Marco Pelliccioli

- Italy -

Marco Pelliccioli was born in Seriate (Bergamo-Italy) on November 25th, 1982. He published L’orfano (The Orphan) with LietoColle-Pordenonelegge in 2016. He won the prize Inedito Colline di Torino in 2015 and was a finalist in Rimini Prize in 2016. His collection C’è Nunzia in cortile (There’s Nunzia in the Courtyard), published with LietoColle in 2014, was finalist in the following literary prizes: City of Como, Mauro Maconi, Mario Pannunzio and was winner of the Alberto Andronico prize in 2015. Vapore metropolitano, published with Albatros in 2009, was awarded third place in the Mario Pannunzio Prize in 2009. He has also published the novella A due passi dal treno with Eclissi in 2015, which received a mention in the 2015 Italo Calvino Prize.

He was awarded a degree in Literature and Cinema by the University La Sapienza in Rome and now works for the publishing company De Agostini.

Foreword by Maurizio Cucchi from There’s Nunzia in the Courtyard published with LietoColle in 2014

This is a book with a strong, almost violent and sinister, power, expressed by the young poet with wise calm. He already demonstrates clear and distinctive qualities combined with a certain level of maturity. His extremely intense, almost morbid, sensitivity allows him to define an open variety of places and humble and marginal characters with simplicity and animated visions into their lives.

Marco Pelliccioli populates his poetry with a variety of characters: a truly busy crowd, which emerges from the obscene history of modern times and which endures epochal changes without any visible reaction or awareness. The reader easily participates in the clear depiction of humble people, their wounds and wrinkles, their sinister grace; the courtyards, the streets and the markets are outlined using strong colours and expressionistic tools.

The author offers us fragments of a narration, small depictions of an event, hideous characters absorbed in the respectable triviality of their ordinary lives. For instance: the cycling cripple, the street cleaner, or the man with a hollow throat. Nunzia, the main character who gives the title to the book, stands out and appears in several poems. With her “hips shattered by arthritis” and “her twisted fingers” Nunzia is capable of simple gestures of love and kind touches.

Pelliccioli, who is a good observer, can record with firm but touching hand, shreds from real life happening in front of our eyes, as well as events taken from the news section, which inspire a complete set of poems in his book. Among others, we read of “Charon’s hulls”, which refers to one of the horrors we sadly hear in the news today. His complete view is therefore baffling, copious with personal mishaps, but also with historical tragedies, which Pelliccioli can represent without over emphasis. The dramatic reality transpires in his verses through simple realism and naturalism, without the use of hyperbole. It is a shaken truth, but nonetheless our own truth, in fact, as the poet cannot avoid noticing: “our own time is now”.

More about the poet

Poetry

(Untitled) / (Untitled)

Not only death, you know, frightens me
but this prevailing, everlasting
here and now
that, in two clicks, devours
history, fathers and roots
ditching me, the father, the son in her womb,
orphaned and lonely...
Garments, debris, swishes and shards,
the shattered earth:
“Who are we?”
you ask me now...
From The Orphan published by LietoColle-Pordenonelegge in 2016
Non solo la morte, sai, mi spaventa
ma questo eterno, imperante presente
che fagocita i padri, le radici, la storia
con un paio di clic
e lascia me padre, il figlio nel ventre di lei
orfani, soli...
Cocci, detriti, vesti, fruscii,
la terra spaccata:
“Chi siamo?”
mi chiedi ora tu...
Tram number 3 / Tram n.3

The number three used to come this way
scooping up factory workers, ferrying their wives to town
not a plane, just a tram:
when you reach the end of the line
Dawn’s restaurant, the laundry and the floating rags,
rowdy boys spilling into the street,
Nino’s tavern with the glasses resting on the barrels,
and new passengers would jump on board,
to sit resentfully in the cigarette smoke...
Until one day, one morning, you didn’t come back
at the stop Bruna waited for hours
clutching the ticket, hands on her hips
and still, at times, by the window in Via Furietti
she listens to the doors, the wheels, the breaks,
the lights that are not there
and waking, she hangs up her scruffy clothes in the wind.
From The Orphan published with LietoColle-Pordenonelegge in 2016
Un tempo passava di qui, il tram numero tre
raccattava gli operai, le mogli, per giungere in città
neppure fosse un aeroplano, o un animale strano:
quando arrivava a capolinea
la trattoria dell’Alba, i panni, i cenci appesi,
i monelli dell’asilo correvano per strada
all’osteria del Nino poggiavano i bicchieri sulle botti
chi saliva a bordo notava risentito le Nazionali accese...
Poi una mattina, un giorno, non sei più ritornato
la Bruna alla fermata, i pugni stretti ai fianchi,
ti aspettò tre ore con il biglietto in mano
e ancora alla finestra in via Furietti a volte
ascolta le porte, le ruote, i freni, i fari,
che ormai non sono più
e nella veglia stende i panni logori nel vento...
Catafam / Catafam

She scrapes the cauldron in the sink
hands full of cuts, wounds,
she saves the rust and the crusts
for her seven starving youths.

No golden star comes to fill the night
in the river’s blackened valley,
no yellow moon swells above the sour Mörla,
its fearful color dying silently,
only a mist descending to fill their belly.

We tell fireside stories to the children,
- mother still scraping, hands still bleeding -
better to huddle into the straw and sleep quickly
than hear these horror stories: Maria, who lost a leg,
beats hunger with a golden limb she keeps hidden in the attic.

