Divine echoes

Gabriele Tinti’s powerful poetry pairs up with Willem Dafoe’s captivating performance at the Pantheon. Tinti’s emotional and reflective verses come alive as Dafoe skillfully brings them to life, taking audiences on a captivating journey through the human experience.

On World Poetry Day, Willem Dafoe honoured the occasion with a heartfelt reading of Gabriele Tinti’s verses at the Pantheon. Amidst the ancient grandeur, Tinti’s poems explored the Pantheon’s spiritual significance and paid homage to its history, particularly to the martyrs interred within.

Dafoe recounted tales of Christian saints like Saint Lawrence and Saint Sebastian, crafted with inspiration drawing inspiration from the timeless artworks of Carracci and Raphael. These masterpieces, housed within the Pantheon, spoke of humanity’s eternal search for the divine. At the heart of the event was Raphael’s evocative ‘Transfiguration,’ a work of profound emotion left incomplete yet brimming with significance. Dafoe’s interpretation mirrored its beauty, stirring a collective yearning for spiritual transcendence. Within this setting, Dafoe became a conduit for reflection and contemplation of Gabriele Tinti’s work, inviting the audience to journey through history and faith with him. His performance bridged past and present, leaving a lasting impression on those present.

As the evening unfolded, Dafoe’s artistry illuminated the Pantheon, connecting poetry, history, and human experience. Though witnessed by a select few, its impact promises to resonate far beyond, echoing through time. This moving tribute was part of Tinti’s larger ‘Ruins’ project, which explores ancient narratives amidst Rome’s rich heritage. By collaborating with talents like Willem Dafoe, Tinti’s creations keep building connections that go beyond time and place. In the midst of Rome’s rich history, Dafoe’s reading at the Pantheon shows how poetry can bring people together, stir inspiration, and uplift souls.

In honour of World Poetry Day, we sat down with Gabriele Tinti to discover what poetry means to him.

hube: What does poetry mean to you? What sets it apart from the combination of words we use to communicate in our daily lives? 

Gabriele Tinti: When everything is silent, poetry speaks. It’s an act of resistance against the mundane, everyday use of words. Born from silence and wounds, poetry is destined not to entertain or console but to keep us alert. Mine, in particular, is an attempt at prayer, it’s lamentation, confession. I don’t know where it leads the reader. Certainly, it doesn’t reassure them.

h: Could you share your thoughts on the power of performance in poetry? How do you think the act of recitation enhances the impact and resonance of your work, particularly when delivered by someone like Willem Dafoe?

GT: When poetry is spoken, it always becomes something else, losing the magic of the written word to acquire a new one. Being able to entrust one’s verses to a personality like Willem Dafoe, one of the greatest living actors, is an honour. He is a master at creating density around certain words, at making the writing resonate as it should, without excess.

h: Your collaborations extend to include found and ekphrastic poetry. How do these different forms of expression intersect with your main body of work, and what unique challenges or opportunities do they present?

GT: I used found poetry in my book on suicide, ‘Last Words’, with images by Andres Serrano. I felt that I couldn’t do otherwise. By using the actual words of people who had indeed committed suicide, I chose to strip the volume of any pathetic attempt at identification, fiction, or literary artificiality. In other words, the end of all communication, of every vital impulse, they testify to the most authentic difficulty of being human. There are the fundamental themes of my work, death, suffering, and violence, but the stylistic choice was somehow dictated by this particular theme. 

My series of poems inspired by images and myths of the past is instead an essential part, both thematically and stylistically, of my work. The words of ancient inscriptions constantly enter into my poetry, blending with it. So, this is also a use of found poetry, although less totalising than in ‘Last Words’. 

I like to think that my poetry shows what it means to spend time with ghosts and to speak with our ancestors. I believe that art, and poetry, are none other than this attempt. Because we are the result of our past. We always drink at the same source. Always working with the same material which is our thirst for transcendence.

h: Your ekphrastic writing project ‘Ruins’ seems to bridge the gap between visual art and poetry. How do you perceive the relationship between these two art forms, and how does it affect your creative process?

GT: Lessing asserted that poetry should ‘keep to the laws of physical painting’ as Homer did when he ‘pictorially’ described Achilles’ shield in a ‘painting’ of more than a hundred lines ‘thanks to which he has been considered a master of painting since antiquity’. This mixing, this coexistence of the arts in a single creative space, which Lessing takes to a paradoxical outcome by calling Homer a ‘painter’ and his poetic work ‘painting’, is something original that is consummated in Horace’s principle of the ut pictura poesis: painting as silent poetry and poetry as speaking picture. Now, as then, the writer cannot do without images, just as the painter, the artist, cannot do without words.

h: Can you give us a glimpse into what attendees can expect from your upcoming presentation at the Mark Taper Auditorium/ LA Public Library?

GT: After many years of collaboration with LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum, I am pleased to be able to present what we have accomplished at the LA Public Library next April. I will be screening videos of the readings and discussing them with Getty Museum curator Kenneth Lapatin and LACMA educator Chelo Montoya, with whom I have shared many projects and ideas to give voice to the myths of the past.

h: How do you tackle the task of crafting poetry influenced by classical sculptures and Renaissance artworks, especially considering your position as the inaugural poet in residence at the National Roman Museum?

GT: Images enter into my writing alternately as direct reference, as evocation, but also simply as the ‘stage’ of a monologue, of a closet drama, of a writing that is not intended for staging but for reading – anti-spectacular – by a single reader. Each time, it is an adventure to study, to talk with scholars, and to try to know as much as possible about the sculpture or painting and the myth that the images represent. I start each time from there, from the time spent in Museums, in those places of worship of relics, where we can still speak with our ghosts.

h: Lastly, as someone who has published several poetry collections and worked with various publishing houses, what advice would you offer to aspiring poets who are seeking to establish themselves in the literary world?

GT: I would tell them to be prepared for failure, for marginality. Prepared to embark on a journey where they are completely alone. To hang in there because despite that, at least they won’t have to answer to anyone, they can be free.