FRANCA COLOZZO: INTERVIEW

NILAVRONILL TALKING WITH

POET OF THE MONTH

FRANCA COLOZZO

FEBRUARY 2025

NILAVRONILL: Welcome to Our Poetry Archive, dear poet. And congratulations as the poet of this month. 

FRANCA COLOZZO: I am honoured and touched by your warm welcome, dear NILAVRONILL, as founder-President of OPA

NILAVRONILL: What are the factors that have influenced you immensely in the growing phase of your literary life. When, most probably you were not certain of your future as a poet or writer. Do you think society as a whole is the key factor in shaping up you as a poet, or your poetry altogether?

FRANCA COLOZZO: In truth, without being aware of it, I wrote poems since the first cries of my school life. Having learned to read and write at only five years of age thanks above all to my mother who was a teacher, I carried on this passion of mine together with drawing. I remember the autumn leaves I painted mixed with a poem composed for autumn. Almost without realizing it, I was slowly entering the world of art and poetry and that's how my first love poems began to take shape when I reached 15 years of age. I loved learning poems by heart, as also imposed by the Italian former School System in force in middle and high school classes. My English and Italian literature teachers used to make me read in class the most important compositions from Dante Alighieri to Petrarca and poets of “Dolce Stil Novo”, up to Leopardi, Foscolo, Carducci, Pascoli, etc., as well as in English from Chauser to Shakespeare, Keats, Shelly, Wordsworth, Milton, etc. This was the beginning, interspersed with periods of stasis due to my work as an architect and teacher also abroad. Back in Italy, I started writing poems again for pure pleasure until I had the courage to finally publish them in online poetry magazines.

NILAVRONILL: Do you consider your literary life as an extension of your self-existence? If so, how it is related with the time around you? 

FRANCA COLOZZO: Poetry has always been my muse, the regenerative force that often harmonizes with the sea, where I love to retreat in the summer on a solitary rock. Poetry and writing, as well as drawing and art in general, have always been an anchor in difficult times in my life. So, I live immersed in a dream. Poetry is the secret source that radiates the energy that keeps me alive. My complex poetic world moves between love, nature, peace and social justice. I am not a monothematic poet, but I am emotionally involved in all the events of this world. Especially pacifism and social justice are my flags that I try to wave against the abuses that we observe with apprehension and worry of new war escalations.   

NILAVRONILL: As a poet, do socio-economy and politics in general influence your literary visions? If so how, and if not, why? 

FRANCA COLOZZO: Environmental issues are at the heart of my actions and poems, not only through articles, blogs for UN DESA and UN SDG goals, participation in Zoom meetings, and webinars (four online courses with final exams and diplomas on Long-Term Economy, Climate Change, Sustainability, Stakeholders, and Smart City, followed during the pandemic years, with many articles published in foreign newspapers and on academia.edu). On a personal level, I have focused on waste recycling and caring for domestic animals, taking care of a feline colony for over eleven years. My commitment to society gained significant momentum in 2018. In fact, in March 2018, I was appointed Global Goodwill Ambassador (Virginia, USA) in the role of GGAF “Italy Chapter”. In March 2019, I became an INSPAD Ambassador of Peace and CEO of IHC (International Harmony Council), twinned with INSPAD (Institute for Peace and Development, based in Islamabad, Pakistan). I was also named Ambassador of the “Merle Rebirth Foundation”, an NGO in India focusing on the education of orphaned girls. Later, in 2022, I was appointed Ambassador of Peace by the United Kingdom’s GPLT (Global Peace Let's Talk), based in London and founded by Dr. Nikki DePina. Here, I serve on the Board for   environmental issues, and European relations. Additionally, I am the Executive Director on the Board of the International Association RRM3 - RINASCIMENTO RENAISSANCE - Millennium III, founded and chaired by Prof. George Onsy (Egypt ). This latter is an international movement for peace and justice. With its awareness campaigns published regularly in connection with 200 journals worldwide, RRM3 works for a better world starting with a new European Awakening.  This association, where I work actively and almost full-time, aims to tackle the difficult challenges of our world. I work alongside the Chairman through a large governing body of thinkers, writers, and media personalities who collaborate as both members of the European Council and the Intercontinental Advisory Committee. This ever-expanding movement continues to resonate with the call for a reawakening of European values, alongside those of the entire world. Especially now, as Europe finds itself on the brink of a potential nuclear war, feared to escalate into a third world war even by the Pope. To prevent this threat, we have supported the activities of the RRM3 founder-President, Prof. George Onsy, the Italian journalist Goffredo Palmerini, and my personal collaboration as Executive Director and a researcher, particularly in Ethics. I was nominated a scholar of the Ethics Academy, founded and chaired by Dr. Jeranil S. Anand (India). Coordinating various activities and disseminating them on social media is certainly not an easy role, but it is crucial.

