Edited by Luca Paci
'The sheer range of this collection only goes to show how thriving the Italian contemporary poetry scene is. It's a vital window into the soul of our neighbours in this post-Brexit Europe; a testament to Luca Paci, the essential work of translators, and the continued efforts of publishers like Parthian.' – Roberto Pastore, Poetry Wales
‘A rich, varied and timely collection. So little Italian poetry is ever translated and, even then, usually only the very familiar big-guns. Throughout this enjoyable anthology I relished not just the wealth of the Italian, but also the insensible (to me) sounds of so much dialect. Reading Tempo, it felt not like a collection of Italian poetry but of Mediterranean tongues. Each time I turned the page, there was something unexpected: not just the obviously different geometry of the lay-outs and languages, but also the subject matter – political verse, love poems, spiritual paradoxes, threnodies. With exquisite translations, this volume felt constantly inventive but also strangely restful.’ – Tobias Jones
"Paci has done a great service: Tempo will be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of anglophones whose knowledge of Italian poetry has not been updated beyond Ungaretti, Montale, Pasolini, and other giants of the last century." World Literature Today
"...Tempo is full of music of all sorts, and is a wonderful door into a different literary world from the one I mostly inhabit. These are excursions I intend to keep making, poets whose work I hope to find more of and enjoy." Tears in the Fence
"These are poems that criticise the language of power and reach for the people at the margin of the new global economy (women, the disabled, transgender people, migrants) and explore, with bold originality, the experience of separation and exclusion... reading through this anthology has been an immensely enjoyable, stimulating experience." Caroline Maldonado, The High Window
Contemporary Italian poetry offers an extraordinary array of styles, voices, approaches, ways of looking at the world and ways of representing it. This anthology tries to capture the multiplicity of these voices with its selection of the most representative poets from different backgrounds: academics, working-class writers, editors, journalists, performers, travellers and professional translators. The reader will discover a diverse poetry dealing with the topical concerns of identity, sex, politics, migration and race.
The poets who appear are:
Antonella Anedda, Franco Buffoni, Dome Bulfaro, Maria Grazia Calandrone, Chandra Livia Candiani, Milo De Angelis, Matteo Fantuzzi, Fabio Franzin, Marco Giovenale, Mariangela Gualtieri, Andrea Inglese, Rosaria Lo Russo, Valerio Magrelli, Guido Mazzoni, Umberto Piersanti, Laura Pugno, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, Ida Travi, Luigi Trucillo, Patrizia Valduga, Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto and Lello Voce.
Translated by: Bhikkhu Abhinando, Craig Arnold, Johanna Bishop, Jacob S. D. Blakesley, Geoffrey Brock, Patrizio Ceccagnoli, Martin Corless-Smith, Linh Dinh, Moira Egan, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, Patricio Ferrari, Lara Ferrini, Marco Giovenale, Tommaso Jacopo Gorla, Susanna Maggioni, Jamie McKendrick, Anthony Molino, Dylan J. Montanari, Matthew F. Rusnak, Jennifer Scappettone, James Schwarten, Olivia E. Sears, Susan Stewart, Serena Todesco, Cristina Viti, Justin Vitiello, William Wall and Alex Wilk.
Luca Paci was born in Novara, north Italy in 1970. Paci is currently the Co-Director of the Italian Cultural Centre Wales, the Italian Film Festival Cardiff and part of the executive board of Wales PEN Cymru. For the past five years he has been teaching Italian Studies at Swansea and Cardiff University. Paci is a translingual poet, editor and translator into English, Welsh and Italian. He has published a number of essays, articles and poems in English and Italian. Among his translations are La Ragazza Carla/A Girl Named Carla by Elio Pagliarani (Troubadour, 2006) and Bondo by Menna Elfyn (Ludo, 2021)