Special prize Concorso Letterario “Parole e Poesia” – XIII Edizione 2020-21, March 2021,
Winner of the XXXVI edizione (2020) del Premio “Letteratura” poesia, narrativa, saggistica, III sezione, Istituto Italiano di Cultura Di Napoli e dalla rivista Nuove Lettere, December 2020;
Finalist in Sezione F, Concorso Internazionale di Poesia “Citta di Acqui Terma July 2020;
Shortlisted for the international prize, XXXI Premio Letterario Camaiore – Francesco Belluomini June 2019
Elements of a visionary nature and the dynamics of poetic language can clearly be applied to writing about conflict. The common thread in this collection is the passage and transit, as in the original title, Crossings, which Guido Cupani renders well with Traversi. The latter not only reflects the idea of intersections in the narrower sense of the term but amplifies effect and function, transverse movement, diagonality, and depth. This is about moving into a state of conflict, which drives people to flee, crossing obligatory spaces in the chaos. Conflict manifests itself during the escape itself and is not so much an extreme condition as an inherent part of existence. It is understood as a collective condition and existential state: "Its dust smoke palls, quietens / coughing, destroys the sense of // days hammered into days [...]".
This state is reflected in taut expression at the outset, as in Outhouse, where elements of the four quatrains produce an impetus and buildup made effective by use of the pithy imperative: "Open, the air chills my neck, / pare the gloom, take down / the old scythe. [...]", and subsequent longer measures, grouped in couplets or full-bodied verses, or splintered. The endings conclude in a peremptory manner: "One got out to Witness / The others were held by the scruff"; or: "they are trying to dig out the boy / scrape your hands raw, or scrub them". This expressionist vitality underpins the agitated insistent tone, as does the whirling lexicon, and evocation of extremes linked to forms of oneiric perception: "dead babies in ice cream cabinets", "smashing of windows", "a bloodied hell": a staccato series of apocalyptic landscapes and figures.
The implosive atmosphere coexists with moments in which time is suspended, or there are ever so slight promises of salvation: "Try to reflect and find that true image / amongst the fossils obscured by flickers". The experience of our fragility and the tragedy that surrounds us makes us question the essence of poetry. This is the trace we leave behind, where the writing is not tasked with hiding or suturing wounds but rendering them in all their trauma, like the log of the desperate journey, a war diary. Allegorical references to travel and conflict are linked to literary and mythological allusions: from the Talmud to the Commedia, from Beckett to Adad, a Mesopotamian god of storms. They create both a territory and a complex essential path: that of violence and the precariousness of human existence, the open wounds of conflict that can only become a source of poetry through our awareness. Williamson does not shrink from what contemporary history says to us in daily events unfolding - before our eyes - with war, migration or terrorism, in a barrage of news or facile rhetoric. Instead, he focuses his gaze and vision on the manifestations of such events, in which the human condition is so crudely embodied.
from the preface by Luigi Cannillo
