Contributor to our first issue, poet Elisa Biagini, has been busy. Busier than usual. In addition to teaching creative writing and art history courses at US universities in Florence and hosting a longstanding poetry workshop for dedicated Italian poets and coordinating an ambitious poetry festival in Florence called Voci Lontane Voci Sorelle, Elisa was invited to Australia in August to participate in the Queensland Poetry Festival. Next, she’ll be flying to Japan for more poetry, and some Teaching.

This photo of Elisa was taken at the Cartavetra gallery opening where she currently has a conceptual piece (the cutlery seen here) in the collective exhibition entitled “Ruvidezze.” There will be a closing event, open to the public, for this exhibition on Dec 5 with drink and music, and a panel conversation with some of the artists.

Three filmmakers from Poggio a Caiano traveled to Charlottesville VA this weekend to show their quirky, wonderful film Sogni di Gloria (“Daydreaming”) at the Virginia Film Festival.

The filmmakers, Lorenzo Orlandini (Screenwriter), Patrizio Gioffredi (Director), and Duccio Burberi (Director of Photography), are part of the ten-member Tuscan filmmaking collective John Snellinberg (an invented “person” behind the group’s productions). They represented Poggio a Caiano, Charlottesville’s Sister City, before a packed theatre and followed the film with a lively Q & A.

Check out the trailer.

Bravi!

To many of us, the name of Sebastian Faulks is heavily associated with the conflicts of the past century. His famous trilogy, made up of Charlotte Gray, The Girl at the Lion d’Or and the infamous Birdsong – which has sold over 5 million copies in the UK alone – has cemented his formidable reputation as one of our finest living novelists, with a rare ability to combine genuine popular appeal with serious literary acclaim. It’s unsurprising, then, that Where My Heart Used to Beat, his highly enjoyable thirteenth novel, looks back toward the wars once again. After his father died in the First World War, which allows Faulks to explore its effect, the protagonist, Robert, is catapulted into the Anzio Landings of WWII in southern Italy.
This passage alone is decisive proof that Faulks is a master of his craft, as the focus on the small details, combined with jittery sentence structures that carefully mimic the chaos around Robert, is one of the most profoundly moving passages of prose written in the last twenty years – most probably since Faulks placed Stephen Wraysford in the battlefield at the Somme.

To read more of this review from former TSP contributor Nicholas Chapman, please check out the full article on The Bubble.

Look what we found at the recent art opening of Ruvidezze, the inaugural group exhibition at Brunella Baldi’s elegant gallery Cartavetra in Via Maggio.

Naturally, this sculpture by illustrator and artist Maurizio Olivotto caught our eye.

In September and October, The Sigh Press partnered with the Stibbert Museum and the Angeli del Bello to hold a series of art-related events for children and adults in Stibbert Park; the Comune di Firenze also sponsored the initiative. Integral to each event was the backdrop of Stibbert Park: there was an art class for kids (“Make Your Own Coat of Arms”), an improv concert by musicians Francesco Ronchetti, Julian Spizz and Luigi Gagliardi where texts written by concert-goers in the Park were used as lyrics, and an afternoon of plein air painting and writing.

Below is a piece of “plein air writing” by Molly McIlwrath written that day, inspired by “The Language of Flowers”, a handwritten book celebrating the anniversary of a husband to his wife for their 50 year anniversary on the 8th August 1913.

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