Roberto Roganti between Stories and Modenese Dialect Poetry
Interview by Maria Teresa De Donato
Dear fellow Readers,
Today I am happy to host my dear friend
and fellow Author and Blogger Roberto Roganti again.
We had a first interview with Roberto
about his passion for classical music, which led to the creation of The Classic Month column on this Blog and Virtual
Cultural Salon. Those who wish to do so can read it at the following link: https://holistic-coaching-dedonato.blogspot.com/2023/08/roberto-roganti-and-classic-month.html
Roberto, ad hoc from Modena, began his writing activity in 2007,
dealing with restaurant reviews for a site dedicated to cooking; during the
work, he embraced poetry, first in the language and then in the vernacular;
finally, he switched to yellow, which he now cultivates with ardor.
Today we will talk about his production of stories and dialect
poetry.
Enjoy the reading!
MTDD: Hello
Roberto, and welcome again for our second interview.
RR: Hi
Maria Teresa, you know I almost missed it… it's a period where I have a lot to
do and to write, and I'm getting lost in words.
MTDD: From your biography, we note a
notable production of stories and poems, also in dialect, as well as awards and
recognitions in this area.
In this regard, we also want to remind
the public that you are the founder of I Poetineranti. This group is dedicated
to reading their texts in public, in the language and the vernacular, that
organizes music-poetic shows in the vernacular, and that you were one of the
artistic directors of the Modenese Dialect Song Festival for three years.
RR: Well, let's say that's the past. The present is writing
detective stories and collaborating with an emerging publishing house. In
short, I'm an editor, and I create covers. That's something I like and allows
me, all in all, to pass the time. I confess that Roberto, President of I
Poetineranti, is no longer here, even if my former partners continue to call me
President, a bit like Kessie, the Milan player who, however, betrayed the
shirt. I haven't betrayed poetry, I don't have any more arguments to write
about, and I still have so much stuff to publish; I think I can live on my
income for a few decades if the good Lord lets me live beyond the century. I
confess that the microphone in hand, the gaze on the audience there in front,
the whispers and the giggles and the applause when I read my texts in Modena
dialect… I miss them a bit. Unfortunately, my city's lack of hunger for culture
has disaffected me in creating and proposing. I'm looking for solutions to
develop cultural spaces or presentations, but the public isn't there... in
hiding. I had reached the apotheosis with two friends; we had carried on the
Festival of Songs and Modenese Dialectal Poetry tradition, with significant
participation, especially from a singing point of view. In the last edition,
Nevruz, the son of Pierangelo Bertoli, Marco Baroni sang, and even Paolo
Mengoli came with the Bolognese dialect... We were already launched for the
2020 festival; we had found a free theater, which was not bad; we had important
sponsors and good contacts: Andrea Mingardi and Davide Van De Sfroos and others
from Reggio and Romagna; we had even thought of two evenings, instead... Covid
took the scene, and amen. You know the rest too.
MTDD: When and how were these
passions of yours born?
RR: I started writing restaurant reviews… and then, inside
me, I heard a little voice that inspired me with different words, other than
food for the stomach, but food for the soul. Slowly I wrote something, then
something else, and again and again… everything I saw inspired me; I wandered
through the parks with the dog and observed nature as I had never done before,
pouring out words at full blast… Not being able to take notes, I dictated
everything on my cell phone, then at home, I elaborated and edited. The dialect
has arrived for due evolution. My grandfather was an expert in Dialèt Mudnés…
All the most famous poets of the time passed through our house as well as
playwrights. They came to see him to have their writing corrected because of
the accents, which is a big commitment.
I won't name names because maybe you don't know them. Still, I
can mention one, a certain Guido Cavani, who, in addition to poetry, wrote
stories and wrote a beautiful book, Zebio Cotàl, which had a preface by the
great Pier Paolo Pasolini. Well, I was saying, my grandfather had already left
for quite a while when a letter arrived at our house, they invited him to a
reasonably significant dialect competition. I had recently tried my hand at
dialect; I was studying it as an autodidact. I read the rules, and I tried; I
only had five days to write three poems, and I did, and I participated. It was
a colossal debacle, but it was a stepping stone. I didn't do poorly compared to
the famous dialects who were in the race, but I considered that test as a
challenge, a challenge between me and myself... to see where I could get. And
I've come a long way. Third places, special mentions, some of my lovely poems
are still read at village festivals… I wrote a book, Al mê SLANG ed Módna, but
only to fix it in black and white; I had already won the challenge. Then as
time went by, I acted around a bit in provincial theaters, always organizing
nice things... then 2020 arrived, and we all got stuck.
