Many people ask me "but what happens during the writing workshops you conduct?" I could say that magic is done, yes. But I would soon be accused of abusing hyperbole to advertise my product. So let the concrete examples provide the answer. I fish from the rich deck of five appointments of the laboratory "Lecco and its giants" held between September and October. Topic of the evening, the poet Antonia Pozzi. Proposed exercise: let's read together his poem "The deaf dog" (after a first preparatory warm-up exercise): THE DEAF DOG Deaf for the great wind that flies and shouts in the castle has become the dog. Above the stands – in the lake stretched out – he runs, without gasps: neither the moss on the stones at great height threatens him, nor a tile removed. So closed and whole is in him the strength from which he no longer has a name for anyone and goes for his secret free line. (the exercise continues): Now let's play with the sensory sphere. At that precise moment described by Pozzi in the poem, what is the dog seeing? What smells does it smell? Do you feel something on your fur? On the mustache? Is he eating? We write a small passage highlighting, between the lines, the four senses with which it is endowed.
Some works proposed by the participants
It is as if he were in a bubble, isolated from the outside world, nameless, since he cannot hear anyone calling him, and therefore somehow "only" in his thunderous silence. He fills it by telling stories and generating fantasies, as when seeing a flying hat and a fat lady running after him imagines the woman screaming against the wind that, like him, does not seem to hear her, or as when, feeling a good scent of rose, he perceives the arrival of spring and imagines the swallows returning.
"Chucky" the dog (someone nicknamed him that)
Who knows why bipeds with that sparse hair on their paws always open their mouths but do not yelp. That female who has been watching me for a long time, then, is really strange. There is a smell of rain, I should go, but the gravel on the pavement aches my paws. I think I will stay here, the food that that other biped overlooking the castle is consuming smells good, I can't wait to bite it: maybe I will give up a dignified meal.
These are just a few examples, through which to guess what kind of sensations you can immerse yourself in during the workshops. Until you feel completely wet and contaminated. This exercise stimulates the sensory sphere (poetry is a formidable cue). The participants each live the moment in a different way, the one in which the poet's gaze meets the eyes of the deaf dog: there are those who describe it in the third person, others in the first identifying with the animal itself. Fantasy gallops. The emotional sphere lights up. Smells, tastes and colors immediately become clear. When I write that "magic is done," I mean just that. It seems something trivial. And instead it is complex simplicity, something that can be touched in the air. A smile. Another and another. It's the power of writing. Writerial creativity.