Last Thursday, as part of the Shelley, festival there was a lovely event in front of the house the Shelleys stayed in when they first arrived in Italy – the villa Chiappa in the old part of Bagni di Lucca. A group of local Bagni di Lucca poets, comprising Rossana Federighi, Maura Bertolozzi, Francis Pettitt, Roberto Ragghianti and Valerio Ceccarelli, met to celebrate Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Luca PB Guidi, of Shelley House bookshop in Bagni di Lucca, was the presenter and each of the poets read a classic poem plus two from their own collections. My classic poem was Shakespeare’s first sonnet which was later read in an Italian translation by Valerio Ceccarelli.

There was a very full house in the balmy summer evening and some of the audience had to sit on the wall behind the rows of chairs.

It’s interesting to note that poetry has come back in a big way, thanks also to the leader of the opposition in the UK government, Jeremy Corbyn. He, like so many others, senses the significance from Shelley’s ‘A defence of Poetry’ that ‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’

What this means is that poets can express concepts and feelings which cannot be properly articulated in any other discipline, whether it be philosophy, history, psychology or science. Poets in a sense are seers: they can somehow look into the future. Ultimately, however, poetry is, as Wordsworth famously said, emotion recollected in tranquillity.

Certainly we all left the pleasant poetry evening feeling both refreshed and recharged.

For more information about other events in the Shelley Festival see the facebook page at:

https://www.facebook.com/ViareggioLaCittaDelCuoreDiShelley/

and Emanuela’s article at:

http://www.loschermo.it/festival-shelley-evento-internazionale-legato-a-bagni-di-lucca/

The Italian revue at Roberto Ragghianti’s page at ‘Righe d’inchiostro’ (the title of his recently published book) was also very positive:

‘Ieri sera la magia della Poesia ha trasformato una normale serata d’estate, in un momento carico di Emozioni, di brividi sulla pelle, di Amicizia e spiritualità. Le parole di Shelley, (sotto casa sua), le parole di Dante, di Shakespeare, del Petrarca hanno risuonato nella notte e hanno trapassato e colpito al centro del cuore tutti coloro che insieme a noi hanno condiviso questo momento. Poi abbiamo osato leggere anche le nostre di Poesie, nell’emozione di Valerio che mi ha fatto sospirare, nella dolcezza di Maura, nella determinazione di Rossana, nella bravura stratosferica di Francis. La regia di tutto questo è stata di Luca e di Rebecca della Shelley House due ragazzi straordinari, due Amici Veri. Grazie di cuore a tutti.’

Bagni di Lucca is truly the town of poets and poetry . Indeed how could it not be when there are such great poets as Mario Lena living here!