INTERVIEWED BY ANNALISA CARLEVARO

 

Fabio Jermini was born in Sorengo (Switzerland) in 1988. He graduated from the University of Geneva with a thesis on Somiglianze by Milo De Angelis (published in 2015) and obtained a PhD in Italian philology with a thesis on Cecco Angiolieri’s comic sonnets (of which he’s finalizing the critical and commented edition). He published the collection Corpi gabbia d’ali e unghie [Bodies, cage of wings and claws] (Alla Chiara Fonte, Lugano, 2015) and other poems in the anthologies Paragrafi (puntoacapo, Pasturana, 2018) and Non era soltanto passione (Alla Chiara Fonte, Lugano, 2018), in the magazines Cenobio (2020/1) and Fluire (2021/3) and in Almanacco dei poeti e della poesia contemporanea (Raffaelli, Rimini, 2022). He has translated from Spanish poems by Dámaso Alonso, which appeared in Cenobio (2017/2). He lives in Collina d’Oro (Switzerland).

 

Annalisa Carlevaro: How did your love for poetry come about? When did you start writing and how has your poetry evolved over time?

 

Fabio Jermini: I always wanted to be a writer. The desire to be a poet came later although there is a family film from 1998 where I read one of my poems about nature in front of relatives. In high school I started writing poems, a sort of imitation of the poets I was studying and then a few poems in the local dialect. At the end of high school, I began to feel that after Eugenio Montale there are no other poets. I liked Foscolo and Montale but it was a question of a school programme when I   discovered another universe. In those years I met a poet for the first time in my life, Edoardo Sanguineti, and I had a revelation that the poet exists.

My first collection Bodies, cage of wings and claws was published in 2015 and is the fruit of my university years during which I had the good fortune to attend  some courses taken by Fabio Pusterla as a guest professor at the University of Geneva. On this occasion, I discovered Italian poetry of the second half of the 20th century (Sereni, Orelli, Luzi, Fortini). Pusterla gave me the task of analyzing some poems by Milo De Angelis, which I liked so much that it became the subject of my Master’s thesis. Poets recognise each other and in my first-year Bachelor class there was the poet Linda Baranzini with whom I exchanged poems. I see the first book as very distant from my current poetry. The tragic setting and especially the theme of the mal de vivre seems very adolescent and out of time to me as I was just 21-22 years old then . The poems in my first collection date back to 2013, the volume was published by the publishing house alla chiara fonte . I also need to thank Chiara and Mauro Valsangiacomo, Andrea Bianchetti and poets such as Daniele Bernardi. 

 

A.C.: Are there any poets you feel particularly close to, poets who have acted as teachers to you?

 

F.J.: Vittorio Sereni says that we learn most from those who do not resemble us. Studying De Angelis, I learnt a lot from him even though I did not adhere to his poetics. I really appreciate some of his ideas on poetry such as the clash between the contingent and the transcendent and the contemporary tragic seen as that which does not end. I also believe that adolescence is a time of poetry, a time of contrasts where the child becomes aware that there are desires that can be fulfilled and others that cannot be fulfilled and also becomes aware that there is a sociality that requires him to come out of individualism and come to terms with social experiences. That is where poetry is born. This is one of the important aspects I learnt from De Angelis. Another important reference connected to the theme of adolescent awareness is the book by Giancarlo Pontiggia Lo stadio di Nemea. Discorsi sulla poesia (Moretti & Vitali, 2013). I also recognise the masters of poetry, in particular the Spanish poets of the ’27 generation, Dámaso Alonso, Pedro Salinas, Vicente Aleixandre and some of  De Angelis’ more recent contemporaries, Pere Gimferrer and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. 

 

A.C.: What are the main themes that emerge from your poetry?

