«Tneglecting is not solving problems, the world is falling apart and you still think that your problems are incomparable, you just need to go outside to understand that you are wrong, the streets with holes, the overturned buckets». Thus begins rap song about environmental degradation presented by the 4 G of the IIS Di Vittorio Lattanzio al Climate Speaks contest Italy which opened the European Environmental Poetry Festivalongoing in Rome until 13 December.
The European Environmental Poetry Festival opened with the Climate Speaks Italia contest where students from 5 schools in Rome’s Municipio V presented the works created during the poetry workshops.
Starting from young people to educate adults too before it’s too late: COP27 has just ended (with a meager result) and the contradictions between what adults say and what they do to protect the environment are evidentespecially if the kids at school confront each other, they talk about it.
And this is exactly what happens, for example, at the Di Vittorio Lattanzio Higher Institute, in the V Municipio, Prenestino/Villa Gordiani area, on the eastern outskirts of the capital. A multi-ethnic institute, where some teachers, meeting in a commission on the environment, have made many leave projects on separate collection, recycling, plastic reduction.
Starting with the Constitution
“We started from Article 9 of the Constitution on environmental protection,” says Professor Loredana Gnagnarella, professor of Italian and history at the address of the scientific high school of applied sciences. «From theory we have moved on to the reality of the neighborhood: the lBullicante natural needle in the former Snia abandoned industrial area. Only a part is protected, while if it were entirely protected it would be a nice green lung». In the poetry workshops that took place before the contest, the boys read texts by Lucretius, Virgil, Leopardi, Pasolini. And it was precisely Leopardi who took inspiration for their dialogue between Man and Nature where Nature is the victim and pleads: «It is enough just to look around you to see the damage inflicted on me». In all they presented three poems, including one in dialect, and a rap song.
Environmental poetry in hendecasyllables
Also at Immanuel Kant classical and linguistic high school, Tor Pignattara, with a catchment area that extends to the hinterland, the highly motivated students read poems by authors such as Rodari or Caproni during the workshops, «sensitive to the theme of nature», says Professor Claudia Cacciò, English teacher . “From there they got their ideas out. The only constraint was that they had to write in hendecasyllables, to compose sonnets, also not respecting the order of tercets and quatrains. They concentrated, divided into groups, on the most heartfelt themes: melting of ice, floods, drought, all climatic catastrophes. They took the commitment and carried it out with great seriousness ».
After the contest, again as part of the Environmental Poetry Festival, the schools involved (there are also the IC Simonetta Salacone, the Itis Giovanni XXIII and the Francesco d’Assisi high school, also in Town Hall V) will meet poets and poetesses: Maria Grazia Calandrone and the rapper Luca Mascini will go to IIS Di Vittorio Lattanzio, while students will meet Marion Poschmann at the Immanuel Kant high school. Then they will continue the work in class: at the IIS the environment theme will be declined with the artistic one, while Claudia Cacciò’s students will read the book by Jonathan Safran Foer We can save the world before dinner.
Meanwhile, the European Festival of Environmental Poetry, organized by Saperenework, continues until December 13, with a rich program which brings together many voices of poets committed to the environment, filmmakers, scholars. Because, as the students write, «every man must be happy».
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