MTDD: Can you tell us about the
literary awards and recognitions you have received so far?
RR: As I
mentioned before, many placings and recognitions in poetry, but I never
finished first, except in the very distant 1987, when I won a competition for
the ASL of Modena with a theme on the difference between contracted and private
healthcare… That year, I was taking a course to become a physiotherapist, and
having a doctor's father, I knew the two realities well, so for me, it was
child's play to write a suitable script. Well, let's face it... I had studied
Medicine and Surgery, so I mastered Italian well, and writing became relatively
easy.
MTDD: In your poem Attimi... (R. Roganti, 2009,
RISTAMPA 2020) you write:
"... eviscerating like magic
from the bottom of my soul
all those words
which I never am
managed to put
together ..."
Compliments! They are lovely and equally
significant verses.
How important is poetry for communication purposes? Why, in your
opinion, can it be more accessible for some people to express their feelings
and thoughts through verses rather than verbally?
RR: Look, I'm an atypical poet: very few poems about love,
which I consider a private thing, but a lot about the world around us. With my
profession, I had to observe my patients and understand their way of moving and
what problems they might have… and I applied the same method in daily life. I
watched, observed, meditated, and stared in my mind… then away, home, pen in
hand, and the words were impressed on the paper… simple, isn't it?
MTDD: Among your poetry collections, we
have Illusionist (2009, REPRESS 2020), Family (2010), and Groggologia (2010,
poems and stories).
How were they born, and what did you want to communicate to
readers with your literary productions?
RR: First, there was Attimi… another challenge, curious
indeed. It was my father's birthday in October 2009, and we were celebrating
his first 80 years... I had agreed with my brothers that we would make a
cumulative gift. At the end of the dinner, the gift arrived, but I didn't
appear, they had excluded me, and I don't know why... so I took it easy and
promised him a unique gift. I had already written some texts; I assembled them
into about thirty poems, all accompanied by my photographs. Thus was born my
first book of poetry. After that, it was an almost crazy descent: Illusionist,
Family, and then Groggology. I then called this my Opera Omnia; I
was almost sure that after that, I would stop there because it contained five
other anthologies that I hadn't published, along with six short stories I had
written in the meantime... I wrote the first one one night, in which I could
not sleep. The window was open, and some clouds surrounded the moon… I called
it The Moon in the Well. An unfortunate plot about the accidental death
of two children a few days after the end of a war. There was another, Mors
tua, vita mea, which I later transformed into a yellow.
MTDD: In 2013, you published a poetic
collection entitled Poetic Notes of a Fornicator of Souls, a rather intriguing
title.
Can you elaborate on the concept?
RR: Beautiful, beautiful cover, framing my grandfather in his
closet, playing solitaire, the only light being a table lamp with an
incandescent bulb that gave an aura of mystery. In the background, a calendar
on which the year could be read, the year of the photo obviously: 1982. Each
poem referred to a person I had known, who was alive or dead, public figures,
or people who had accidents… in short, I had inserted myself into the souls of
those who, for one thing, or another, had attracted my psychic curiosity.
Moreover, it was precisely in that period that I began to develop my poetry by
almost completely eliminating punctuation; I left only the three points instead
of the comma of more or less long spaces to make it clear which pause to keep
between one word and another, the 'newline was understood only because the word
on the following line was capitalized.
The Dead of the Twin Towers
(September 11, 2001)
Today again
I
have well printed
in my eyes
in
my mind
in
my heart
the
blurry figures
with uncertain outlines
from unnatural positions
of
those who threw themselves into the void
from
those windows
towards
certain death
to
escape certain death...
MTDD: Also, in the same year, your
collection of short stories, Ra…corti in scatola, was released.
What are its main themes and aspects?
RR: I
assembled all the stories I had written up to that moment, adding at the bottom
those already published in Groggologia. I still hadn't clear ideas about
what to do because I was slowly moving away from poetry. Meanwhile, I put them
there. I was finding that it was fun to write short stories, but I realized
that they were almost all crime/thriller stories… maybe that was a sign. Later,
I abandoned this path to devote myself to yellow literature. I want to discuss
it here, but I know a third interview will be dedicated to the topic, so follow
Maria Teresa De Donato, and you will find me.
