For Chaucer, April was the month of pilgrimage. For three Irish poets with an unswerving dedication to the Italian writer his countrymen know as Il Sommo Poeta (the Supreme Poet), it was May of last year. The three, Maria McManus, Siobhán Campbell and I, along with our respective husbands, found ourselves in an oak-canopied graveyard at the back of the Basilica of San Francesco in Ravenna, Italy, looking for the tomb of Dante Alighieri, whose 700th anniversary had taken place the year before and whose famous epic, The Divine Comedy, had been a source of inspiration for each of us.
The search for his tomb sounds easier than it proved to be. We quickly identified the location on the Via Dante Alighieri, and wove our way through the narrow medieval streets, listening to the sound of church bells and observing small groups of tourists following their own itineraries through this beautiful and remarkably uncrowded city. We entered the modest gateway to a small graveyard, shaded by an enormous old oak, and dappled with a dense undergrowth of ivy. We scanned the headstones, testing our rusty Italian, until we found a large marble tomb beside the steep wall of the Basilica, with an inscription that mentioned Dante Alighieri in large capitals. Content that we had succeeded in our quest, we took turns to read poems from Divining Dante, an anthology published the previous year, which featured poems by Siobhán, Maria, and 68 other poets from around the world.
Satisfied that we had paid the poet full tribute with our readings, we wandered around the small graveyard, picking up acorns and marvelling at the simplicity of this peaceful final resting place. One of our party had ventured further to the top end of the Via Dante Alighieri. A loud exclamation brought the rest of us quickly after him. There, in baroque and marble glory, was Dante’s official tomb, his final resting place after 700 years of being moved from spot to spot, from hiding place to hiding place, as the Franciscan brothers protected their most cherished ‘guest’ from the claims of rival cities such as Florence, where Dante was born and lived most of his life. There was also a threat from despotic rulers – Mussolini had apparently wanted to bring his bones to the battlefield for a final confrontation with the Allied Forces. We smiled ruefully as we posed for yet more pictures at the ‘real’ tomb, but didn’t feel the need to read more poetry, confident that he’d heard our words earlier and appreciated their sentiment.
Ravenna offers a wonderful example to city planners about how to celebrate their writers. Not only does the nearby museum and Dante’s house contain terrific exhibits that bring to life the great poet’s work (there are listening stations in various spots around the city where you can hear excerpts from The Divine Comedy), but everywhere you look there are literary echoes of other writers who have come to Ravenna and written about it.
On one street, aptly named the Street of the Poets, there were info-boards dotted at regular intervals that detailed visits made by the likes of Byron (who lived in Ravenna briefly with a lover), TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, Carl Jung, Henry James and Dario Fo. What a wonderful idea that would be for Dublin, who prides itself on its literary associations. Imagine an O’Connell Street with info-boards about all the writers who have made their home in our capital, or simply visited it. We have a lot to learn from the Italians about how to celebrate our writers, both native and visiting.
In March, Dubliners will have a chance to hear poems from the Divining Dante anthology. Twenty of the contributors recorded their readings for inclusion in the latest curation of Quotidian’s Poetry Jukebox, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland-funded street art project, which is being installed at the Italian Cultural Institute on Fitzwilliam Square. The poets come from Ireland, Italy, the UK, the US, India, Singapore and Australia – the Irish poets featured are Eleanor Hooker, Eileán Ní Chuilleanáin, Joseph Woods and Mary O’Donnell.
The Divining Dante Poetry Jukebox will be resident at the ICI for three months, from March to May 2023, and there will be a launch event on March 2nd in conjunction with Irish PEN, which will be attended by Dante scholars from the island of Ireland, as well as contributors to the anthology. There’ll also be an exhibition of lithographs by Liam O Broin celebrating The Divine Comedy. The ICI has a programme of events planned for the duration of the project and further information will be available on the Italian Cultural Institute website.
Punch Rock
for Kerry Wallace
The only irritant
on this pristine morning
as I sit out sipping
black Tanganda tea
with a hunk of submerged
garden lemon in a hand-
thrown cerulean blue
and white porcelain cup
is the unidentifiable
small brown bird
flitting among emerald
Acacia canopies
sweeping downwards
to a brimming dam.
Joseph Woods
