The initiative promoted by the Municipality of Vicenza - Department of Growth - and by the Gallerie d'Italia - Palazzo Leoni Montanari, the cultural headquarters and museum of Intesa Sanpaolo in Vicenza, in collaboration with the TheArtsBox association, the Department of Comparative Linguistic and Cultural Studies of Ca' Foscari and the VicenzaJazz Festival, is directed by Marco Fazzini.
Poetry Vicenza can also count on the support of eight city associations (Spazio6, Mirror, Spazio Der Ruf-Le Cinigie, Hands, Laboratorio09, Teatro Spazio Bixio, TheArtsBox and Galla Caffè) and four higher education institutions in the city.
The festival will be hosted in the most significant and fascinating places in Vicenza (Olympic Theater, Palazzo Chiericati, Gallerie d'Italia - Palazzo Leoni Montanari) and in the various spaces of the associations, all located in the historic centre, spaces now ready to welcome 24 poets from 10 countries.
Poetry Vicenza will present two significant periods full of events: the one straddling March 21, World Poetry Day, and the first fifteen days of May, a period in which poetry will also cross jazz music, thanks to the collaboration with VicenzaJazz. The month of April will instead be dedicated to debates, round tables on poetry, meetings with small and medium-sized poetry publishers, printers of poetry books with movable type, and professionals of art books now known throughout Europe: Tallone, Mardesteig, Passerini, Antiga, Amos, Book, etc. Poetry Vicenza thus transforms itself from a poetry review into a real festival, involving various city partners in a unique initiative in Italy.
The guest poets for 2017 will share their vision of the world and of life, reciting some of their most famous and significant poems, recounting their experiences and interacting with the public and young people. Each appointment will also be a musical event, precisely because the Festival aims to underline the musicality and orality of poetry, which has been born and developed with and in music since its origins. The musicians, also representatives of various nations, will offer counterpoints, accompaniments and original comments to the poetic texts.
The deputy mayor and councilor for growth of the Municipality of Vicenza, Jacopo Bulgarini d'Elci:
“Investing in poetry is a political choice: an antidote to the dramatic and brutal simplification of reality, and of language, which we are witnessing. In times of haste, efficiency, ignorance claimed as a value, suspicion of all authority and wisdom, in this time there is a need for poetry more than ever. We need his ability to create gaps, to force us to step aside to look from another perspective, his drive to re-consecrate language, his claim to a claimed and subtracted time and energy. Building opportunities for poetry is equivalent to planting a seed, and taking care of it: in each of us, and in the soil of the community".
The coordinator of the Gallerie d'Italia – Palazzo Leoni Montanari, Elena Milan:
“The Gallerie d'Italia in Vicenza are an open space for the promotion of culture, art and also contemporary poetry through the poetry and music festival Poetry Vicenza, which brings the voices of the most important Italian and foreign poets to the city. Let's give continuity to this initiative that once again sees us alongside the municipal administration to give our contribution to the cultural life of the city, proposing a wide-ranging festival that allows the approach to an expressive genre often considered distant and indecipherable but which we believe there is, today, a latent and widespread need, like a chink in the dark”.
The artistic director of the Poetry Vicenza review, Marco Fazzini: “The poetry and music festival Poetry Vicenza, in its third edition, renews the desire to open the borders to a variety of both languages and cultures. In about two months of events we host, in the city of Palladio, poets, musicians, poet-songwriters, artists, gallery owners, printers, publishers, actors, critics and translators for a particular reading of our contemporaneity. With depth of writing and intellectual commitment, and through a not inconsiderable dose of creativity, these guests show us that one cannot live clouded either by easy consumerism or by certain mechanisms of common 'doing'. Poetic 'doing' is something else, even if it is often blamed for being out of fashion, or against the tide: putting it "on stage" is our challenge, a challenge consumed in a field, the literary one, which can not only produce culture, but sometimes also the economic growth of a territory. In preparing this Festival, the supporters, in concert with the organizers, had the primary intention of inviting plural voices from all over the globe, involving various city cultural associations, and four Higher Institutes so that the entire city is the scene of a common project : that of donating poetry free of charge in exclusive architectural and artistic places, and sharing it with the new generations in the hope, if not in the certainty, that poets, audiences, and operators will be able to draw furore from the recesses of an obscured era like that present a handful of shiny nuggets, and thus embellish the path for all of us for the rest of the year”.