MTDD: In 2016, you published an
autobiographical work, with a second edition released in 2021, entitled From
the high chair to high school in 100 Steps.
Can you share with our readers the
reasons, what you consider the five most significant steps taken in your life,
and which you have indicated in your literary work?
RR: The precise definition of this work is the one given to
it by a crime writer friend, much, much better than me, Luigi Guicciardi. This
collection contains 100 short stories about my life from the day of my birth to
the day of my thirteenth birthday. The definition that your friend gave you was
Postcards from real life. Fit like a glove. The characteristic of these
postcards is that the topics covered, usually very short, are narrated not in
the present as a memory, but in the present of the time, with the jargon and
modus of the child at that precise moment. I remembered and recalled the
feelings and thoughts that crossed my mind in various moments of my existence.
It wasn't easy, but it wasn't difficult either—concentration and trust in one's
memory. By the way, I have to tell you this… Although I was born in the center
of Modena, I went to live with my parents in a country town because my father
won the conduct there for my first six years of life. Since my father worked
under the table to get a transfer to the city, he knew very well that it was
useless for me to start elementary school in that country because I risked
beginning the year in one place and finishing it in another. So they made me
study as a private student; in fact, when we returned to the city, I enrolled
directly in the second elementary school at the age of 6; I was a year ahead
... I also completed my high school diploma when I had not yet turned 18 ...
Damn, I digress ... The teacher from where I went, I swear that the name
Ghisellini echoed in my head… the teacher Ghisellini… and so I published with
this name. When my mother read it, she telephoned me to announce that the
teacher was called Ghiselli… in any case, for me, she remains the teacher
Ghisellini!
MTDD: In 2019, you published Al mê SLANG
ed Módna, poems in the vernacular.
How important is it to publish in your own dialect and keep the
language, local culture, and traditions alive, and why?
RR: I
mentioned it before, but I can add that dialect is not a written language but a
spoken one. Unfortunately, talking about it, over time, we lose our memory;
better than fixing black and white and giving a sense of eternity to the
language of our ancestors, even if each of us stuffs it with improper terms
precisely because the originals have been lost. I have defined my dialect as
SLANG because it is miscellaneous... the Modena one that I studied with old
texts, the one from the lowland that my father knows who corrected me, and the
one from the mountains my wife speaks, and contributed to the corrections. If
you go around the city by now, the dialect could be better spoken by many, not
only from Modena but also foreigners... and they put their own into it. The
beauty is that despite everything, it is the international language of every
city; each one has its own, and everyone can understand anyone who speaks it.
MTDD: Would you like to share some
verses with our readers?
RR: I'd
like to give you an example; there's also the translation. Unfortunately, most
genuine dialectal poems, which are excellent, cute, and make you smile, are
long. I have chosen a sad one, which makes you think as an antithesis to the
fun of the dialect.
La nèbia
Quand la nèbia
l’è propria un nèbioun
La per un mur
La vin sô d’la tera
La va’fnir dapertot
Pian pian la quacia
gnianc fossa ‘na pela
tot al besti, al cà, al pianti
e ... nueter
Un mantèl d’uvàta
cal quacia tot,
al smorza i armour
e al mand adveinta
culour ed fumaneina,
tot bagnè,
ca-n-gh spôl gnianc vaddâr
E ci passa sul viso
come una fredda carezza
... giazeda cuma la mòrt
The fog
When the fog
is
impenetrable
It looks like
a wall
Leaven from
the ground
It creeps
everywhere
It slowly
covers
like a film
all the
animals, the houses, the plants
and … the
rest of us
A muffled coat
that covers everything,
muffles noise
and the world becomes
grey,
humid,
almost invisible
And it goes on our face
like a cold caress
… cold as death
MTDD: Is there a recurring theme in
this dialect work of yours, or what are its salient aspects anyway?
RR: No recurring theme, freewheeling poems. Jovial, sad,
thoughtful, nice... True dialect poetry is usually born in dialect; if you want
to fill a book, you must translate texts into Italian. The problem in
translating from language to vernacular is that many familiar terms exist
outside the dialect. Therefore, they must be tricked, and sentences are slipped
in instead of words.
MTDD: In 2020, you landed on the
collection of poems Capsicum, the lyrics of suffering.
