Franca Mancinelli was born in Fano, Italy, in 1981. Widely considered to be one of the most significant Italian poets, she has been awarded several national prizes. Four of her books have appeared in English in John Taylor’s translations: The Little Book of Passage, At an Hour’s Sleep from Here, The Butterfly Cemetery: Selected Prose 2008-2021 (all published by The Bitter Oleander Press), and All the Eyes that I Have Opened (Black Square Editions). Her writing, which regularly appears in English-language poetry journals, is also featured in the University of Oxford project “Non solo muse: panorama della poesia italiana dal 1970 a oggi,” edited by Adele Bardazzi and Roberto Binetti, as well as in Europe in Poems: The Versopolis Anthology, selected and edited by Patrick McGuinness (Arc Publications-Beletrina Academic Press, 2020).
John Taylor is an American writer, critic, and translator who lives in France. Among his many translations of Italian, Modern Greek, and French poetry are books by Philippe Jaccottet, Pascal Quignard, Pierre Chappuis, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, José-Flore Tappy, Charline Lambert, Béatrice Douvre, Pierre Voélin, Georges Perros, Elias Papadimitrakopoulos, Veroniki Dalakoura, Lorenzo Calogero, and Alfredo de Palchi. He is the author of several volumes of short prose and poetry, most recently Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees (The Bitter Oleander Press), A Notebook of Clouds & A Notebook of Ridges (The Fortnightly Review Press), which is a “double book” co-authored with the Swiss poet Pierre Chappuis, and What Comes from the Night (Coyote Arts Press).
Four Poems by Franca Mancinelli
è una riva d’alghe e conchiglie rotte.
Toccate terra a ogni passo.
Superstiti, bevete il mare.
L’amore torna a voi onda per onda
–ripete ogni linea sulla sabbia.
it is a shore of seaweed and broken shells.
With each step you survivors
reach land, drink the sea.
Love comes back to you wave by wave
—repeats every line on the sand.
*
veniamo al mondo quando c’è tempesta
come gabbiani in cerca di cibo.
Con il sereno puoi leggerci – punti
fermi sulla lingua dell’infinito.
we come into the world when it’s stormy
like seagulls looking for food.
With clear skies you can read us—points
set down on the tongue of infinity.
*
spazio di notte viva
carne sotto una benda
tolta prima del tempo. La testa
a fondo nel cuscino come un chiodo.
a space of live night
flesh under a bandage
removed too early. The head
deep in the pillow like a nail.
*
a gambe congiunte
dormo – le membra riunite
come uno stormo a sera
dentro la stessa chioma.
my legs joined
I sleep—limbs reunited
like a flock in the evening
in the same leafy tree.
Poetry in this post published with the permission of
© Franca Mancinelli
© translated from the Italian by John Taylor
Photo of Franca Mancinelli: photo credit: Chiara De Luca
Photo of John Taylor: photo credit: Françoise Daviet-Taylor