Mar. 4 – He was born in Sardinia, but has lived for more than twenty years between Europe and North America. Today he lives in Montreal, Canada. Alberto Mario Delogou is an agronomist, an economist, a journalist, an actor and a writer. And on Thursday, March 12 at 6:30pm – he’ll be at the Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal (1200, Avenue du Dr. Penfield) to present his multilingual book: “Ballate per seppellire un fucile.” The poems in the book took a decade to write, and each one was first conceived in one of the four languages that the author speaks (Sardo, Italian, French and English) and then transposed in the other languages. “Ballate per seppellire un fucile” are poems to recite and sing, stories of war, oppression and liberation, of hunger for bread and peace, of misunderstood identities, uprooting and privileges, and heroes without rifles. The book includes: the poem “Se sapessi,” winner of Gramsci 2006 Award for Sardinian poetry; the secular prayer “Ballata per seppellire un fucile”; the stark and poignant “Le sue mani che guarivano,” the subtle “Servi, la tecnologica Inchinatevi,” and the aristocratic “Destini di culla.” “Reading his texts – and this collection in particular – I didn’t have the feeling of being in front of something that had alread been ‘said’ a hundred times, or something dull. Delogou’s texts aren’t dictated by convenience or boredom, but rather by his will to live and to put Sardinia at the center of the world, without being blinded by pride, but rather always chasing lucidity: a Sardinian finds the center of the world only when he can go beyond himself. This is where the poems come from,” writes the author Alessandro De Roma in his introduction to the book. The Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal promotes the event with the patronage of the European Project Performation: La Gente è il Territorio (www.performigrations.eu), a cultural project funded under the Culture Programme of the European Union.
