Words of the Sea. 2000

“Parole di mare” offers in these evenings not only a sequence of poetry readings, but a nucleus of a broader project of intercultural exchanges. For this reason we thought of the sea, this sea that divides us and unites us at the same time, as the most suitable symbol for an encounter that enhances diversity, in an era in which it is threatened by globalization, but which simultaneously enhances the desire to know the other, the different from oneself. Therefore these international meetings propose different languages, forms of expression and tools, such as words, music and images. In fact, it seems to us that artistic languages ​​are irreducible to the banalization and flattening that would make the world an enormous chain of hypermarkets, where the same goods are on sale, perhaps with different labels, from London to Sydney, from Beijing to Buenos Aires, from Tunis to San Francisco. It is in the very nature of the arts to search for the right word, the right agreement, the right chromatic shade, which serve to express that sensation, that feeling and only that. We want to hope that the very nature of the arts is the antidote to the plague of languages ​​that reduces them to skeletons, useless for formulating complex and articulated thoughts; but also the antidote to "municipal viscerality", to that mixture of selfishness and resentment which gives rise, in the north as in the south of the world, to new hotbeds of conflict, racial hatred and religious persecution. The project is therefore a meeting between different people, but also between a real place and a utopia, so that poetry, like a magnificent rainy day, can contribute to reducing the distance between heaven and earth. But above all it is the journey of imagination and desire, the landing not as an end but as the beginning of a new journey, which modern sailors perhaps no longer make on the water, but in the ether, to continue to meet again. And the setting for these international meetings could only be Amalfi, which had known the mysterious paths of gold since the Middle Ages, and spread the compass and other instruments resulting from the knowledge of civilizations very distant from each other, allowing the birth of new, richer and freer men. From North Africa, from the Near East, from the tormented shore of the Adriatic, from Sardinia, from England and from the Americas, eighteen poets arrive in the port of Amalfi, who will give life with their bodies and with their voices, to the routes of the word, which has roots in the dawn of human adventure and reaches out towards the unknown domains of the future. They are welcomed by a landscape in which the intertwining of nature and culture has given rise to one of the most enchanting results, a place in which the word paradise is not at all excessive.

Program

21/22/23 July 2000 Cloister of Paradise and Church of the Crucifix Amalfi Program: 21 July 2000 at 8.30 pm "Multimedia poetic itineraries" at 9.30 pm Inauguration of "Parole di Mare. International poetry meetings". Presentation of initiatives for the "Salvatore Quasimodo Centenary". Reading: Jorge Enrique Adoum (Ecuador) Mohammed Bennis (Morocco) Agneta Falk (England) John Giorno (USA) Miroslav Kosuta (Slovenia) Izet Sarajlic (Bosnia) July 22, 2000 8.30 pm “Multimedia poetic paths” 9.30 pm Reading: Ira Cohen (USA) Louis-Philippe Dalembert (Haiti) Lawrence Ferlinghetti (USA) Amal Al Juburi (Iraq) Alberto Masala with Fabiola Ledda (Sardinia/Italy) Martin Matz (USA) July 23, 2000 8.30 pm “Multimedia poetic paths” 9.30 pm Reading: Adonis (Syria/Lebanon) Giancarlo Cavallo (Italy) Sinan Gudzevic (Croatia/Serbia) Jack Hirschman (USA) Amjad Nasser (Jordan) Janine Pommy Vega (USA) Musicians: Maurizio Carbone (percussion), Gaspare Di Lieto (piano), Nando Gandolfi (traditional wind instruments), Massimo Mollo (guitars and plectrums), Andrea Sensale (guitars).

Information

Municipality of Amalfi Campania Region Province of Salerno UNESCO Autonomous Tourist and Tourism Company E.P.T. Chamber of Commerce Mountain Community Centenary Salvatore Quasimodo