After a prologue with a reading by the poet Giovanni Fontana for the inauguration of the artist's book exhibition at the Galleria Peccolo in Livorno, the 2017 edition of Poetry Vicenza will kick off on Tuesday 21 March at 18 pm, at the Gallerie d'Italia – Palazzo Leoni Montanari, precisely on the occasion of World Poetry Day, with the recital Love Translator, made up of readings and testimonies by Anna Maria Carpi, Fabio Scotto, Bianca Tarozzi, Rino Cortiana, Andrea Molesini, with musical accompaniment by Paolo Birro.
Among the most awaited appointments of the first block of events we mention the one with two English-speaking poets very distant from each other, the English Jeffrey Wainwright and the Caribbean Lasana Sekou (Palazzo Chiericati, Saturday 1 April at 18.00) accompanied by the music of Massimo Tuzza (percussions) and Filippo Rinaldi (bass), and that of two songwriter poets, the American Eric Andersen and the Italian Michele Gazich, who will be the protagonists of a meeting curated by Marco Fazzini (Gallerie d'Italia - Palazzo Leoni Montanari, Sunday April 2 at 18pm). But these will not be the only predominantly musical performances: the guitarist and singer-songwriter Sylvie Genovese will perform in a performance of music and poetry, entitled Migrant strings, on original songs by Brassens, Leon Gieco and Atahualpa Yupanqui, scheduled at Der Ruf on Friday 31st March, at 21.
In the final block of the festival, that of May, two important female voices, such as the Romanian Marta Petreu and the Scottish Christine De Luca will take turns reading their poems, accompanied by the music of Ilaria Fantin and Irene Brigitte (Gallerie d'Italia - Palazzo Leoni Montanari, Friday 12 May, at 18 pm). And, still in May, on the 13th and 14th, still a lot of poetry with Nico Naldini, Guy Goffette, Lello Voce and Marta y Micò, who will offer poetry and music shows, together with Wanderer Guitar Duo, Frank Nemola, Vicotr Valisena, Bruno Censori and Gionni Di Clemente, SolEnsemble, etc.
The evening of Friday 19 May, at 18 pm, at the Teatro Spazio Bixio will be dedicated to a great recently deceased author-poet-songwriter, Leonard Cohen. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the album Songs of Leonard Cohen, a reading to music will be held with Piergiorgio Piccoli, Michele Silvestrin, Marica Rampazzo, Anna Zago and Livio Pacella, with music by Valter Tessaris, Paolo Barbieri, Vittorio Ghirardello, and Francesco Martini.
To complete the artistic offer of Poetry Vicenza 2017, ten art exhibitions will open in the city, including the one presenting at the Galla Caffè, the 43 artist's books by Edizioni Peccolo (from 17 March to 23 April), or Faces of art which proposes, at the Der Ruf space, the photographs of the Paduan artist Pierantonio Tanzola (from 18 March to 14 May), or The face, poetry, the personal exhibition of the Gorizia artist Franco Dugo at the space The ArtsBox ( from 25 March to 14 May) or, again, the One Day Exhibition: Contemporary Poets in which - Sunday 19 March, from 10 to 22 - portraits, books, letters, manuscripts, photos, rare films of various poets are exhibited Italians and foreigners, including Seamus Heaney, Charles Tomlinson, Edwin Morgan, etc.
The initiative is accompanied by the anthological volume Poetry Vicenza 2017 (Pisa, Edizioni ETS) with a bilingual selection of texts edited by various translators, and rich bio-bibliographic notes for each individual author.
Admission to all meetings is free (subject to availability).
Vicenza, March 2017
POETRY VICENZA 2017
Vicenza, 21 March – 4 June 2017
The official places of the review:
Galleries of Italy – Palazzo Leoni Montanari | contra' S. Corona, 25
Palazzo Chiericati | Matteotti Square
TheArtsBox | against San Paolo, 23
Olympic Theater | Piazza Matteotti, 37/39
Other spaces for exhibitions, readings and round tables:
Space Der Ruf | against Porta Padova
Hands | against SS. Apostles
Laboratory09 | contra' Frasche del Gambero
Mirrors | against S. Lucia
Space6 | against St. Peter
Bixio Space Theater | via Goffredo Mameli
Galla Coffee | Gate of the Castle
The partner high schools of the city:
Lioy High School | against Cordenons
Pigafetta High School | against Cordenons
IIS Boscardin | via Baden-Powell
IIS Canova | Via Astichello
For information and registration:
Municipality of Vicenza – Department of Growth > 0444 222101 > infocultura@comunevicenza.it
Galleries of Italy – Palazzo Leoni Montanari > 800 578875 > info@palazzomontanari.com
TheArtsBox > 339.5709671 > info@theartsbox.com
18 March 2017 – For almost three months Vicenza becomes the Italian capital of poetry thanks to POETRY VICENZA, the poetry and music festival which will bring to the Palladian city, from 21 March to 4 June 2017, a rich program with the best of world poetry.
