Local Poet Aaron Giovannone sipped on San Pellegrino as he explained how he came to write the collection, Little Italies, which he will read from this Friday at Strega Café as part of the Grey Borders Series. “It’s about finding the Italian in everyday,” Aaron says, amused for realizing both his beverage and choice of meeting place to further illustrate the theme of his new collection.
“I was looking for places where Italian erupts in everyday language, literature and culture. I would go to places like Starbucks and realized I see Italian everywhere: in hip–hop, movies and television.” Shuffling through his manuscript, Aaron pulls out a photocopied receipt that serves as a clever example of his conceptual poetry.
“It was a horribly depressing day outside and I was trying to figure out where I’d end up,” Aaron elaborates, “I ended up at Wal–Mart.”
Inspired somewhere between the greeter and the dark abyss, he created a type of poem called a terza rima out of arranging the shortened Italian names assigned to certain items on the receipt. Portfolia, Bon Jovi, umbrella all neatly displayed down the left column. “A terza rima for $61.15,” Aaron laughs. “It was actually less. I returned the portfolio and the Bon Jovi CD.”
For those of us who are unfamiliar with the term, terza rima is an Italian stanzic form of poetry used by Dante in his Divina Commedia. Aaron worked in this fixed form, using Italian words that are common in English. His poems are riddled with pop culture references: Godfather or Rocky clichés, Tony Danza and singing chefs. He is playing with language and our common usage as a way to create critical distance. “It’s a fun form to work in, I suppose, because I invented it.”
Influenced by the avant–garde, Aaron’s poetry is both innovative and fun. “I think it’s important that the work is accessible to people who just like poetry. You don’t need a graduate degree to enjoy it.”
Aaron does, in fact, hold a graduate degree from the University of Calgary and plans to further his studies in poetry. He currently teaches at Brock University in St. Catharines alongside the poetry series coordinator, Professor Gregory Betts.
