A picture, ‘Il Re Gallo’ (The King Rooster) by Stefani Pinci that I saw in Rome last Christmas in a private gallery (Galleria Arte Sempione) where her work and other artists’ artwork are on display, reminded me of Mediterranean colours, warmth and Carnival time. The style and
technique she uses is called ‘tassello di mosaico pittorico’, that is, pictorial mosaic pieces which are made in oil painting. It is an award-winning picture that she exhibited at the Expo in Dubai in 2020. Eventually I bought it and now it has a place of honour in my living room. I couldn’t help writing a poem about this great painting referring to some lines by Emily Dickinson and to some of the titles of Stefania Pinci’s pictures that I found poetic. So I wrote a first draft in Italian and English and then split the poem in two, one in English and the other in Italian, one is more or less the translation of the other. Here are the poems and the picture:
The King Rooster
Inspired by the artwork of Stefania Pinci and some poems by Emily Dickinson
There is another awakening
in a world of wonders,
on Sunday celebrations,
when waves of emotion
and the singing of colour
in another sunshine –
where frost and darkness have been –
explode.
The memories of the mind,
the surprise of the summer fragrance,
the golden sunset,
where colours are friends
and nature is alive.
The cicadas go crazy,
the King Rooster wins through
with colours of light
his head in flames
on a broken-up background
with fragments of sky
in the pearl moonlight and stagnant waters.
The monochrome of the uncertain landscape
when the figure misses the appointment
in a patchwork of still life against a black frame.
Il Re Gallo
Versi ispirati dall’opera di Stefania Pinci e da alcune poesie di Emily Dickinson
C’è un altro risveglio
in un mondo di meraviglie
la domenica della festa
quando onde di emozioni
e la sinfonia dei colori
in un’altra scena di sole –
dove un tempo erano il gelo e l’oscurità –
esplodono.
I ricordi della mente
lo stupore del profumo dell’estate
l’oro del tramonto
dove i colori sono amici
e la natura è viva.
Le cicale sulle colline impazziscono,
il Re Gallo trionfa con colori di luce
la testa in fiamme
su uno sfondo spezzato
di frammenti di cielo
in un chiaro di luna di perla
tra acque stagnanti.
Nell’incertezza del paesaggio monocromo
l’immagine manca l’appuntamento
in un patchwork di natura morta contro uno sfondo nero.
During half term we met our sons, daughter in law and granddaughter Violetta in Nottingham. It was cold and grey but we had a good time in a cosy Airbnb. Violetta had great fun in a playground with four slides, she had a go on all of them. She chased a black cat too that she called ‘catto’ combining Italian ‘gatto’ and cat. She can also count until seven mixing Italian and English numbers. We had fun reading Peppa Pig stories from booklets I found at a charity shop. We visited Wollaton Hall which has displays of stuffed animals and an original skeleton of a T-Rex, precious minerals and there were also deer in the park. Violetta enjoyed everything, especially the animals, both stuffed and real. At the bookshop I managed to find something to buy, two booklets for a few pounds, one about old rhymes such as Butcher, Baker and Candlestick Maker, the other one is titled ‘Cowslip, or Cautionary Stories in Verse’ (1811). They are distressing stories about unruly children and how they are ‘rightly’ punished and beaten. A different attitude from today.
https://thehighwindowpress.com/category/special-feature/
For Valentine’s Day I prepared little presents for family and friends, homemade soap hearts made by my friend Vittoria (Vittoria Artisan Soap: https://www.instagram.com/artisansoaps2022/) and cards made by the students at my school. I will bring some of them to Italy too for my mum and her friends, as for me Valentine’s Day is not just for lovers but also for all the people you love.
On the motorway to Nottingham, we stopped for the usual toilet break and cappuccino. I was shocked by the prices, £ 3.65 for a cappuccino and a few days before I had paid £ 3 for a tea in a pub in Twickenham. Unbelievable! In Italy the average price for a cappuccino (which is much much better than any Costa or Caffe Nero hot drink) is € 1.50 and an espresso is € 1.00. another shocking discovery is how much care homes charge in the UK. A friend of mine has just found a good care home for her elderly mother in Rome. She pays € 1,800 per month. In the UK it is £ 1,800 per week. I wonder what they do with so much money. Do they pay high wages to carer workers or have high renting fees? I doubt it.
