«My chips, my curses.» Rereading Tommaso Di Ciaula

Abstract

The article aims to reflect on the work of Tommaso Di Ciaula (1941-2021), exploring its memorial and political dimensions, its forms of lyrical autobiography and working-class protest, as well as peculiar aspects to a competitive and dizzying relationship with archetypes and experiences of the Italian tradition of the twentieth century. In the spirit of a close continuity between poetic prose and versified discourse, the exercise of poetry aspires to become a political gesture and a sign of anguish that questions, starting from personal experience, the wounds inflicted on the psyche by industrial development in the second half of the twentieth century.