“SCIAME” (SWARM)
A SPOKEN WORD SHOW ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Directed and performed by poets Giorgia Monti and Serena Piccoli (Lestordite), with live music by Fabio Strada, successfully debuted on January 11th 2019 at Almo Cultural Centre in Piumazzo, Castelfranco Emilia (Modena, Italy). Sections from Sciame were also read in some public schools in Venice in February, thanks to Teacher and Poet Lucia Guidorizzi. The last theatre performance was in Forlì on April 6th in a crowded hall in the city centre, Sala Santa Caterina, as part of the City Cultural Program “Lotto marzo” against gender violence.
Last year the two friends – poets Serena Piccoli and Giorgia Monti (Lestordite Cultural Association) made an international call for poems, short plays and short stories focused on violence against women to raise awareness on this horrible plague. They anonymously received writings from all over the world and then made the selection (please find the whole list of authors below).
Contributors include internationally acclaimed poets with their literary works that, in some cases, show habits and landscapes of their nations (a young girl on her first day of menstruation in India, the long history of colonialism and racism in Ghana, just to name a few).
All the selected texts – including a poem and a short story by Giorgia Monti, and a short play by Serena Piccoli – are part of the show and of the upcoming Sciame anthology published by Cicorivolta Press (Italy).
The texts have been translated into Italian from English by Serena Piccoli, from Romanian by Professor Stefan Damian and from Spanish by Marco Paganelli. All pieces are performed in Italian, so that the audience can understand them, except for Adeena Karasick’s poem (in order to give a real sense of musicality and puns of the text). All poems will be published in their original language along with the Italian translation for poems in other languages, again for better reading comprehension.
“Giorgia Monti and Serena Piccoli deliver impressive and precise work, the poems themselves creating a path to be walked on together with the audience, in a relentless crescendo. Like a spiral where the only way forward is downwards, keeping performers and audiences constantly engaged in creating ourselves while keeping a crystal clear vision. This is how this shared listening gives us back not only the human abomination but also the beauty of being women (and men). This process also brings to the fore some essential behaviors of those who do not bow their heads as well as the importance of some sorrows that are not silent. Fabio Strada’s live music makes this possible, with his metaphysical and meditative accordion amplifying the meaning of words and their significance. The show leaves traces, we go home less helpless and with one more reason to get to know humans through poetry.” Says acclaimed poet and performer Martina Campi who attended Sciame in Forlì on April 6th .
“Raising awareness to end violence is about changing people’s hearts and minds—in governments, civil society organizations and in the general public. And we keep doing it through Poetry and spoken word shows.” Say Serena and Giorgia, the 2 friends who founded and still direct Lestordite, a non profit cultural association based in Forlì (Italy). The Association aims to spread Poetry through performances, theatre shows, readings, festivals, workshops and other events. It also contributes to the fight against discrimination, hate and violence through cultural projects involving Poetry and Drama. Giorgia (both a poet and a short-story writer) and Serena (poet and playwright) are invited to perform their poems and those of other Italian poets all over the country in squares, city halls, cafés, theatres, schools, festivals and many other venues, both individually and together. They are also the founders and directors of the acclaimed International Poetry and Sister Arts Festival in Forlì and Cesena, Italy, which hosts artists from all over the world: dancers, painters, musicians, writers, photographers, performers and of course, poets!
Serena and Giorgia would like to thank all the authors selected for inclusion in Sciame.
Here’s the list of all the authors who have shared their literary works for the show and the upcoming anthology:
Adeena Karasick – USA
Maria Laura Valente – Italy
Ani Bradea – Romania
Ana Arzoumanian – Argentina
Kokuu Andy McLellan – UK
Eleonora Urizio – Italy
Stefan Damian – Romania
Kala Ramesh – India
Paolo Polvani – Italy
Enrico Gregori – Italy
Fabia Ghenzovich – Italy
Marta Chocilowska Poland
Celestine Nudanu – Ghana
Lucia Guidorizzi – Italy
Iliyana Stoyanova – UK\Bulgaria
Nikolay Grankin – Russia
Nana Amma Adomaa Abrefa – Ghana
Adjei Agyei-Baah – Ghana
Giorgia Monti – Italy
Serena Piccoli – Italy
—
Sciame poster photo is by Silvia Tiso.
Sciame pictures were taken during the 2 shows in Piumazzo and Forlì by Maurizio Tonelli and Velia Leporati.
—
We would like to share the following 3 poems from Sciame:
To The Widow – Adjei Agyei-Baah (Ghana)
You’re the sleepless duck who rests on one leg
Keeps vigil over a silent compound
And waits upon the ancestral spirits
To come for the last morsel of the day
You are the abandoned lover
Who plies the memory lane in acidic tears
Walking the footpath that closes in with weeds
And mulls over multiple mouths meowing to be muted
Your resting place is a bed of bamboo
Denied of warmth by the icy hands of fate
Its discomfort turning you into an early morn bird
That wakes to catch no worm
You are the quivering lamb at the kangaroo court
Around you the predatory pride prowl
The ripe pawpaw by the roadside
That the wayfarer chances upon with joy
You whom tradition mocks with hyena’s laughter:
The wicked witch who killed the breadwinner
And forced to take an oath of innocence
By gulping down bath water from your husband’s corpse
But you are now the desert cactus
Who once nursed your seeds in the hooves of the passing caravan
And prayed for the rains to water them anywhere they fell
For now your children have returned through the stormy weathers
With a tearful joy for your crackled lips
—
(no title) – Marta Chocilowska (Poland)
a black eye
of the bar owner’s wife
spilled coffee
—
Calling a father a father – Giorgia Monti (Italy)
Chàrcoal
the smell of your hands.
I was better
under the moon.
Rock crystal
ossified by breath.
In the shock
I tested escape routes
on your back.
Brittle spaces.
With a whistle in my ears
-expanded- silence entered.
While waiting
I was getting ready for fear
as for a grace.
A woman’s pale blue shadow
beyond the door
she’d never open.
You were proud.
You blew empty air
on my hair.
That beard’s needle
just that offénse.
Father, how can you
sting a rose?
https://www.facebook.com/SerenaPiccoliAutrice/videos/306895693575056/?t=0
Serena Piccoli performing Adeena Karasick’s “House of the rising S[o]ns”
—
For more info: https://associazionelestor.wixsite.com/lestordite/english
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LESTORDITE/?ref=page_internal
