Italian poetry: are we facing a new rebirth? My experience makes me answer, without a shadow of a doubt, with a convinced yes.
For some decades poetry in Italy has remained closed in almost esoteric circles. Critics and poets, perhaps frightened by the confrontation with the great twentieth-century poetic season, did everything they could to remove poetry from the people and keep it closed and protected.
And so alongside the greats of distant and near history, those poets who have become more intelligible to people survived in collective knowledge: just think of Merini with her much criticized television appearances.
But what does not make the elite end up making the strength of the network. In the English-speaking world, social networks have created a generation of new star-poets (Atticus, Rupi Kaur and many others) who have folded poetry to the needs of Instagram. In the Arab world, poetry has been relaunched to the mass thanks to some talent shows that make the winning poets millionaires. Whether it is good or bad, history will tell. But it remains a fact: that poetry is experiencing its own rebirth.
In Italy this has not yet happened in a complete way, or at least no “instapoet” has yet been clearly affirmed, but it is on Instagram itself that the desire of an entire generation to regain the poetry is throbbing. Hundreds, thousands of young and young people clog the hashtags with their own verses.
Of course, very often these are simple emotional outbursts without a basic poetic knowledge. But other times pearls are found.
Personally, during the quarantine I organized daily direct about poetry to make people read their poems. And I assure you that there have been many, many surprises. Many young and very young people have shown that they can translate the language of their soul into words.
And this gives very hope for the future of Italian poetry.
Of course, it is necessary that the criticism and closed circles of “academic” or “graduate” poets begin to seriously consider what is happening outside their enclosures. Also because those who are more in the art have a responsibility towards everyone else.
In short, we need a meeting between the past and the present, between the genuineness of the young and the experience of the older ones. And Italian poetry will return to shine.