RINASCIMENTO RENAISSANCE - Millennium III works for the future of Europe, addressing not only its rapid demographic changes altering its identity but also managing current and future conflicts, especially in light of recent events. The new RRM3 Magazine reflects the cultural message of peace and interfaith harmony that should be increasingly spread in our multiethnic and multicultural society to prevent the rise of terrorism driven by migrations and misunderstandings between peoples. Recently, I also became a “Human Rights Activist” Ambassador (Italy Chapter) for WIP (World Institute of Peace, Nigeria), founded by the active public figure Lamina. This has added Africa to the beloved places of the battles I have fought regarding migration and sea tragedies, also through my poetic contributions and feedback sent in the past to the European Parliament for the European Transparency Register.

NilavroNill: Is it possible to put into the words everything that as a poet you wish to express literarily? If not, why?

FRANCA COLOZZO: I think that freedom of expression is the basis of a poetic world without limitations of any kind. It depends on the poet's ability to convey emotions to the reader. But I think that today we want to artfully use vulgarity to amaze, shock, break the mold. Excess vulgarity often falls into a parody of poetry, far from being so when it is used in a blatant way to attract attention.

NilavroNill: Do you agree with John Keats (1795-1821) on his ardent believe, “Truth is beauty, beauty is truth”? Even if we take for instance the war of Kurukshetra, the conflicts between Kauravas and Pandavas, or the fall out of second world war in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how can we manage to reconcile between those truths with beauty as promulgated by Keats? 

FRANCA COLOZZO: According to Keats, beauty is both physical and spiritual. The perception of physical beauty involves all five senses, it is perceived in all its forms and arouses joy, in fact, in Endymion Keats writes: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”, this joy leads to spiritual beauty (friendship, love, poetry). Physical beauty and spiritual beauty are closely linked, since the first is subject to time and will fade and the second is eternal. An artist will die but what he has created during his life will be immortal. Keats identifies beauty with truth as the only knowledge and ends Ode to a Grecian Urn with these lines: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all you know on earth, all you need to know” and it is this concept of beauty that makes him a precursor of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Aesthetes, who considered his cult of beauty as the expression of their motto Art for Art’s Sake. From Kurukshetra (King Kuru, the ancestor of the Pandavas), famous for the battleground where Lord Krishna preached the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna, to the sad days of the launching of the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, up to the macabre present day with the genocide in Gaza, we can always glimpse a battle between the bestiality intrinsic in human nature and the divine spark that makes beauty and love the flower of universal harmony. This is what Keats' poetry tends to, uniting soul and body in the universal message of love.

NilavroNill: Too many writers believe imagery is an essential part of poetry. Do you agree this notion? Even if we consider Leonardo da Vinci’s words that poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. 

FRANCA COLOZZO: The fundamental elements of poetry are what make up the structure and meaning of the poem itself (such as rhythm, metrics, image, tone and language). An immediately evident element that allows us to distinguish poetry from prose is the verse, which we can consider the unit of measurement of the poetic text. So what are images in a poem? It is the rhetorical figure that aims to clarify a concept, comparing it with another that has an element of similarity with the first. In the figurative field, a similarity is obtained by juxtaposing different images that recall each other for some element of similarity either in form or in concept. I believe that in poetry, today more than ever stripped of its traditional guise, deprived as it often is of the verse thus making it more prosaic, there is the need to express an ethical message not directly but by proxy. Poetry should not appear as an edict or erudite commandment, but should teach a moral principle implicitly by implying the concepts. This is what I was taught in the five years of high school, which followed eight years of lower education. So, the images take shape metaphorically, sometimes even using flights of fancy that transport the viewer into a contracted or dilated space-time depending on the poetic message implied by the author.

NilavroNill: Do you believe, passionately falling in love with a particular language is essential to excel in poetical ventures? And is it possible to write poems in multiple languages preserving same literary quality? We would like to know your own experiences. 

