I like Gary Ciocco. When I first met him he was telling the world how devoted he was to me so naturally I liked him.
Actually, Gary and I met in Hanover, Pa. shortly after I returned from Iraq and started reading in local venues. Since then we’ve become pretty good friends. Well, today he sent me an e-mail to tell me that he was chosen as the first runner-up for the 2007 Bordighera Poetry Prize. Congratulations Gary!
The Bordighera Poetry Prize is a contest for Italian-American poets and the goal is to select a prize-winner for publication.
(Source) The prize, consisting of book publication in bilingual edition by Bordighera, Inc., is dedicated to finding the best manuscripts of poetry in English by an American poet of Italian descent and surname or middle maiden surname, to be translated upon selection by the judges into quality translations of modern Italian, for the benefit of American poets of Italian ancestry and the preservation of the Italian language.
The winner wins $1,000 and publication. Gary took runner-up. Close, but no cigar. Still, it’s an honor to come so close.
Gary Ciocco’s poetry has grown on me. I must confess, when I first heard him read his poetry more than a year ago I wasn’t real impressed, but I’ve heard him read some of his poems several times since then and his presentation has improved a lot. It also makes a big difference to actually read the poems on the page and after doing that I like them even more. Here’s a sampling of one of the runner ups:
MJ’s
(After E.E. Cummings)MJ’s
deflated
who used to glide and shoot through air and space
like an organic coil
like a friendly, deadly cobra
and leaped&spun&plottedhiswaytowickedwealth
from our need for admiration-cum-inflation.
our new desire for a leaper-come-lately.Lord
he was bigandslim muscledandtrim blackandbald
and oh so lofty,
smiling
beautiful
photogenically.What I’d like to know is
what will it feel like to walk on land
with a limp
without a father
superman dunker
salt of the earth?
Hope you liked it as much as I did. Better luck next time Gary. Now you’re famous.
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Kudoes to Gary, whose performance I witnessed on numerous occasions years and years ago. Glad his performance has improved from those days. After all, reading one’s poetry is comparable to acting, you can’t just read, you have to *read.* And this Bordighera Poetry Prize sounds very cool, esp with the bilingual publication of the authors’s work.
Best,
Claire Kirch
Midwest Correspondent
Publishers Weekly
A very powerful young voice in the Italian-American community is Cristogianni Borsella. This youngster’s passion for social justice and cultural continuity has produced three outstanding works to date: ON PERSECUTION, IDENTITY & ACTIVISM, FASCIST ITALY, and MEDOCENTRIC. His last work MEDOCENTRIC is a collection of poetry which emphasizes Mediterranean ethnic identity in an often cold and “rootless” Anglo-Saxon society. His works can be found on Amazon by typing CRISTOGIANNI into the search engine.