Maybe the soldiers will come tomorrow
bringing us soap to sell at the market.
There will be milk to soften the crusts
and we will see, reflected on mother’s face,
the peach blossom in the barnyard.
From The Orphan published with LietoColle-Pordenonelegge in 2016
Scrostava il paiolo all’acquaio
le mani tagliate, i calli,
staccava la ruggine, croste,
per i sette figli affamati.

Non brillano stelle dorate
nella valle buia del Serio
né dolce è il fluire della Mörla, o la luna:
il giallore ha paura e muore in silenzio
la nebbia è scesa in pance ormai vuote.

Si raccontano fiabe ai figli al camino,
- la madre che scrosta, le mani di sangue -,
sono fiabe d’orrore: la Maria senza gamba
spegne la fame col suo arto d’oro nascosto in soffitta...
tra brandine di paglia conviene dormire.

Chissà se domani verranno i soldati
a portarci i saponi da vendere al borgo,
ci sarà un po’ di latte a mischiare le croste
per vedere nel volto di nostra madre
il riflesso del pesco sbocciare nell’aia.
There’s Nunzia in the courtyard / C’è Nunzia in cortile

There’s Nunzia in the courtyard
her hands are torn apart, her stick hangs on the wall,
water spills above the hydrangea.
Her mended wrinkles look like clay:
rose buds mildly open,
grace that gleams by the fountain.
From There’s Nunzia in the Courtyard published with LietoColle in 2014
C’è Nunzia in cortile
con le mani lacerate, il bastone appeso al muro
l’acqua versata sulle ortensie.
Sembrano la terra le sue rughe rammendate:
boccioli di rosa appena pronunciati
grazia che splende alla fontana.
Objects, bodies / Le cose, i corpi

With a frozen grocery bag,
shopping and scotch, handle and crutch,
step by step she walks down the street:
the colourless fringe, the yellow of the poplar
wrinkles on her face, cracks in the wall...
A heap of rubble grows bigger day by day,
the wall by Via del Conventino is coming down
nobody cares to fix it, not even her,
as if objects and bodies
had to return to their original form.
From The Orphan published with LietoColle-Pordenonelegge in 2016
Con la busta congelata
la spesa, la stampella, il manico, lo scotch,
passo dopo passo lungo il marciapiede:
le crepe sulle mura, le rughe sulla faccia,
il ciuffo senza tinta, il pioppo ormai ingiallito...
Un cumulo di cocci cresceva ogni mattina
veniva giù dal muro in via del Conventino
nessuno interveniva, neppure lei,
come se le cose, i corpi,
dovessero tornare al loro vero nome.
Rosarno / Rosarno

(Immigrants revolt in Rosarno - 07.01.2010)

In the cardboard house
made by silence
the son breathes
punished by History.

The mother kneeling at the cross
the father worn out in the fields

while the wind shouts out:
“It’s nobody’s fault!'”
From There’s Nunzia in the Courtyard published with LietoColle in 2014
(“Immigrati in rivolta a Rosarno” - 07.01.10)

Nelle case di cartone
costruite dal silenzio
respira il figlio
punito dalla Storia.

La madre china al crocifisso
il padre fiacco alla campagna

mentre il vento urla:

“non è colpa di nessuno!”
Scan (II) / Ecografia (II)

“Look, the heart is beating!”, she says,
a train, a locomotive,
a music sheet asking us for words
which we do not own
and you, swinging your tiny legs,
her hand stretched out to reach you,
you move planets, you jump, you shift, you wave at us,
you save us from my mother, from her father,
from the sorrow for those who, probably,
just wanted to love us, and how could they not?
From The Orphan published with LietoColle-Pordenonelegge in 2016
“Come batte il cuore”, dice lei,
un treno, una locomotiva,
uno spartito che chiede a noi parole
ma non sappiamo dire
e tu, che sbatti le gambine,
muovi i pianeti, la mano di lei protesa verso te,
balzi, ti muovi, forse ci saluti,
ci salvi da mia madre, suo padre,
dal dolore per chi, forse,
voleva solo amarci, come non poteva?
Your question / La tua domanda

Now that piece after piece the wall is bare
infinite windows open on the Mörla,
now that the voices of the dead and the living
have attempted communion,
garments and tram, comets and hull,
their names
overflow into the streets by the Mörla
flooding basements, shelters and houses:
ask your question
to the wet mist on the lawn,
before the sun dries everything again.
From The Orphan published with LietoColle-Pordenonelegge in 2016
Ora che i cocci hanno spogliato le pareti
aperto infiniti cerchi sul corso della Mörla,
ora che le voci dei morti, quelle dei vivi,
hanno tentato la loro comunione,
le vesti, i tram, comete, scafi,
il loro nome,
straripa per le vie la piena della Mörla
inonda case, tetti, sottoscala:
prima che il sole asciughi
porgi alla foschia umida sui prati
la tua domanda...

Marco Pelliccioli

- Italy -

Poetry

(Untitled) / (Untitled)

Tram number 3 / Tram n.3

Catafam / Catafam

There’s Nunzia in the courtyard / C’è Nunzia in cortile

Objects, bodies / Le cose, i corpi

Rosarno / Rosarno

Scan (II) / Ecografia (II)

Your question / La tua domanda