 

F.J.: There has been an evolution of themes from the first collection that was centered on the desire to speak the truth freely as a kind of reckoning; they were poems written in different eras, also very unrelated to each other. For instance, in the central section there is a love poem where I see the influence of Pedro Salinas, specifically a collection of love poems I was reading when I was working on these nine motets. Now I have turned to estrangement, a little bit apocalyptic and a little bit ironic, so there are poems that present desolate landscapes, a poem that presents a family and an estrangement effect in the finale where I imagine a catastrophe, a small universal chronicle, the description of a family lunch, and then others such as Elegia, written in a car cemetery, and DMC. These are texts that have a meaning that the end presents a kind of keystone. It is a technique of composition, an art related to a technique, and I compose the poem starting from the ending. It is easy to start a poem well but it is very difficult to finish it. Not every poem has a good ending or an ending that closes a meaning. So, I think first about the effect I want and then I go backwards.

 

A.C.: What is the role of mechanics in your poetics, also understood as objects that become animated?

 

F.J.: The mechanical component is an autobiographical component, I am descended from a lineage of mechanics, grandfather, father, brother.  I tried to be a mechanic but I am not. 

 

A.C.: A juxtaposition with the life and poetry of Seamus Heaney comes to mind, in particular the poem ‘Digging’ in ‘Death of a Naturalist’, his father and grandfather were farmers but the poet could only dig with his pen.

 

F.J.: Yes, with Heaney I also share the idea of carcasses seen as a kind of archaeology. My parents had a workshop and I used to go there after school. The mechanical component also comes from an intuition of Daniele Del Giudice where he reflects on the animal component of cars, which is also found in the names (Fiat Topolino, Maggiolino, Lamborghini are all kinds of bulls). This was something fascinating for a child, the car is not that cold, distant, inhuman thing but arouses interest with this association with the animal component. Especially for racing cars the animal appeal has a symbolic meaning connected to speed. I think of Senna in 1994 when the Schumacher era had not yet begun, we were coming out of the 1980s and the great rivalry between Senna and Prost. Senna was supposed to retire but life had other plans for him and I was also impressed because in 1994 my grandfather died. It is as if the idea of death marks the epochs of life. Finally, the mechanical component is linked to the idea of ‘failure’ which is a word I like a lot. Unconsciously, every poem of mine has something of a breakdown, in the use of different meanings of broken, interrupted or rotten.

 

A.C.: In your poetry we encounter multiple languages, what importance do they have within your writing?

 

F.J.: The different languages are connected to the idea of multilingualism, which was already present in much poetry of the second half of the 20th century and that was certainly better than mine. I have not thought of a precise model, but I like the idea of mixing and of inserting these inserts from other languages. 

 

A.C.: Metrics and rhythm play a fundamental role in your poetry, what function do they have?

 

F.J.: They do indeed play a fundamental role> I believe in  the idea that there is no poetry if there is no metre, no measure. Verse is everything, making poetry means writing verse in the first place, which is what distinguishes it from prose. A verse well marked by marked accents that perhaps beats on the same timbres (as Giorgio Orelli said in the volume Accertamenti verbali), is an association and recollection that poets have of themselves and of other poets. I love the typical anapestic pattern of Manzoni’s choruses and the dactylic anapestic pattern of Pascoli’s novenario, which is the one I hear most often. Studying especially the ancient poets, I realised that sometimes punctuation is not necessary because the measure of the verse already manages to provide the moment of pause, even when the syntax is continuous. For this reason, in my poem, I have reduced the number of commas and inserted many dashes and parentheses.

 

A.C.: And you also make wide use of puns.

 

F.J.: I like puns. My ideological choice of poetic language was to not adhere to standard Italian and to invent a language, a special language of my own. First of all, there are inserts in dialect because I was born and grew up in a dialect-speaking family, my parents always spoke in dialect and I have always responded partly in dialect, partly in Italian and partly by distorting the dialect words. Having to choose a special language of my own, I chose these characteristics, and this also relates to what I said about multilingualism. I use French because I lived in Geneva for 10 years and also studied partly in French. Latin, on the other hand, is part of the religious component that emanates as a cultural heritage in my personal biography. I don’t feel I am a true believer but I feel I have a spirituality and the parts of biblical wisdom are linked to this reason. Spanish on the other hand is also related to my wife who is half Spanish and to the frequent trips I have made to Spain.

