MIGRATIONS, Pasquale Verdicchio

MIGRATIONS 

 

Travel is long

across seas and rivers

over mountains and trails;

we encounter and exchange stories

and discover our selves in each other’s lives.

This is the confluence of history

where migration brings us

to thresholds where we can only

simply be what we are.

The ethnicities that flow through our veins

veiled by green screen realities,

carded legitimacy of residence

retractable revocable rescindable

with an ill legal erasure of equanimity.

 

Identity is what we mirror

of others; not a reflection,

just a matter of

an open gift of meeting.

 

 

Pasquale Verdicchio is a Canadian poet, critic and translator who has made important contributions to the whole discourse on ethnic minority writing and culture.

Born in Naples, Italy, in 1954, he moved with his family to Canada and grew up in Vancouver, B.C. His first degree is from the University of Victoria, his M.A. from the University of Alberta and his Ph.D. from the University of California. He has been teaching in California for a number of years in the areas of Italian, film and creative writing.

Among Verdicchio’s many books his works of poetry are significant for their originality with language and structure. They include: Moving Landscape (1985), Ipsissima Verba (1986), Nomadic Trajectory (1990), Approaches to Absence (1994) and The House is Past (2000). His most important critical work is Devils in Paradise: Writing on Post-Emigrant Culture (1997), Bound by Distance: Rethinking Nationalism Through the Italian Diaspora (1997), The Southern Question (1995) and translation of Gramsci.

He has also translated many Italian writers into English.

• Bibliography of Works by Pasquale Verdicchio
• Lightzoo

 

 

Featured image: painting by Giacomo Cuttone http://www.cuttone.altervista.org/gall/completa.html