Poetry
The Partnership Studies Group has a particular focus on the transformative power of imagination. As Einstein says, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world”. And David Malouf, in An Imaginary Life, states: “We are free to transcend ourselves. If we have the imagination for it”. Poetry, art and music are instruments of beauty and truth, of openness, dedication and care towards the Other.
Although Póiesis today is often considered as an imaginative contemplation detached from the world, from immemorial time it has always been “action”. Indissolubly linked to voice and song, it is a spell; in ritual actions to interact with the world it becomes a drama; in Romanticism, where the poet is Vates, poet and prophet, it is a teaching of how to “live in the world”.
The PSG’s Actions for Poetry
The Partnership Studies Group has officially nominated Francesco Benozzo for the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024
The PSG has officially nominated Francesco Benozzo for the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024. Benozzo is a member of the PSG and of the international scientific committee of the pioneering Master of Partnership Studies and Native Traditions (University of Udine). He is an internationally acclaimed Italian lyric poet, harpist, composer, singer and bard, ethnophilologist (a discipline he founded), dialectologist, ethnographer, and anthropologist. His poetic work is extraordinary, penetrating and vast, and it is centred on the intense and diffused exploration of places, with their poetic mappings of the self and the world, across the Apennines, Galicia, Wales, the Lake District and the Faroe Islands. The most distinguished facet of his production is the retrieval and valorisation of world native traditions, through his scientific research, his poetry and performative poems with his Bardic and Celtic harps. His approach to life and literature has always been characterised by an active engagement in intellectual debate and public life, an artistic practice of critical thinking and civil dissidence he believes to be a fundamental role and mission of the artist. He is the author of long epic-oral poems translated into the main languages.
Among his 800 publications, the international book series ALL (Forum editrice Universitaria Udine) has published three significant volumes he authored: the latest bilingual edition of his poems is Sciamanica. Poemi dai confini dei mondi / Poems from the Borders of the Worlds (2023); a new “defence of poetry”, The Ridge and the Song. Sailing the Archipelago of Poetry (2022); and a groundbreaking poetic translation of the ancient Welsh Bards, Poeti della marea. Canti bardici gallesi dal VI al X secolo (2022). Here Benozzo highlights how the oral and sung performances of these Celtic poets were characterised by a visionary inclination, strongly tied to the elements of the physical landscape, and by a profound sapiential and animistic yearning which is unparalleled in the Western world. Attached to the book there is a CD in which the author performs with his bardic harp and reinterprets some of the compositions he translated.
Benozzo creatively traverses different genres with outstanding beauty and originality, balancing visionary power with an in-depth reading of landscapes experienced through and in the physical body. Benozzo has the inimitable capacity to recapture the original word when it first named the world. Poem after poem, unfailingly he enacts a revolution of the very idea of poetry: with his atemporal and universal dimension, he is the Homer of post-modernity.
Therefore, the PSG has officially nominated Francesco Benozzo for the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature with an emphasis on both the above and other unflagging intellectual and poetic achievements.
GALA, the internationally renowned Global Academy of Liberal Arts, supports Benozzo’s nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024. Click here.
Poets from the Frontier international prize
In accordance with the topic used over past years within the creative and partnership world, in this new project, entitled Poets from the Frontier, ALL, in collaboration with the Partnership Studies Group, aims at creating a prize, which can hopefully be awarded year after year. The prize aims at assessing and enhancing poetic expression and creative writing, with the objective of traversing interdisciplinary borders, exploring complex and mutable landscapes, tracing paths in ‘different’ territories, from local to global, in order to achieve an experimental multidisciplinary, poetic and artistic laboratory, where a caring and partnership culture may be cultivated, according to the principles proposed by the Partnership Studies Group. Since poetry expresses itself in different languages and suggestive forms, like the multi-coloured tiles of a mosaic, the prize is also intended for other ‘arts’, such as figures of the constant presence of the humane, indelible traces of a route where being and becoming meet, iridescent and magical textures of spiritual and artistic itineraries, as in the Songlines of Aboriginal Australians, or other ‘singers of boundaries’. Poetry, in particular that of minority languages, is often a song with manifold voices, narrating stories of strength, courage and great love for one’s roots, language, tradition and culture.
Parallel to the literary dimension, poetry enacts a series of different functions that go from the representation of identity, to educational practices, to shamanic rituals for the community. The prize intends to promote a new awareness of these multiple roles and meanings of poetry in our contemporary world. It aims at valorising figures of poets and artists who operate across borders, among different practices, genres, cultures, and who recover artistic forms which are menaced or have disappeared, who experiment by taking poetry into new territories, or bringing it ‘home’ from places which may seem far away.
The prize will be awarded for the internationally renowned activity of scholars, artists or poets of recognised merit, whose work embodies an open and bold interdisciplinary vision from a cultural, literary, poetic, linguistic and scientific point of view.
