GIACOMO GARZYA ON HIMSELF

Poetry is not my sole raison d'être, but it is the receptacle of my experience, my disquiet, the deep stirrings of my affections, and now my grief at the untimely, tragic loss of my adored daughter Fanny. Style undoubtedly has a specific weight in writing: as De Sanctis put it, "form is the thing itself". In my case the choice of words does not allow much room for different layers of meaning; rather it is the poem as a whole which can lend itself to different interpretations. This is where, speaking always of my own situation, poetry parts company with prose. The immediacy with which many poems were written should not be taken for spontaneous writing; rather they are sedimented thoughts which surface when they have to. And if the process of polishing is soon accomplished, this must not be seen as a sign of levity but a personal way of relating to words in their proper meaning. I view my exploration of poetry and photography as a diary of the soul: not of my soul alone, but of all those who stop to think and reflect on the meaning of their existence and on how it proceeds. Perhaps the recurrence of the seasons, of the different ages of gold or iron, can give the illusion of a cyclical progress, but in fact situations always change, like the sounds around us or the light and colours in pictures. My poems, like my photographs, are an intimate diary which is no mere exercise in intimism. Ever since childhood I have had the value of universality impressed on me, and whenever I write or photograph it is myself I interrogate, but always thinking of others. For me writing and photographing, often conducted in the first instance with those dearest to me, seeks to be a response to the world we live in, in which certain primary values are forgotten. My roots and sentimental ties, like the places and nature itself, all form part of my output, but what prevails is the wind, that dominates our existence like the sea. I believe that the touchstone of my activity is the invitation to live joyfully whatever is beautiful in the world, in a dialectic opposition to grief, to the drama of death, even though these are the true dynamo of existence, the source of creativity and liberty.

My fifth book of poetry has come out: GIACOMO GARZYA, Pensare è non pensare, Bibliopolis, Napoli 2009, with a preface by Eugenio Mazzarella.