Poet
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Umberto Fiori 1949 country: Netherlands Italiaans |
schrijft sinds zijn twaalfde gedichten, maar publiceerde pas tegen zijn dertigste voor het eerst in een literair tijdschrift. Door zijn optredens met de rockgroep Stormy Six en directe communicatie met het publiek wilde hij poëzie schrijven met ‘normale woorden’, hetgeen aanvankelijk door critici niet werd gewaardeerd. Fiori doceert hedendaagse Italiaanse letterkunde aan de universiteit van Milaan. Dit jaar verschenen zijn bundel Voi en een cd met gezongen teksten op muziek van Luciano Margorani.
Publications (selection): Case (1986); Esempi (1992); Chiarimenti (1995); Terminus (1998, Italian and English); Tutti (1998); Talking to the Wall (1998, Italian and English). (1949) was born in Sarzana, a town in northern Italy just east of the Mediterranean port of La Spezia. In 1954 his family moved to Milan, where Umberto studied philosophy. As a student in the 1970s he became singer and songwriter of the rock group Stormy Six, which recorded seven albums and toured widely in Italy and other European countries. He also wrote popular music reviews and articles about Woody Guthry, Bob Dylan, Paolo Conte, Peter Gabriel and others, and about the interaction of text and music. Since the mid-eighties he has been collaborating with composer Luca Francesconi, with whom he wrote songs, two operas and pieces for orchestra and voice. Umberto Fiori has been writing poetry from the age of twelve, but did not publish a poem in a literary journal until he was nearly thirty. He then made the acquaintance of well-known poets such as Vittorio Sereni, Franco Fortini, Franco Loi and Maurizio Cucchi, who encouraged him to publish his first little volume, Case. At first Fiori’s work was not taken too seriously, owing to the avant-garde and hermetic trends then prevailing in Italian poetry, but Fiori persisted in writing simple, understandable poems in a straightforward, almost popular idiom, about city streets and squares, dogs, encounters with people, street brawls, all the things and events that seemed new and important to him after spending years on the road with his band. His poetry is more or less an account of his attempts to live as an ordinary human being. After his début volume, Fiori published three more collections: Esempi (1992), Chiarimenti (1995), and Tutti (1998). He says his work has lately been given a more open-minded reception; at times even praise. |
