Piccole poesie di famiglia at the Lercari Library: meeting with translator Linda Del Sarto

On Saturday 29 November, the Lercari library in Genoa hosted a very special meeting: the children of class VA of the I.C. San Fruttuoso met our own Linda Del Sarto, translator of Piccole poesie di famiglia, Barbara Schiaffino, director of Andersen magazine, and Sergio Maifredi, artistic director of the Ligurian Public Theatre.

After the class had arranged itself in a circle, Sergio Maifredi briefly introduced Michał Rusinek (unfortunately absent), highlighting his special relationship with Nobel laureate Szymborska. Afterwards, a short video made by the author for MIMebù and available online was shown: in this way, the children put a face to the writer of the book and became familiar with him.

Afterwards, the subject of the book was explained in detail: Barbara Schiaffino elaborated on rhyming poetry, its musicality and importance for use at school. Linda Del Sarto then spoke about the work of translation, making the original language heard and comparing it with the Italian result each time. Her readings, then, were many and the children actively commented, making parallels with their own familiar stories. There were several foreigners, including one Czech, who was able to recognise a few Polish words. At this point, they moved on to talk about the importance of language knowledge and the topic of bilingualism, especially in today’s globalised world.

At the end, the students handed Linda Del Sarto a notebook containing some poems they had written in class in the previous days, in preparation for the meeting on Piccole poesie di famiglia: all of them speak in a funny way about “ancestors… oddballs!”, as the title of this splendid collection itself states.