 

A.C.: Could you speak to me about the kind of language you have chosen to express your poetry? How would you comment on the use of graphics and punctuation marks within your texts?

 

F.J.: Poetry is art and if in art one can allow oneself freedoms, why not take the liberty of using punctuation marks that are not used in Italian? Also given the influence of the Spanish poets mentioned above and the familiar biographical reasons. The crux desperationis is a graphic sign that is used in critical editions to mark uncertain passages or dubious readings and comes from my profession as a philologist. In the context of poetry, I use it because I use coded messages and put myself in the shoes of those who cannot interpret the text and do not understand it.

 

A.C.: In your poems we see an intersection of different registers and seemingly distant themes. 

 

F.J.: Yes, there are poems of mechanics, of devastation, of desolation and then those that are a bit more introspective, anguished, surreal. I have been experimenting with language and metrics (for example in the poems for Jennifer) as well as experimenting graphically with calligraphy. Why not, for instance, write a poem in the shape of pac-man (The matrix)? Pac-man wanders around in a labyrinth in the dark, eating pills and chasing his ghosts, even the video game itself already renders the labyrinth metaphor. I also love film references, like Mr Anderson collapsing on his keyboard one night after another. I like to include cinematic references that are sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit. 

 

A.C.: To conclude, what do you think is the sense and role of poetry today?

 

F.J.: Unfortunately, Italian poetry has a marginal role; as Guido Mazzoni also says, with the advent of the consumer society and pop culture, poetry has lost its social mandate, but I do not think that poetry is in a bad way even without a social role, I do not think it is worse off than in past eras. The audience of poetry is made up of poets who read poets, and I don’t think it was any different for Dante, not to delude oneself that Dante’s audience was larger than the audience of a contemporary poet. We are perhaps better off than Baudelaire and Leopardi. I am also thinking of Sergio Corazzini who railed against the figure of the poet vate, the poet who had a social role, and reflecting back, I do not know whether the social mandate is good or bad for poetry. Poetry lives as long as there are poets. 

 

 

Poems

 

SAMHAIN

 

Like the fox

which got urban

at midnight au bout du monde

we stopped to smell the park, the wind, the moment

in which every scent is a memory

and then we wandered about, our muzzle low,

pawing along crystal boulevards,

following suburban tracks in the metallic light,

as prey the elegy of impossible memories

  of folds in the chronotope

(the soup, the window, the assault, the victory,

the whore under the bridge, the solfeggio exam)

 

DMC

 

And I saw you

at the Gravesano roundabout

making the light tremble as you passed by

¡miraculous steel angel,

sweet superb seagulls’ envy!

In eighth grade I drew on the classifier

the most important part of you (a picture

in my head…) and my class’ teacher,

who remembered it well, recognized it:

it was the most important part of you, the one

that the doctor saw, when he came to,

after hitting his head on the sink,

slipped while hanging a clock

standing on the toilet’s wet porcelain.

The most                        important part

of you, the one                 which makes

time

travel

                    possible.

 

[The DeLorean DMC-12, with its “gull-wing” doors and stainless-steel body, was chosen by Dr. Emmett L. Brown to build his time machine (see Zemeckis, Back to the Future, 1985). The “flux capacitor” is the device that makes time travel possible and its most obvious part are the light tubes arranged in a Y shape.]

