slowforwardoggi, 15 ottobre / today, october 15th : an online meeting about a “wunderkammer” of contemporary italian poetry
https://www.casaitaliananyu.org/events/italian-poets-in-wonderland/
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
11:00 am – 1:00 pm (New York) // 17:00 – 19:00 (Italy)
as a part of
Settimana della Lingua Italiana nel Mondo
in collaboration with
Italian Cultural Institute in New York
Zoom Webinar
Italian Poets in Wonderland
Presenting the Digital Wunderkammer of Contemporary Italian Poetry
On Zoom
(register here)
Featuring:
Stefano Albertini, NYU
Luigi Ballerini, UCLA Emeritus
Fabrizio Bondi, Suor Orsola Benincasa University, Naples
Valerio Lo Bello, NetSeven
With the participation of:
Cecilia Bello, Università di Roma La Sapienza
Stefano Colangelo, University of Bologna
Ugo Perolino, University of Chieti
Vincenzo Frungillo, poet
Gianluca Rizzo, Colby College
Beppe Cavatorta, University of Arizona
In ENGLISH and ITALIAN:
https://www.casaitaliananyu.org/events/italian-poets-in-wonderland/
What if Italian poets were like those animals that, from a distance, seem like flies? Almost invisible at first glance, yet impossible to ignore once you find yourself in the same room with them. From this thought—and from a quotation by Jorge Luis Borges in The Analytical Language of John Wilkins—comes Itpoetry.org, the first digital platform dedicated to contemporary Italian poetry. The site is inspired by the bilingual anthology Those Who from Afar Look Like Flies, edited by Luigi Ballerini and Beppe Cavatorta, whose second volume will be released in November.
On this platform, a variety of voices—academic and beyond—connect online to discuss contemporary poets. The project was launched under the auspices of Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at New York University, on the initiative of Luigi Ballerini and Fabrizio Bondi. Itpoetry.org was developed by the NetSeven studio in Pisa, which translated the structure of Flies into an interactive online experience, giving artistic form and digital animation to the often acrobatic and ironic ideas of Ballerini (UCLA emeritus) and Bondi (Suor Orsola Benincasa University, Naples).
The long flight of the “flies,” carried weightlessly by digital bits, aims to connect not only the two sides of the Atlantic but also the languages of new media with those of poetry—reaching unexpected and diverse audiences. All this stems from the belief that poetry, with its non-instrumental and therefore non-aggressive logic, “takes no prisoners.” Poetry can thus become a vehicle for peace; and it is our ongoing task to translate it—to interpret it, embody it, and carry it forward.
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Michele Sorice
