And here it comes the second.
Should I say the first?
It depends.
Am I referring to the moment I wrote the poems or to the moment I got to publish them?
The majority of these poems have been written before those in La Mujer in-visible, my first published book.
But I always discarded them. Because they were sad. Because they were about love. And then...I had enough to make a book. However, this is not what I did.
I kept them. And when the opportunity of publication came for the first time...I kept on discarding them.
Then, the pandemic started and I decided to keep myself busy with several indoor activities. The publication of the first book gave me the push to try to get some other poems out. So one of the things I did during the lockdowns was fixing Lovefracking to participate in a poetry contest. The contest required writing in Italian. So I translated some of the poems originally wrote in other languages ( you know by now that I write in different languages), I took away some, I add some others...and the actual Lovefracking was there.
Did I win the contest? No.
But the publishing house, Edizioni Montag, who organized the contest contacted me with the offer of publishing the manuscript anyway. I was surprised and happy and, of course, I said yes.
Now that the book was becoming a real book, I took the chance to thank the Argentinian poet Jorge Aulicino and I dedicated the book to him.
We met years ago, before La Mujer in-visible was even a book, through a common friend. I was looking for someone who could read my poems and tell me if they were poetry. In a bar, with a café con leche and a medialuna in front, he told me: "They are publishable, but if you want, I can help you polishing them." For some months I went to his office, once a week, and we spoke about poetry, about my poetry, about literature, about work, about people. What astonished me was that every critic he had on my writing was illuminating. I felt some stuff was out of place with the composition we were revising, but he could always spot what it was.
And so we polished. And polished. And polished. And La Mujer in-visible was taking shape. But for me, that was something more. It was the final step towards emancipating myself from the taboo of poetry and doing my "coming out".
This is why I especially thank Jorge.
So, the first book is dedicated to the person who made me take the first emancipating step, and the second to the person, Jorge, who made me take the final step.
A description of Lovefracking can be found here, where you can also buy a copy.
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