Would you like to present it to us and, without revealing too
much, explain its contents in general terms?
RR: I just
reprinted this collection of "heavy" poems, by the way. They are
particular; I have defined them as 3M: Illness, Evil, and Death. Illness
and Death are poems that deal with everyday subjects of suffering:
autism, madness, death of a relative, Parkinson's, funerals… I don't think
there are any cheerful ones. On the other hand, Evil is the heaviest
section. It is not recommended for children under 20, those over 60, and very
sensitive people. The characteristic of this section is that I have immersed
myself in the various characters, trying to describe their moves, thoughts, and
actions. Every time I played the bad guy, I felt like a chameleon, an actor. I
became a sniper, a drug addict, a rapist, a pedophile, a murderous driver, a
thief, a fugitive, a serial killer, a suicide, a pimp, an alcoholic, and even a
prostitute… It wasn't easy, but I got an excellent result. An example, in the
poem The Dose, I speak of a drug addict who finally finds what he is
looking for. At home, he digs into the only place with a small space left ... I
showed it to a friend who is an ex-drug addict, who confirmed everything for
me. He complimented me on the courage to describe the atrocities to which they
are forced and, above all, the abundance of details.
MTDD: Before concluding... I know you have participated in GnaM
Year 1, 2011, and GnaM Year 2, 2013, eno-gastro-chatter.
What exactly are these "eno-gastro-chatters"? Were
literary works presented or specific topics discussed, and if so, which ones?
RR: It
wasn't a show, just the story of my three years of drinking. Let me explain. In
2007 Modena, a webmaster, created Gusta Modena. It is a site where those
who participate write reviews of the restaurants where they have gone to eat,
trying to enter as many details as possible, put their feelings, the price
paid, and finally give a vote in chef's hats. Having good IT knowledge, I
quickly find myself from a user who sends reviews to a user who writes directly
on the site and moderates the others. Thus a group of acquaintances is created
of virtual friends who occasionally become real and meet for tasting dinners.
Three years in which I interacted with my river reviews, where I also talk
about the history of the local areas; I share my poems, my cooking recipes,
information on particular foods, or more or less fine wines in the dedicated
sections. And over three years, I reviewed more than 200 restaurants, from 2007
to 2010, the year in which I had a healthy change of mind: due to a review
rejected by a new moderator, who made little ballots, let's not say which ones,
I decided to drop the 'bone, and I'm gone. The following year I thought well of
recovering my contributions; I noticed an air of crisis in the organization,
also due to that factor that pushed me to abandon; other subscribers who
thought like me followed me. It began a slow decline, and to this day, it has
stalled, but those times have never returned. Gusta Modena's hardcore had been
snubbed and forced to leave, but the ball had deflated by leaving.
So I recovered everything I wrote,
cataloged the system, and divided it into three episodes, making them look like
three moments of a love story:
Volume One, When
and how love manifested itself,
August 2007 - August 2008, First year: the courtship, The dawn, and the break-in
Volume Two, When and how love was consolidated, August 2008 - August 2009, Second year:
coexistence, Confirmations, and promotion
Volume Three, When and How Love Sagged, August 2009 - August 2010, Year Three: The
Breakup, Betrayals, and Separation
MTDD: Roberto,
how can those who wish to follow you, contact you, or buy your publications do
so?
RR: To follow me, they can find me on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/roberto.roganti.52/
or on my blog: https://poetineranti.blogspot.com
Regarding my publications, as for those
we have talked about, almost all are out of print or out of stock.
They can still be purchased directly from me: Al mê SLANG ed
Módna and Capsicum; you can also order this online here:
https://seguiletueparole.it/prodotto/roberto-roganti-capsicum/
However, I expect the reprint of Groggologia,
minus the stories (in the following interview, I'll tell you why) and Poetic
notes of a fornicator of souls.
MTDD: Thank
you, Roberto, for having participated in this interview and for having
presented part of your literary production, namely the one linked to the poems
and stories you have written up to now.
I look forward to our third interview to
present your production of mysteries to the public.
RR: This, too, is slowly evolving. I'll leave you with a
gem... during the covid period, as you know, there was little to do, so I
wrote..., and I wrote six long and 15 short mysteries to be developed... so
we'll have some to talk about, and you'll have to be able to read if you love
the genre... Fast, non-demanding, easy-to-handle thrillers with characters that
really exist.
.jpg)