The initiative promoted by the Municipality of Vicenza - Department of Growth - and by the Gallerie d'Italia - Palazzo Leoni Montanari, the cultural headquarters and museum of Intesa Sanpaolo in Vicenza, in collaboration with the TheArtsBox association, the Department of Comparative Linguistic and Cultural Studies of Ca' Foscari and the VicenzaJazz Festival, is directed by Marco Fazzini.
Poetry Vicenza can also count on the support of eight city associations (Spazio6, Mirror, Spazio Der Ruf-Le Cinigie, Hands, Laboratorio09, Teatro Spazio Bixio, TheArtsBox and Galla Caffè) and four higher education institutions in the city.
The festival will be hosted in the most significant and fascinating places in Vicenza (Olympic Theater, Palazzo Chiericati, Gallerie d'Italia - Palazzo Leoni Montanari) and in the various spaces of the associations, all located in the historic centre, spaces now ready to welcome 24 poets from 10 countries.
Poetry Vicenza will present two significant periods full of events: the one straddling March 21, World Poetry Day, and the first fifteen days of May, a period in which poetry will also cross jazz music, thanks to the collaboration with VicenzaJazz. The month of April will instead be dedicated to debates, round tables on poetry, meetings with small and medium-sized poetry publishers, printers of poetry books with movable type, and professionals of art books now known throughout Europe: Tallone, Mardesteig, Passerini, Antiga, Amos, Book, etc. Poetry Vicenza thus transforms itself from a poetry review into a real festival, involving various city partners in a unique initiative in Italy.
The guest poets for 2017 will share their vision of the world and of life, reciting some of their most famous and significant poems, recounting their experiences and interacting with the public and young people. Each appointment will also be a musical event, precisely because the Festival aims to underline the musicality and orality of poetry, which has been born and developed with and in music since its origins. The musicians, also representatives of various nations, will offer counterpoints, accompaniments and original comments to the poetic texts.
The deputy mayor and councilor for growth of the Municipality of Vicenza, Jacopo Bulgarini d'Elci:
“Investing in poetry is a political choice: an antidote to the dramatic and brutal simplification of reality, and of language, which we are witnessing. In times of haste, efficiency, ignorance claimed as a value, suspicion of all authority and wisdom, in this time there is a need for poetry more than ever. We need his ability to create gaps, to force us to step aside to look from another perspective, his drive to re-consecrate language, his claim to a claimed and subtracted time and energy. Building opportunities for poetry is equivalent to planting a seed, and taking care of it: in each of us, and in the soil of the community".
The coordinator of the Gallerie d'Italia – Palazzo Leoni Montanari, Elena Milan:
“The Gallerie d'Italia in Vicenza are an open space for the promotion of culture, art and also contemporary poetry through the poetry and music festival Poetry Vicenza, which brings the voices of the most important Italian and foreign poets to the city. Let's give continuity to this initiative that once again sees us alongside the municipal administration to give our contribution to the cultural life of the city, proposing a wide-ranging festival that allows the approach to an expressive genre often considered distant and indecipherable but which we believe there is, today, a latent and widespread need, like a chink in the dark”.
The artistic director of the Poetry Vicenza review, Marco Fazzini: “The poetry and music festival Poetry Vicenza, in its third edition, renews the desire to open the borders to a variety of both languages and cultures. In about two months of events we host, in the city of Palladio, poets, musicians, poet-songwriters, artists, gallery owners, printers, publishers, actors, critics and translators for a particular reading of our contemporaneity. With depth of writing and intellectual commitment, and through a not inconsiderable dose of creativity, these guests show us that one cannot live clouded either by easy consumerism or by certain mechanisms of common 'doing'. Poetic 'doing' is something else, even if it is often blamed for being out of fashion, or against the tide: putting it "on stage" is our challenge, a challenge consumed in a field, the literary one, which can not only produce culture, but sometimes also the economic growth of a territory. In preparing this Festival, the supporters, in concert with the organizers, had the primary intention of inviting plural voices from all over the globe, involving various city cultural associations, and four Higher Institutes so that the entire city is the scene of a common project : that of donating poetry free of charge in exclusive architectural and artistic places, and sharing it with the new generations in the hope, if not in the certainty, that poets, audiences, and operators will be able to draw furore from the recesses of an obscured era like that present a handful of shiny nuggets, and thus embellish the path for all of us for the rest of the year”.
