Studio Homo Radix

TIZIANO FRATUS: A POET MIXING VISIONS OF NATURE AND HUMANITY

Tiziano Fratus grew up looking at and listening the elements of nature. Long summers alone in the wide plane of Lumbardy and after among the beautiful hills of Monferrato, in Piedmont. As a young adult he begin to surf in the woods and ancient forests of the alps. Reaching the kingdom of monumental conifers in California he found a new reason, a new idea of identity. So new trees and roots and leaves blossomed on the paper.

Among his poetry collections Il molosso (The Molossus, three editions – Edizioni Torino Poesia), Il respiro della terra (The Breath of the land – Edizioni Torino Poesia), Nuova Poesia Creaturale (New Creatural Poetry – Edizioni Torino Poesia), Un quaderno di radici (A Notebook of Roots – Feltrinelli), Musica per le foreste (Music for the Forests – First edition Mondadori, second edition Aboca), Vergine dei nidi (Virgin of the Nests – Feltrinelli). Last poetry production is influenced by the idea of the minimalist sacred music, inspired by artists as Arvo Part, Harold Budd, Ten Holt, Stefan Micus, Phjilip Glass and John Tavener. He works to create poems “in a shape of seeds, leaves and trees”, “miniated forests” as he like to consider them. This writing series embraces the antology Poesie creaturali. Un bosco in versi (Creatural Poems. A Wood in Lines – Libreria della Natura, Milan, 2019) and the collection Sogni di un disegnatore di fiori di ciliegio (Dreams of a Cherry Flowers Sketcher – Aboca, Sansepolcro, 2020).

Fratus’ poetry has been translated into ten languages and published by international magazines and journals in twenty countries; he has been selected for the international platform Versopolis that connect largest european poetry festivals. In 2010 Creaturing, a selection of his poetry, has been published in the US by Marick Press and presented across the country, in 2017 a new selection titled Eleven Root Poems has been translated and published in UK by Five Seasons Press and presented in Ledbury Poetry Festival. In 2020 his poetic voice is published in the Uk in the international Versopolis Anthology Europe in Poems, Arc Publications, embracing sxt new poets. Fratus is also columnist for newspapers and he’s living in a little village at the foot of the Italian Alps; he was honored by Cinemambiente Festival with Acorn Prize and by International Prize Il Ceppo for his Green and New Nature Literature.

>>> The Forests Weaver – A selection of 53 poems in a shape of seeds, leaves and trees
>>> Listen the poem Selfportrait of Landscape with Mulberry | Duration: min. 0.35
>>> Read Baby Girl, a poem to celebrate the Holocaust Memorial Day
>>> Read The Woody Womb of Buddha, a sort of definition in verses of the Silvo-Rural-Rustic Buddhism
>>> Listen Poetry Expo 23 – Roundtable What we Pray when we walk into Nature
>>> Listen Festival of Hope – Roundtable A Forest of Words, A Forest of Silences
>>> Forthcoming: Forest Heart, a new selection of poems in Lussemburg
>>> Read the poem Sutra of the Trees

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NEWS

LONDON | The European Magazine The Riveter has dedicated a new issue to New Italian Literature, embracing novelists, essayists, poets, critics and much more. In the poetry section there is a composition by Tiziano Fratus, Notes on Siberian Macroeconomics, originally published in Italy in 2009 (in the collection Il respiro della terra, The Breath of the Earth), translated into english by Gail McDowell and published in the anthology Double Skin (Ethos Books, Singapore). The Italian Riveter has been presented at London Bookfair and at The Italian Institute of Culture in London. You can download free the pdf and have a good reading!
>>> https://www.eurolitnetwork.com/the-riveter/

BERLIN, HAUS FUR POESIE, AKADEMIE FUR LYRYKKRITIC | Marielle Matthee realized a wonderfull videopoem dedicated to The Forests Weaver by Tiziano Fratus: she introduces readers and listeners to Fratus’ Dendrosophy and Poetry, reading some poems in a shape of seeds and leaves and trees.
>>> https://www.kanalfuerpoesie.org/medien/akademie-fuer-lyrikkritik-fokus-italien-marielle-matthee-zu-tiziano-fratus/

