Carpe Diem #970 Italy

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Europe is an awesome continent I think and therefore its a pleasure to be on this month's ginko straight through Europe. Today our next stop is Italy, also one of the co-founders of the EU (these co-founder countries are known as the Inner Six).
Italy home-country of one of our CDHK family-members, Georgia (a.k.a. Bastet), and the country were the European Haiku Society (EHS) is based. The EHS started in 2015 and this year the EHS celebrates its 1st anniversary. As you can see in the right of our Kai, I am a member of the EHS and there were already several haiku created by me published in our weekly newsletter Akisame. The EHS also has a seasonly magazine named Makoto, but this magzine is only for members.

Italian Flag (referred to as "Il Tricolore"

All that I know of Italy I know from reading, the Internet, movies and so on. I have never been to that country, but as I think about Italy than I think of the Maffia, Pizza, the Pope, haute couture, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

However ... all nice things and persons to talk about, but I love to take you on a trip to Tuscany, in the middle part of Italy, close to the Alps.

Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in central Italy with an area of about 23,000 square kilometers (8,900 square miles) and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants (2013). The regional capital is Florence (Firenze).
Tuscany is known for its landscapes, traditions, history, artistic legacy and its influence on high culture. It is regarded as the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and has been home to many figures influential in the history of art and science, and contains well-known museums such as the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. Tuscany produces wines, including Chianti, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Morellino di Scansano and Brunello di Montalcino. Having a strong linguistic and cultural identity, it is sometimes considered "a nation within a nation".

Flag of Tuscany
 

Tuscany has a unique artistic legacy, and Florence is one of the world's most important water-colour centres, even so that it is often nicknamed the "art palace of Italy" (the city is also believed to have the largest concentration of Renaissance art and architecture in the world). Painters such as Cimabue and Giotto, the fathers of Italian painting, lived in Florence and Tuscany, as well as Arnolfo and Andrea Pisano, renewers of architecture and sculpture; Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, forefathers of the Renaissance; Ghiberti and the Della Robbias, Filippo Lippi and Angelico; Botticelli, Paolo Uccello, and the universal genius of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

Several famous writers and poets are from Tuscany, most notably Florentine author Dante Alighieri. Tuscany's literary scene particularly thrived in the 13th century and the Renaissance.

In the 13th century, there were several major allegorical poems. One of these is by Brunetto Latini, who was a close friend of Dante. His Tesoretto is a short poem, in seven-syllable verses, rhyming in couplets, in which the author professes to be lost in a wilderness and to meet with a lady, who represents Nature, from whom he receives much instruction.

 

Brunetto-Latini

 

I was surprized to read about Brunetto Latini's "Tesoretto" in which he used seven (7) syllables verses, rhyming in couplets. I immediately thought about our own haiku (and tanka) in which we also use lines with 7 syllables. Just a nice "link" between Italy and haiku.

I found a nice series of Italian haiku. I couldn't retrieve an emailaddress to ask permission, so I publish them, but if you know one of the haiku poets used, please ask them if it's okay to use their haiku here at CDHK. Of course the rights of the used work stays with the authors. By the way the following three Italian Haijin won prizes in "The Basho Award" contest, which takes place once a year organized by the Italian Haiku Association (IHA).

Daniele Brancati

Brezza serale
i girasoli esausti
chinano il capo

Evening breeze
the exhausted sunflowers
bow their heads 

Sunflowers in Tuscany

Donatella Nardin

Fiori notturni -–
ne immortalo in un selfie
la caducita’

Night flowers
I catch their transiency
in a selfie

Maurizio Petruccioli

Stelle cadenti –
cercando un quadrifoglio
mi scordo il cielo

Falling stars
looking for a clover
I forget the sky

And on Daily Haiku I found a nice article in which the well known haiku poetess Antonella Filippi from Italy writes haiku about the seasons. An example of her work will follow hereafter. I couldn't retrieve an emailaddress or something to ask Antonella for permission. Of course the rights of the published work stays with her.

 

Antonella Filippi

ESTATE / SUMMER

luce del falò
la mia ombra danza
a mia insaputa

the light of a bonfire
my shadow dances
unknown to me

un guscio vuoto
consumato dal canto
rossa cicala

empty shell
consumed by its chirping
a red cicada

© Antonella Filippi

 

A wonderful episode this was to create, sorry for being this late with publishing. This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until June 10th at noon (CET). I will publish our new episode, our first CD-Special by Joyce Lorenson, our "New Life"-kukai winner, later on. For now ... I hope I have inspired you to create haiku.