BESEDE, KI JIH NE POZNAM

by PATRIZIA DUGHERO

“We must always give a name to things, to better recognize them or to ensure that they can be remembered. […] Francesco Tomada transmits to us oral figures and gives them a body by naming them. He not only calls things as they are, he calls them so that they exist.” This is what he wrote about the collection To Each Thing Its Own Name The poet Fabiano Alborghetti, and this is the unforgettable imprint I’ve had since 2009, when I met Francesco, who joined us in Bologna in the poetic circles that then animated the city. Francesco Tomada, born in 1966, has chosen Gorizia for many years, becoming a thoughtful yet reserved promoter. He has published numerous anthologies, the latest of which is Facing joy alone, for the “Gialla” of Pordenonelegge (2021), and the novel The son of the she-wolf (2022), co-authored with Anton Špacapan Vončina, now translated into Slovenian. We also recall his 2016 anthology, published in the “Autoriale” series by Dot.Com Press. His texts have been translated into about fifteen foreign languages; his monographs have been published in Bulgaria, Greece, and Spain. Editor of the website “Perigeion” and the magazine “Smerilliana,” he edited a volume on the literary production of the Province of Gorizia from 1861 to the present. He is involved in various cultural dissemination initiatives, including serving on juries for literary prizes and organizing bilingual cross-border events.

With these 4 poems he composes a captivating minimal contest On the theme of language, held together by a narrative and emotional voice: a poetry that unfolds through micro-scenes, details, and sudden emotional outbursts is recognizable. The almost prosaic language maintains emotional density. A poetics of the invisible everyday: small gestures that reveal entire worlds combined with a unique ability to close texts with epiphanic verses, brief but incisive, through a tone capable of lingering in the gray areas of experience. From the first composition, “Dal medico,” Everyday gestures become a gateway to question language, the body, and its communication capabilities. The deaf-mute girl’s hands become words, emotions, signals. The sudden and powerful ending turns everything upside down. “it is the only language in which no one / no one can shout” and Sign language, as a space of nonviolence and simultaneously the impossibility of shouting, speaks of communication, migration, and vulnerability with the simplicity of a real encounter. The free verse, predominantly short, with no strong punctuation, generates an almost diary-like spoken flow, and the internal caesura often coincides with a perceptual shift. Here the metapoetic function, “can you say ‘chat’?”, It means questioning language itself. It is the most explicitly linguistic poem of the entire Corpus : language, as both a limit and a protection, is explored in three directions: foreign language, sign language, and violence. Trenitalia It’s almost an aphorism with a poetic rhythm that grows like that of a moving train. Capturing the perspective of those who remain, the transition from the failure of language as a tool for repair—what is inherited are not only gestures, but silences—leads to an ending that is a true semantic short circuit: the gap in which the remaining subject is linguistically invisible. With The words I don’t know , the syntactic fracture intervenes to imitate the difficulty of saying with verses Very fragmented, proceeding through an accumulation of hypotheses on the impossibility of expression, not for lack of courage, but for the awareness that language can hurt or be insufficient. The final question is a sharp blow that turns grammar into emotion. Essential and painful in its disarming sincerity, the gloss is also a paradox that interrogates an impossible verbal form to say that grammar becomes destiny. Following, with an inexplicable final smile, Good morning, one of the most mature and complex poems in the mini-collection, vibrates with a restrained tenderness: a failed confession in which the poet chooses to remain in the present to express himself. In the tension between present and future, the lack of punctuation creates a continuous suspension supported by the strong use of direct speech; and here too, the everyday scene (breakfast) is elevated to a space of symbols, while the necessary lie becomes a moral choice. Protection and deferral, language, in a pure translation of the nonverbal, an act of love. What emerges is an intimate, gentle, and firm poetry in which language is never enough, yet it is the only way we can be close to others. The free meter and suspended syntax, as well as the rendering of the hesitant and precarious nature of speech, foster an emotional modesty, despite the difficulty of pronouncing “we,” and fit perfectly into the contemporary Slovenian poetic landscape. AG’s work fits into this vein, with translations created specifically for the magazine, providing us with a linguistic legacy designed to support our neighbors even in the expansion of silences. The precision of Tomada’s poetry is combined with the conciseness of the Slovenian language, capable of simultaneously enhancing clarity and semantic density. Having overcome cultural divides, Slovenian poetry in recent decades, from Šalamun to Komelj to Šteger, has developed an intimate yet non-denominational approach, quotidian yet imbued with a sense of care, focused on emotional interstices. Tomada, with his poetry of meticulous attention, fits perfectly into this horizon.