AURORA CANTINI, primary school teacher, poet and storyteller from Aviatico, Bergamo plateau. She has been writing since she was 8 years old, with stories created on the pavement or listening to the sounds of the forest, and before that she invented verses in front of the window, watching the snow fall and imagining butterflies dancing. Her first poem appeared in the national magazine “Primavera” when she was just 14 years old. From 1993 to today you have published 21 books.
Five books of poetry, three illustrated books for children and families for charitable purposes, thirteen books of fiction, non-fiction and novels, musical biographies and memoirs on the Shoah. Many interventions in schools, with conferences on various topics: Poetry, the First World War, Anita Garibaldi, the Shoah, the Tenor Gambarelli, peasant life and the Twin Towers. He is part of the jury committees of various literary competitions and is president of the Le Coti di Pradalunga literary prize. He collaborates externally with various literature and local websites.
You can follow her on the blog: http://acantini.altervista.org/
Can you give us a brief description of you as a person and then as an Author?
I am tied to my mountain land like a suspended root, I feel it vibrate within me in every breath of wind, in every crunch of a leaf, in every hidden path. I listened to the poems of the leafy trees that, moving in the sweet summer sunset, cradled my childhood dreams, or when, loaded with snow, they soared into the sky and took me up there, into the blue, with their long diamond fingers. They told me stories, they consoled me, they intoxicated me with life, they loved me tenderly, silently and forever. And now that I write poems and stories, I know that I owe it to the Earth, to my Mountains, feeling the caresses of all my ancestors who still live and always, through me.
For me, writing is a vital need, of the soul, which I could never do without. I breathed the love for life and nature running on the meadows of my beloved Amora, under the Cornagera, Selvino plateau, Bergamo Valleys.
In 2021 I celebrated my 50 years of literary life, starting from the first poem written at school in third grade and read in public by my teacher. 2023 was a year full of emotions for me because exactly 30 years have passed since my first publication, the book of poems Fiori di campo, which I presented at the sixth edition of the Turin Book Fair on 23 May 1993.
How and when did your passion for writing begin?
Since I was a child, I have lived in the company of books and stories that I, in turn, write.
My poetry, my narratives, arise from my very being alive, like a force I cannot escape. Poetry has always attracted me, as has writing. In fact, since primary school I wrote poems at the request of my classmates, or I copied the most significant ones from my favorite magazine: the legendary “Primavera”. I am a poet deep down and forever, I am a narrator of stories created on the pavement since I was a child.
Since I was six years old I have felt the overwhelming call of poetry and over the years this need of my soul has gradually refined and modeled itself on the fabric of the world, following the folds of my path as a woman.
When something happens that excites me a lot, inside my heart it forms like a lake where all my emotion that presses and wants to come out through words is concentrated, to the point of canceling me out and feeling one with the world around me; then I feel lighter.
I don’t have the key to interpreting the pain of living that everyone brings with them, I can only be the spokesperson for a gift that was given to me and that I hope someone can share with me. We are never alone, the road is long to travel, someone is always beside us, we just need to know how to see beyond. Today we talk too little about poetry, yet perhaps it could be a way to transmit more love into the world.
She is the winner of numerous literary awards. What are these awards?
Winning a literary prize for a poet is equivalent to winning an Olympics. It’s coming out of silence, of oblivion. It is emerging, even just for a few moments, from the darkness in which poetry is confined. Many awards won are prestigious, such as the International Seneca Award, or the Walter Bonatti Award, or the Ossi di Seppia, as well as the Giorgio La Pira… All very important showcases from which to spread poetry, love for beauty, brotherhood, universality of intent, but also to make themselves known, to create positive visibility. We non-professional writers and poets of the profession (understood as a job with which to make a living) have many things to say, precisely because we are not bound by deadlines, contracts, commitments and obligations… We are real, genuine, we talk about daily life with the spontaneity of those he does it exclusively out of passion.
He has published numerous books. Is there any book that you feel most connected to?
I have published 21 books ranging from poetry, fiction, historical fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, biographies, musical books, children’s books… I love them all, because for each one I gave my all, every free moment, every moment of thought… Hours, weeks, months, years. Write, even at night under the influence of inspiration. And then shape, refine a page, add, smooth. Crying with the protagonists, rejoicing with them, loving them. And feeling torn inside when leaving them.
How did you start writing fiction?
I started writing stories almost at the same time as my first poems, the stories created on the pavements and along the meadows of my mountains. But the first publication in fiction came in 2009, after 3 books of poems. Simply because poetry was no longer enough for me, I needed an “extended”, told, immersed poem. I call it poetic prose.
Lately he has published various books for children. What drove you to dedicate yourself to this genre?
Writing stories for children was the third stage of my literary journey. I was inspired by the very young writer Giulia Gabrieli, a girl from Bergamo who died at the age of 14 of sarcoma in 2011. We had both won a literary competition organized by Parco dei Colli di Bergamo in June 2009. I was struck by her enthusiasm and her dream of becoming Writer. Soon afterward she became ill. I discovered the silent world of children in hospital and decided to write a children’s book for charity, dedicated to this girl who dreamed of continuing to write. And in recent years I have broadened my audience by involving families, creating a trilogy of stories from the Selvino Aviatico Plateau, always for charitable purposes for children in difficulty or with disabilities.
Can you share a thought or piece of advice with debut poets?
Never give up, never give up, never leave Poetry alone. She is fragile, she is defenseless, her voice is lost among the clamor and cries of social media and of today’s fierce and chaotic life. It’s up to us to give it a voice. Because the verses are a medicine for the soul, a consolation for the disorientation and contemporary solitudes. A verse is as fast as our every step and accompanies us along every breath we take, insatiable and pungent. It supports the path, fills the nights, drives away fear: every poem is sublime enchantment. Torments and joys have always run alongside man. Like a wild flower, a poem has few demands but with its tenderness it gives moments of relief from the suffering of everyday life and can make life a little more lovable, to rediscover the meaning of everyday life, the sincerity of a friendly gaze , sharing, solidarity in the fear of the night, consolation and pity: in a word, the humanity of the world.
Edited by Irma Kurti
(Interview published on Saturno Magazine)
AURORA CANTINI
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