On Monday (13 May) at 5.30 pm at the CGIL auditorium in Lucca, the latest book of poems by Virginio Giovanni Bertini with photos by Liliana Barone. The title U-turn (graphic designer and publisher Maurizio Della Nave) with a preface by Gianni Quilici, poet and film critic and with an afterword by Laura Marchetti, professor of anthropology and intercultural pedagogy at the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, essayist, ecologist and pacifist, author of numerous publications on material imagination, oral tradition, fairy tales and myths.
U-turn will be introduced by the teacher Elisa Bertoni teacher of literary disciplines and Latin at the Vallisneri scientific high school, followed by speeches, readings of passages, music and reflections, moderated by Gianni Quilici.
Guest of honor will be present Dante Untito whom one of the 26 poems is dedicated, an Italian military internee, taken prisoner by German troops after the defeated revolt in Ragusa in 1943, now 104 years old and in good health.
The book can be found at Lucca Libri. Caffè Letterario bookshop, in viale Regina Margherita, 113.
The book is divided into four parts and summarizes the writer’s life journey and civil commitment: from existential issues to the more purely social ones often experienced directly, from a worker and human fraternity to a new ecological vision where nature takes on a leading role.
“A strong and original message of radical criticism of the three-dimensional M that overwhelms us today: war deaths, deaths at work, the death of the planet. It is an invitation – as explained in a presentation note – to go beyond the usual tram tram, to get out of the cage in which we are trapped, to invent new ways of radical protest, changing reality and ourselves together. This change will have to be a strong change, first of all of our consciences. To be indignant and rebel in the face of growing barbarism as a precondition for building a new other humanity. This is the strong and determined message that emerges from the twenty-six poems connected, emotionally, to twenty-six photographic shots. A sort of novel in verse emerges, which gives and takes, which moves, which changes and screams the need for a profound transformation on an ethical, social, cultural and political level. Starting with us, from our roots of earthly humanity.”
And the message becomes more and more credible both on a formal aesthetic level and on a substantial level in relation to the writer’s biography, precisely because of what he has done and continues to do in terms of civil commitment and social and for his previous literary productions.
It would be enough to remember its role as a point of reference in the Lucca student movement in the years 1967-1968his trade union experience in the CGIL of Fiat Mirafiori in Turin, his participation personally and for up to 13 days in two hunger strikes, within a large mobilization of a social network for the rights of migrants in Lucca, first in 2000 and then in 2006, both with victorious results.
And finally it should be underlined how, towards the end of the 1990s, the figure of the trade unionist and researcher became intertwined with that of the writer and poet, with the creation of numerous publications including: FraternityEts, 1997, with preface by Marco Revelli, OffsideAletti editore, 2014, The Olympic girlAletti editore, 2015, and a novel Empty heartAletti editore, 2011, also, with Donatella Francesconi and Giulio Sensi, The body and the soulchronicles of denied rights and original struggles, ETS editions, 2007, with preface by Alessandro Santoro.
Bertini is currently part of the Senza confineri Association and is involved in movements for peace, for the defense of health, the environment and common goods.