After a prologue with a reading by the poet Giovanni Fontana for the inauguration of the artist's book exhibition at the Galleria Peccolo in Livorno, the 2017 edition of Poetry Vicenza will kick off on Tuesday 21 March at 18 pm, at the Gallerie d'Italia – Palazzo Leoni Montanari, precisely on the occasion of World Poetry Day, with the recital Love Translator, made up of readings and testimonies by Anna Maria Carpi, Fabio Scotto, Bianca Tarozzi, Rino Cortiana, Andrea Molesini, with musical accompaniment by Paolo Birro.
Among the most awaited appointments of the first block of events we mention the one with two English-speaking poets very distant from each other, the English Jeffrey Wainwright and the Caribbean Lasana Sekou (Palazzo Chiericati, Saturday 1 April at 18.00) accompanied by the music of Massimo Tuzza (percussions) and Filippo Rinaldi (bass), and that of two songwriter poets, the American Eric Andersen and the Italian Michele Gazich, who will be the protagonists of a meeting curated by Marco Fazzini (Gallerie d'Italia - Palazzo Leoni Montanari, Sunday April 2 at 18pm). But these will not be the only predominantly musical performances: the guitarist and singer-songwriter Sylvie Genovese will perform in a performance of music and poetry, entitled Migrant strings, on original songs by Brassens, Leon Gieco and Atahualpa Yupanqui, scheduled at Der Ruf on Friday 31st March, at 21.
In the final block of the festival, that of May, two important female voices, such as the Romanian Marta Petreu and the Scottish Christine De Luca will take turns reading their poems, accompanied by the music of Ilaria Fantin and Irene Brigitte (Gallerie d'Italia - Palazzo Leoni Montanari, Friday 12 May, at 18 pm). And, still in May, on the 13th and 14th, still a lot of poetry with Nico Naldini, Guy Goffette, Lello Voce and Marta y Micò, who will offer poetry and music shows, together with Wanderer Guitar Duo, Frank Nemola, Vicotr Valisena, Bruno Censori and Gionni Di Clemente, SolEnsemble, etc.
The evening of Friday 19 May, at 18 pm, at the Teatro Spazio Bixio will be dedicated to a great recently deceased author-poet-songwriter, Leonard Cohen. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the album Songs of Leonard Cohen, a reading to music will be held with Piergiorgio Piccoli, Michele Silvestrin, Marica Rampazzo, Anna Zago and Livio Pacella, with music by Valter Tessaris, Paolo Barbieri, Vittorio Ghirardello, and Francesco Martini.
To complete the artistic offer of Poetry Vicenza 2017, ten art exhibitions will open in the city, including the one presenting at the Galla Caffè, the 43 artist's books by Edizioni Peccolo (from 17 March to 23 April), or Faces of art which proposes, at the Der Ruf space, the photographs of the Paduan artist Pierantonio Tanzola (from 18 March to 14 May), or The face, poetry, the personal exhibition of the Gorizia artist Franco Dugo at the space The ArtsBox ( from 25 March to 14 May) or, again, the One Day Exhibition: Contemporary Poets in which - Sunday 19 March, from 10 to 22 - portraits, books, letters, manuscripts, photos, rare films of various poets are exhibited Italians and foreigners, including Seamus Heaney, Charles Tomlinson, Edwin Morgan, etc.
The initiative is accompanied by the anthological volume Poetry Vicenza 2017 (Pisa, Edizioni ETS) with a bilingual selection of texts edited by various translators, and rich bio-bibliographic notes for each individual author.
Admission to all meetings is free (subject to availability).
Vicenza, March 2017
POETRY VICENZA 2017
Vicenza, 21 March – 4 June 2017
The official places of the review:
Galleries of Italy – Palazzo Leoni Montanari | contra' S. Corona, 25
Palazzo Chiericati | Matteotti Square
TheArtsBox | against San Paolo, 23
Olympic Theater | Piazza Matteotti, 37/39
Other spaces for exhibitions, readings and round tables:
Space Der Ruf | against Porta Padova
Hands | against SS. Apostles
Laboratory09 | contra' Frasche del Gambero
Mirrors | against S. Lucia
Space6 | against St. Peter
Bixio Space Theater | via Goffredo Mameli
Galla Coffee | Gate of the Castle
The partner high schools of the city:
Lioy High School | against Cordenons
Pigafetta High School | against Cordenons
IIS Boscardin | via Baden-Powell
IIS Canova | Via Astichello
For information and registration:
Municipality of Vicenza – Department of Growth > 0444 222101 > infocultura@comunevicenza.it
Galleries of Italy – Palazzo Leoni Montanari > 800 578875 > info@palazzomontanari.com
TheArtsBox > 339.5709671 > info@theartsbox.com