VERSOPOLIS | The European and International Festival Brave New Literature (2022, january to march) guested a roundtable dedicated to Eco-Poetry: Maggie Wang has argued with the British Vahni Anthony Capildeo, the American Johanna Klink and the Italian Tiziano Fratus about the potentials and limits of what we intend for Eco-Poetry. Here the video:
>>> https://www.versopolis.com/multimedia/video/1168/on-eco-poetry

OXFORD | «With its intellectual precision and astute observations of contemporary society, Fratus’ work represents some of the most important aspects of ecopoetics»: Maggie Wang, director of the Oxford University Poetry Society, wrote an article dedicated to Poetry in an Age of Ecological Crisis; One of the voice she quoted is an old Fratus’ poem, Notes on Siberian Macroeconomics. You could read it on Versopolis website.
>>> Poetry in an Age of Ecological Crisis

CANADA | A new international anthology: A World Anthology of Border Poetry is out now in Canada, edited by Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly and Natasa Sardzoska for a special issue of the review Borders in Globalisation, it embraces 30 poets around the globe. Tiziano Fratus is part of them:
>>> https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/bigreview

JAPAN | A Honorable Mention has been gift to the poem A Drop and a Temple Inside / Una goccia e un tempio by Tiziano Fratus, at the last international contest of Writers in Kyoto. Here the list of winners:
>>> https://www.writersinkyoto.com/2021/05/sixth-annual-kyoto-writing-competition-results/

SOUTH AMERICA | A selection of five poems from the collection Poesie creaturali | Poemas creaturales have been translated into spanish by poet and professor Marisa Martinez Pérsico and published on 2019 in Mexico, in °Circulo de Poesia°,  and in 2021 in Santiago del Chile, in the beautiful poetry journal °Aerea° (#15), with the title Diario de una rana pescadora y otros poemas. The poems are Fosiles | Fossili, Decias que Hegel siempre tiene razon | Dicevi che Hegel ha sempre ragione, Un poco de tierra en el fondo de los bolsillos | Una porzione di terra in fondo alle tasche, Diario de una rana pescadora | Diario d’una rana pescatrice, Escena de mujer con leche | Scena di donna con latte.
>>> https://circulodepoesia.com/2019/03/poesia-italiana-tiziano-fratus/ >>>
https://rileditores.com/tienda/aerea-15-revista-hispanoamericana-de-poesia/

EUROPE | Tiziano Fratus has partecipeted at Festival of Hope – International Poetry Festival last january for an event titled A Forest of Words, a Forest of Silences – Poets Talk about their Roots. Nature and Roots are important issues in the contemporary political and social landscape. They are also vital themes in contemporary literature and poetry. In this event, three artists working in the New and Old Worlds will discuss how they recount inspiration and write about what we call commonly Nature. The event will be hosted by Professor Serenella Iovino (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill), one of the leading figures in environmental humanities. Three Poets: the American Ann Fischer-Wirth, the Amazon born Juan Carlos Galeano and the Italian dendrosopher Tiziano Fratus. In collaboration with Versopolis and Cinemambiente.
>>> Festival of Hope – A forest of Words

UK | And here the cover of the international anthology Europe in Poems, out now in the Uk by Arc Publication!

Materials

>>> Tiziano Fratus – A new poetic voice in Europe – Versopolis
>>> Creaturing – Fratus collection in the US – Marick Press
>>> Double Skin – 5 Italian Poets and 5 Singaporean Poets – Ethos Books
>>> Eleven Root Poems – The book, Five Season Press in Hereford
>>> Tiziano Fratus guest at Ledbury Poetry Festival 2017
>>> Tiziano Fratus guest at Struga Poetry Evenings 2018
>>> Read 3 poems (bilingual) in «Conversation Poetry Quarterly» (UK)
>>> Creaturing – Ilya Kaminski & Kathryn Farris, Web del Sol
>>> Creatures, Inside and Out: Tiziano Fratus’s Creaturing by Michale O’ Sullivan, Cha: an Asian Literary Journal
>>> Creaturing reviewed by Paul Martinez Pompa – Big Bridge