The prize will be awarded according to the undisputable evaluation of an international Commission expressly established and chaired by Prof. Antonella Riem, University of Udine, Italy. The Commission is thus composed: Honorary Professor Sue Ballyn University of Barcellona, Spain, Prof. Franco Cardini, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History, Institute of Social and Human Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy; Professor Emerita Coral Ann Howells, University of Reading United Kingdom; Prof. Anselmo Paolone, University of Udine, Italy.
The prize may be bestowed also in further editions to internationally renowned scholars, artists and poets.
WINNER 2022: FRANCESCO BENOZZO
In 2022, the Partnership Studies Group Committee (USA, Australia, UK, France and Italy), chaired by Prof. Riem, awards the International Prize “Poets from the Frontier” to Prof. Francesco Benozzo. Benozzo has been a permanent candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature since 2015, with nominations made public by PEN International and is also the Italian candidate for the prestigious Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture. He is the author of long epic-oral poems translated into the main languages, including the recent Autoktonia. Poema del suicidio (2021), Máelvarstal. Poema della creazione dei mondi (2020), Poema dal limite del mondo (2019) and Poeti della marea. Canti bardici gallesi dal VI al X secolo (2022).
The eminent critic Lope Estrada thus describes Benozzo: “Visionary, unsettling, epic, windy, Benozzo has the inimitable capacity to recapture the original word when it first named the world. […]. Poem after poem, unfailingly and amazingly this poet enacts a revolution of the very idea of poetry: with his atemporal and universal dimension, he is the Homer of post-modernity”.
On July 1, in the garden of Palazzo Antonini, University of Udine, Prof. Riem awarded the Prize and read the motivations:
“Francesco Benozzo originally traverses different genres with outstanding beauty and originality, balancing visionary power with an in-depth reading of landscapes experienced through and in the physical body. This occurs through a ‘spontaneous adherence’ to their rhythm, as a voice and lyric experience of the magnificence of the natural world. Thanks to his precious ethnophilological, social, cultural work and his civic engagement he succeeds in reviving ancient native traditions, giving voice to ancestral landscapes, at the margins and ridges he explores as an itinerant walker, moving like an acrobat along a fine line, at the edge of mythology, lyric and song. His idea of poetry is significant and original. Benozzo’s poetry builds ‘unusual mansions’ for itself; his poetry, as he says, ‘manifests while subtracting itself’. It takes form always on high cliffs and at the edge of emerged lands, in a timeless and universal dimension, which, at the rhythms of the poet’s walking, sets the step for a positive restlessness, erratic and nomadic, open to a dialogue with places and the ancient Bards’ song”.
From more info on the prize, click here.
International Project 2023 “Imagining Blue Embodied Seascapes: Transdisciplinary Dialogues with the Mediterranean Sea”
“Imagining Blue Embodied Seascapes: Transdisciplinary Dialogues with the Mediterranean Sea” is an intermedial project that intends to be a reflection on the archive of the Mediterranean Sea from an eco-critical, ecological and “partnership” perspective that speaks of beauty, care and encounter. The languages of the project are multiple because they start from poetry, and mingle across music, figurative art, video art and performance.
Direction and Production: Dr. Mattia Mantellato (University of Udine). Supervisors Prof. Antoinette Camilleri Grima (University of Malta) and Prof. Antonella Riem (University of Udine). With the support of The Partnership Studies Group (PSG) of the University of Udine. Poetry: Maria Grech Ganado and Simone Galea. Visual Artist: Kamy Aquilina. Performers: Mattia Mantellato, Adeline Chevrier-Bosseau and Giulia Baratella. Music and Sound Composition: Filippo Franceschini. Recording and Editing: James Moffett and José Fogliarini.
Artistic Project 2019 PATRIAE: Journey in the Patriarchate of Aquileia
This historical docufilm in Friulian language, directed by Marco D’Agostini in collaboration with ALL (Association of Graduates in Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Udine) and the PSG focuses on the journey of Carolina, a 14 year old girl who carries out a research of an important phase of the history of Aquileia and collects the traces of the most significant phases of three centuries of events (1077-1420): from the foundation of the city, through its progress as a political entity with a fluid and syncretic religion, until its decline due to the alliance of part of the Friulian nobility with the Venetians. The project mingles together different art forms, from photography to comics, dance and music.
Artistic Project 2018 LivingBodies@BlurringRealities
As part of Conoscenza in Festa 2018, the project dialogues poetically with the city of Udine through installations and performances centered on the connection between the physicality of the body and the immaterial and blurred reality of the digital world. Organized by: Partnership Studies Group (University of Udine), collective DMAV and Alessandro Rinaldi, the visual artists Tiziana Pers and Isabella Pers, the choreographer and performer Mattia Mantellato and the Italian School Cantastorie (La Voce delle Fiabe) with Piera Giacconi.
Project 2006: Words from the Edge, Indigenous Voices
Multidisciplinary, Creative and Experimental Project 2004: Other Signs, Others Voices