Italian poetry: are we facing a new rebirth? My experience he makes me answer, without a shadow of a doubt, with a convinced yes.
For some decades poetry in Italy remained closed in almost esoteric circles. Critics and poets, perhaps frightened by the confrontation with the great twentieth-century poetic season, have done everything they could to keep poetry away from the people and keep it closed and protected.
And so those poets who have made themselves more intelligible to people survived in collective knowledge, alongside the greats of far and near history: just think of Merini with her much criticized television appearances.
But what the elite does not do ends up making the strength of the network. In the English-speaking world, social networks have created a generation of new poet-stars (Atticus, Rupi Kaur and many others) who have bent poetry to the needs of Instagram. In the Arab world, poetry has been revived to the masses thanks to some talent shows that make the winning poets millionaires. Whether it's good or bad, history will tell. But it remains that it is a fact: that poetry is experiencing its own rebirth.
In Italy this has not yet fully happened, or at least no “instapoet” has clearly established itself yet, but it is on Instagram itself that the desire of an entire generation to regain possession of poetry pulsates. Hundreds, thousands of young and very young people clog hashtags with their verses.
Of course, very often these are simple emotional outbursts without basic poetic knowledge. But other times you will find pearls.
Personally during the quarantine I organized daily poetry direct to make people read their poems. And I assure you that there have been many, many surprises. Many young people and very young people have shown that they know how to translate the language of their soul into words.
And this bodes very well 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 into 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 shine again.