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ABOUT HIS POETRY

«Creaturing by Tiziano Fratus is the book of a citizen who is able to look at history through its abstractions and details and find music where others saw propaganda, find humanity where others saw statistics, find remmbering alive and afire, among things too many of us are ready to forget» Ilya Kaminski & Kathryn Farris – Web del Sol / Poetry International

«Fratus’ poetry explores what it means to be a young italian poet today in the shadow of historical, cultural and traditional forces» Francesco Levato – The Poetry Center of Chicago

«Francesco Levato’s translation into english of Tiziano Fratus’ collection Creaturing is stunning in its seemingly effortless and lyrically precise momentum. There is non question, this is an important collection and a most impressive and accomplished translation» Malena Morling – University of North Carolina

«The book’s title, Creaturing, begets further irony as we come to see humanity itself as a king of creature that engages in all sorts of vile behavior white actual animals, by contrast, are rendered as potentially noble beings» Paul Martinez Pompa – Big Bridge

LAST BOOKS

– Wo Lyrik Zuhause ist. Tiziano Fratus – Publisher: Edition Aramo in Vienna
– L’Italia è un giardino / Italy is a Garden – Publisher: Laterza in Rome/Bari
– Il sole che nessuno vede / The Sun which Nobody sees – Publisher: Ediciclo in Portogruaro
– Poèmes / Poems / Poesie – Publisher: La Traductière in Paris
– Vergine dei nidi. poesie creaturali / Virgin of the Nests. Creatural poems – Publisher: Feltrinelli in Milan
– Eleven root poems / Undici poesie radice – Publisher: Five Seasons Press in Hereford
– I giganti silenziosi / Silent Giants – Publisher: Bompiani in Milan
– Manuale del perfetto cercatore d’alberi (a new edition) – Publisher: Feltrinelli in Milan
– Il bosco è un mondo / Wood is a World (Essay) – Publisher: Einaudi in Turin
– Waldo Basilius (a gothic fairy-tale) – Publisher: Pelledoca in Milan
– Landscapes, Natures, Ecologies. Italy and the Environmental Humanities – Publisher: University of Virginia Press in Charlottesville
– Poesie creaturali. Un bosco in versi / Creature Poems. A wood in verses – Publisher: Libreria della Natura in Milan
– Giona delle sequoie. Viaggio fra i giganti rossi del Nord America / Jonas of the Sequoias. Travel among Red Giants in North America – Publisher: Bompiani in Milan
– Interrestràre. Quaderno di meditazioni / A notebook of meditations – Publisher: Lindau in Turin
– Storia di un albero / History of a Tree (bilingual edition) – Publisher: Silvana in Turin
– Sogni di un disegnatore di fiori di ciliegio / Dreams of a Cherry Flowers Sketcher – Publisher: Aboca in Sansepolcro
– Europe in Poems. The Versopolis Anthology – Publisher: Arc Publications in the UK

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NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL EVENTS

Tiziano Fratus ha been invited by national and international Festivals (Singapore Writers Festival, Comedie du Livre in Montpellier, Literatur und Wein in Krems – Osterreich, Druskininkai Poetic Fall in Lithuania, Turin Book Fair, Genoa International Poetry Festival, Ars Poetica Bratislava, Poestate Lugano, Bookcity Milan, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Mantua Festivaletteratura, Firenze Book Fair, Rome Ritratti di Poesia Festival, Milan Tempo di Libri, Torino Spiritualità, Goran’s Spring in Zagreb, Struga Poetry Evenings), Italian Institutes of Culture (Singapore, Chicago, Lisbon, Marsille, Amsterdam, Lugano, Edimburgh), Universities (Columbia – New York, Vermont – Burlington, Illinois – Chicago, State University – San Diego, Statale – Torino), cultural centres (Book Center – Minneapolis, Casa Fernando Pessoa – Lisbon, Felix Kulpa Art Gallery – Santa Crux, Jersey Arts Centre – Jersey), botanical gardens and parks.

[All the poems reproduced in this page are translated by Eleonora Matarrese]