(June 14, 2016) “Lightness” has always been favoured among popular Italian writers: Guido Cavalcanti’s Spiritelli, Ariosto’s vessels of sanity on the moon’s surface, Calvino’s city and Daniele Del Guidice’s flights accompanied by ghosts and moonlights. These are the things that Chicca Gagliardo has tended her ear towards during her writing of “Poeta dell’aria” (Poet of air). June 15 at 19:00, an encounter with the author is scheduled, moderated by Francesca Bravi (in Italian and German) at the Italian Cultural Institute of Hamburg who organised the event in collaboration with a romance studies seminar at the Cau University of Kiel. Writer, journalist and curator of the site “Ho un libro in testa” (I am thinking of a book), Chicca Gagliardo is first of all an attentive observer of lightness in all its forms. “The poet of air” is the sum of all her thoughts in the form of a short story, an invitation to fly, a guide to a journey through poetry and fantasy. The protagonist of the novel is the reader to whom the poet speaks to. We are the ones who are taught how to fly: young and inexperienced, we don’t know how to live ‘lightly’ nor how to find ‘beauty’ in our lives. Day after day we learn something, how to live life and how to change its course, how to let go and grasp opportunities, how to take shelter from a storm and how to not succumb to daily anxieties. The novel is made up of 33 chapters, 33 intense daily lessons but in the end, if we pay attention the world will look like a better place. It is rare for a young person in the literary landscape to be known abroad as well. The “leggìIO” project of the Italian section of the romance studies seminar of Cau University of Kiel encourages young Italian authors and their German readers to meet. In light of the event on June 15, 150 copies of a limited edition containing an excerpt in Italian and German was released. (PO/Red)
