was inherent to his very being, a physiological, natural act.
Of geography.
“Geographies, not landscapes. Not sections isolated by aesthetic whim, but entire domains of an aerial view or geological continuity. Not contemplation, but description that seeks crossings, affinities and faults”, as Antonella Anedda tells us from the pages of her latest book, *Geografie*. For Anedda, writing means questioning the meaning of life.
On silence.
“Silence/ I have become one with silence/ and I let myself be shaped/ and I let myself be absorbed/ and I let myself be spoken”, a poem on silence by Alejandra Pizarnik, an Argentine poet for whom writing was a way of exorcising pain.
Explorations of the poetry of: Anedda, Akhmatova, Biagini, Calandrone, Tsvetaeva, Lussu, Montale, Pasolini, Pavese, Pizarnik, Plath, Rilke, Rosselli, Sexton.
4 sessions a month (starting in November)
For information, fees and registration: 379 309 41 85 | biblioteca.corigliano@gmail.com
