The Odesa – UNESCO City of Literature Office continues to introduce Odessa residents to the project “Poetry in Cities of Literature.”
This publication in the series is dedicated to the City of Literature Milan (Italy), thanks to which this project became possible.
The project aims to create a cultural bridge of gratitude and cooperation, deepening understanding of the culture of the Cities of Literature and encouraging a two-way exchange. The initiative seeks to transform support into mutual enrichment, creating an environment for the free exchange of books, ideas, and traditions.
Beyond promoting literary art, the initiative highlights the crucial support UNESCO Cities of Literature provide: from festival invitations and translation assistance to artist residencies. These connections help Ukrainian authors cross borders, find new audiences, and preserve their creative voices on the global stage. At its core, “Poetry in the Cities of Literature” is about mutual cultural enrichment — fostering an open exchange where books, ideas, and traditions travel freely, inspiring and uniting people worldwide.
Poet of the Mlan City of Literature:
Poet, essayist, and translator, Luigi Ballerini taught modern and contemporary Italian literature at NYU, UCLA and YALE. He has translated books by American authors, incuding Melville, William Carlos Williams, Gertrtude Stein and a number of American poets. His collected poems were published in the Oscar Collection of Mondadori in 2016. Cephalonia (2005, 2013) a two voice free-verse monologue was translated into English, Russian and Spanish. He is salso the author of the gastro-philosophic book-length essay Le anguille di Leonardo (Leonardo’s Eels, 2025).
each one of us then reads as they please
each one of us then reads as they please, or as they
were instructed to, from left to right, or viceversa,
turning the plow first one way, then in the opposite
direction, not to crush against the dilemma of a heart
worn on one’sleeve, of the bread you share, better, you
give away, or the shirt you take off your back, ad all this
to link waves of enthusiasm with moments of pause,
of recurrent fright, to unnerving requests for exacitude,
to decide wether to ask for knowledge or possession
Was if-god-wills-it better, right after the war? The reflux
of an impossible compensation? And the game of guessing
which was the murder weapon, was it more cunning? And
the procedure to request a non repayable fund, was it as
worrysome as Juda’sprofilperdu in Leonardo’s Last Supper?
*
doubtless you don’t wish me to renew a hopeless pain,
you demand that emotions come from having done, not
from vanity but from a straight appercetive action, say
the outcome of an hallucitation, the equivalent, in turn,
of a premonition, a project on the go, a constant, skilful
surgery, a clinking of glasses perennially postponed
The project wascreated by the Odesa UNESCO City of Literature and being implemented with funds raised by Reykjavik City of Literature as part of the readings initiated by Milano City of Literature “Not Just Words” (Reading for Odessa) on February 24, 2024.