 

SHARPTOOTH

 

bent its head downwards, towards the mud,

turned it back forming an arch, opened wide

its jaws showing the pairs of hooked

teeth and a monstrous deep roar

vibrated the air. The rain drummed loudly

and we heard her raking shrilly

her claws, cracking with a heavy snort

the springs, and we saw her, beyond

the burnished windows, sitting in the back

seats, shaking herself and roaring again,

sinking her jaws, biting the panther,

the mongoose, the tiger, the wolf, the panda

 

(carcaiòzz and baròtegh,^[1] by Vismara at the Stampa,

an autumn evening in the nineties)

 

TOWARDS LORIGUILLA

 

Padre, ¿podremos soportar esta cruz?

Padre Ángel Berriatúa

¡Antichrist! He made it seem easy – and yet

ten hands are not enough to count

(we misunderstood the signals, we

hesitated, missed the gaps, freaked out

and turned around at Repsol – the sun,

bright on the right, went down into the rear window –

we questioned – ¡they’re lying to us! –

we’ve been the beast, the clown, the witches, 

the infected customers, the perfect strangers)

 

VAN EEMEREN’S SQUIRRELS ^[2]

 

YOU | SHOULD | HAVE | BOUGHT | A | SQUIRREL

Kathy Bates

They felt the void at the belt’s end

the infinite scare in the choral squeak

and steel thistles’ sharp breath:

¿what else but an ethical assessment mistake?

And one danced in the iron air

a saving fandango, slipped away, climbed up

high on Vondelpark branches, so therefore,

fed on figs and chestnuts, he doesn’t know

of the shameless, exemplary, strategic manoeuvring

with which the Flying Dutchman was saved.

 

(unpublished)

 

THE MATRIX

(poem in pac-man shape)

 

Like Thomas A. Anderson, who

collapses on the keyboard one night

after another looking for an answer, the knot

that holds on this side, the sweet fixed nail,

like Thomas A. Anderson, who goes to

mass, who pays his taxes (advances,

adjustment), who helps the elderly

landlady with trash, who se-

-parates glass, PET, tin,

paper and cardboard, which        accepts        what        he        sees

because he waits to be waked,

like Thomas A. Anderson, who’s

living two lives and he plays with them,

truly, for the perfect score (three million

three hundred and thirty-three thousand three

hundred and sixty) and repeats everything, from

escape to chase, from anxiety to euphoria,

swallows pills, hunts his ghosts,

while time is running out…

 

(unpublished)

 

EPIGRAMMATA SUPER BEO ^[3]

 

Beo absconditus in pachisandram

The crazy windscreen-wiper tail

and the relentless truffle: he’s hunting lizards

– quickly he makes a leap, makes another, does a turn:

« ¡catch ’em all, domestic raptor! »

Le brandon de Béus

(browsing the Roman de la Rose during the first lockdown)

The siege, the garden, the soft joy,

the unsheathed lipstick doesn’t linger        « ¡Look

how he’s decked, the eager firebrand

all reared up for fun and play! »

El perro salchicha

He slips in, yelps at the relics – and when he jibs

there’s no way        he can’t be bargained with,

he can’t be reasoned with…         « Ein Hund

ist nicht lange an eine Wurst gebunden »

Of ‘Bep’ and ‘Mem’

« ¡There’s nothing for thou! », Jenny warned him,

but all it took was for the bottle to fall, and for us to run

to gather the shards        and Beo crossed

the species on the kitchen top – antelope on the beef.

Gloria in excelsis Beo

¡Good Lord!, it’s fine on the floor ’cause with good will

the mud is clean, ¡but not on the sofa!        And about him,

beautifully seated in wise of a sphinx, Jenny said:

« ¡Beo’s paw has done mighty things! »

 

¡Hwæt!

 

The discovery, while sun-grown on the sofa, and then: tonsure,

antibiotic, gauze, Betadine on the festering wound

(he bit him on the neck, jealous of the courtly sniff

at the damsel’s butt, the old toxic male)

 

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Also, read Trees Leaning against the roof by Sreekrishnapuram Krishnakutty, translated by K.M. Ajir Kutty and published in The Antonym.

Trees Leaning against the Roof— Sreekrishnapuram Krishnankutty

 

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