60th anniversary of Pound’s return to Italy.
On 8 June, the event ‘The Return of Ezra Pound’ took place in Merano at Fontana Castle, the Gilf promenade and the Academy of Italo-German Studies. Sixty years ago Ezra Pound returned to Italy after years of internment in Washington’s St. Elisabeth’s criminal asylum. Marco Nereo Rotelli, in collaboration with the Municipality of Merano, the Civic Library, the Ezra Pound Research Center and the Academy of Italo-German Studies, has devised a series of events, readings and installations to mark this anniversary.
In collaboration with Paolo De Grandis and Arte Communications, Yoko Ono has been invited to speak at Fontana Castle with the installation ‘Wish tree for Ezra Pound’, and Marco Nereo Rotelli will install a stained-glass window dedicated to Cantos made by Vetrate artistiche Grassi on the castle walls.
The aim of these events is not the celebration of an anniversary, but to capture in the occasion reasons for reflection and cultural production.
The presence of the poet Jean Portante (born 1950 in Differdange, Luxembourg – lives in Paris) reinforces the path on international poetry that Merano has been pursuing for years. He will in fact be present, in dialogue with the poet Loretto Rafanelli, at the Academy of Italo-German Studies for a talk on Pound’s poetry today. The new ‘poetic benches’ that Marco Nereo Rotelli has dedicated to Yoko Ono (for the Gilf Promenade) and to Jean Portante for the Academy of Italo-German Studies will also be inaugurated.