I was a bit disappointed that as a TA I was not allowed to strike. Apparently, most of the TAs that the NEU contacted about the teachers’ strike didn’t reply so they did not reach the threshold (50%) that allowed them to join the strike action. As I needed some clarifications about my rights and role, I decided to join NEU. Nobody was on strike at my school anyway.
I had a few successes in my writing too. besides publishing reviews, one of my academic articles, 'An Intertextual Dialogue between Witnessing and Storytelling' on The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, was published in Margaret Atwood Studies, the journal of Margaret Atwood Society (MAS), volume 16 January 2023. Here is the link:
https://english.sxu.edu/sites/atwood/journal/index.php/masj
Unfortunately, you cannot access it if you are not a member of MAS. However, you can download the article from my website here:
http://www.carlascaranod.co.uk/?Examples_Of_My_Work
Some of my poems have been published or will be published soon:
‘Collage Machine’, https://www.spillingcocoa.com/collage-machine-by-carla-scarano-dantonio/ (Spilling Cocoa).
‘Holiday in the Alps, 1970’, in D&W newsletter (06/02/2023).
‘After the dream’, ‘Broken thread’ and ‘Snow haiku’ have been accepted for the next issue of Bezine, Beatitudes section.
‘Tomorrow’, ‘Flowering Menopause’ and some haiku on insects and flowers have been accepted for the next issue of Orbis (203).
‘The light changing’ and ‘Speaking food’ will be out with the summer issue of The High Window.
My sequence ‘Valentina’ from Workwear will be included in Cry Freedom, a Poetry Performance anthology.
My proposal for a paper on Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, ‘Elaine Risley’s visual art: a reversed ekphrasis that challenges patriarchal narratives’, has been accepted for the Accute conference at York University in Toronto. I am so thrilled that I will finally have the opportunity to go back to Canada in May! I will attend the conference, present my work, maybe have time to visit Toronto and I will also spend two nights in Calgary to meet my Canadian friends, Josephine, Crystal and Pam. I am sure I will have a wonderful time and I will enjoy every bit of it.
At Nottingham we also watched Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio on Netflix. The characters depicted as marionettes were enchanting and the story, though different from the original by Collodi, was captivating. It was centred on the relationship between the rebelling Pinocchio and his father Geppetto. They look for each other in a quest that is a personal search for identity and for love. The ending is moving with a striking conclusion: ‘What happen, happens. And then we are gone’.
February is also the month when Sanremo Music Festival happens. The Italian President Sergio Mattarella was present too on the first night. I didn’t have a favourite song this time, but my favourite part was the outfits. I especially liked Chiara Ferragni’s dresses. She was co-host with Amadeus and gave a remarkable speech about how women should believe in themselves and never feel diminished. Her dresses by Dior, Armani and Schiaparelli reflected this thought with written messages such as ‘sentiti libera’ (feel free) and a necklace with the shape of a uterus. Other important speeches were delivered during the festival by Paola Egonu, an Italian volleyball champion, Pegah Moshir Pour, an Iranian activist, together with Drusilla Foer. Marco Mengoni won the song contest with ‘Due Vite’, here is the link to the video clip:
and here is the English translation:
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/due-vite-two-lifes.html
The show was surprisingly politically oriented with episodes such as Fedez ripping the photo of Galeazzo Bignami, the undersecretary at the infrastructure ministry, who was wearing a Nazi armband. The festival had sexual undertones too. The rapper Rosa Chemical kissed Fedez on the mouth and simulated a sexual act. The PM Giorgia Meloni was infuriated.
I was flabbergasted by the work of Cy Twombly. His magnificent heart and apparently messy artwork are mesmerising and thought-provoking. I think I will copy him. Here is a link to an interesting article:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-art-world/cy-twombly-the-content-painter
Daffodils are blooming everywhere. I love their resilience in whatever weather and their colours that range from pale yellow to orange. Better days are coming, despite wars, killings and calamities there is still hope.