FRANCA COLOZZO: I think that language plays a fundamental role in the eventual metrics and expressive fluidity. For example, using a language rich in words and nuances like Italian, one can understand what influence and specific weight Dante Alighieri had in the panorama of world literature and how his Magna Opera was the DIVINE COMEDY, compared to a literary production that was not excessively prolific (Rime, Vita Nova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, Monarchia, Epistole, Egloghe and other masterpieces). In the nineteenth century, with the Risorgimento, the patriotic idea of Dante as the father of the Italian language was imposed, with the addition of Petrarca and Boccaccio to constitute the fundamental canon of our literature. The Dantean terzina, or chained terzina, or terza rima, is the stanza used by Dante in the Divine Comedy. It is made up of three hendecasyllabic verses, of which the first and third rhyme with each other, while the second rhymes with the first and third of the following terzina. The Divine Comedy has been translated into many languages, but the Italian language is certainly the only one that best suits Dante's poetic ode. The translation of a poetic text into other languages can maintain the general poetic quality but, in my opinion, always loses something compared to the original. My experience as a multilingual translator, given my extensive linguistic knowledge from having passed over seven language competitions and as many language courses, including Turkish, has allowed me to understand the nuances that a poem can have translated from the original language. This, while not taking anything away from the poetic construct, can cause a poem to lose musicality, rhyme, fluidity compared to the original text.

NilavroNill: Do you consider poetry as an emotional outbursts of poet’s personal sentiments? Or is it a long journey to realize and express the universal sentiments beyond all personal limitations? Again, we want to understand your views through your personal experiences of your literary life as a poet.

FRANCA COLOZZO: I believe that poetry is often dictated by an emotional outburst, but that above all it represents an individual growth over time. Beyond the outburst, there is an inner world and a complexity of interweaving and relationships with the outside world that obviously vary from poet to poet. My work experience as an architect and teacher, through foreign experiences, has had a complex path with periods of stagnation due to domestic, parental, professional care. However, I consider both my foreign experience and my work experience an enrichment, with deep-rooted technical-scientific and literary studies that have led me to overcome the nineteenth-century concept of a clear division between literary and scientific subjects, considering human knowledge as a whole in the Greco-Roman-Renaissance manner. I have made this point of view of mine explicit in several articles, even if nowadays there is an ever-increasing tendency towards a very clear specialization to the detriment of the individual's classical Forma Mentis, which derives from Greek philosophy, especially Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

NilavroNill: I would like to quote T. S. Eliot, “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.  You cannot value him alone; you must set him for contrast and comparison among the dead.” We would like to know your views in details on Eliot’s comments. 

FRANCA COLOZZO: In the above quote Eliot wants to demonstrate how none of us poets can define ourselves as original because we always owe something to our predecessor. There is a legacy of knowledge of jargon, rhyme, phraseological construction that make us obligated to others. A famous case, cited by me before, is that of Dante who opens the way to a new language: Italian. Precisely by using the Vulgaris (no longer Latin), he opens the way to the Italian language, but the legacy of the previous culture remains the canvas on which he builds new warp and weft. Ultimately, the poet is a bit like Ulysses who, while using usual tools, surpasses all human expectations. The Pillars of Hercules, however, are only surpassed by some greats who have treasured the experience of their predecessors to sail beyond all expectations. The originality of a poet remains this differentiating leap, but he owes his departure to his predecessors.

NilavroNill: Would you consider, it should be the goal of a poet to enlightens the readers towards much greater apprehensions as well as appreciations of life and eternity in general? Or is it better to write poems only to console the poet’s soul? 

FRANCA COLOZZO: The true poet is the one who makes a supreme leap to stem the dictates of the EGO. Today I observe a proliferation of poems without that cultural humus that should underlie the poetic world. It is essential not to be jealous of other poets and to try to penetrate the complex world that surrounds us. Therefore, it is not enough to declaim one’s inner feeling, but to stem one’s ego to save a cosmic humanitarian breath. In short, it is necessary to rise above one’s weaknesses to flow towards a unitary vision. Self-pity and consolation are not enough to change the world into a better place to live.

Dr. Arch. FRANCA COLOZZO (ITALY). Member of UIA - Union of International Architects | poet | novelist | retired teacher of  Technology, Drawing, and Art History, also abroad, on behalf of the Italian Foreign Office (at I.M.I. in Istanbul, Turkey) | multilingual author and translator of about 18 books | freelancer |  UN DESA & UN SDGs  blogger | UN ECOSOC CSW67 member | GGAF (US) | WEF Lifelong Honorary Member | Peace Ambassador on behalf of different NGOs from India, Pakistan, Nigeria and the UK | on Board of GPLT – GLOBAL PEACE LET’S TALK (UK), founded and presided over by Dr. Nikki De Pina (London), nominated Director for Sustainability and Climate Change and contact person for the   Transparency Register of EU Commission & Parliament| Blogger | Freelancer on  Linkedin, national and international newspapers and literary magazines ATUNIS & AZAHAR, LA RECHERCHE etc.| member of the INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY of  ETHICS, founded and presided over by Dr. Jernail S Anaand (India). She is very active on social media and YouTube| Founder and Admin of many groups on Facebook, and Linkedin:  HSW- HUMAN SOLIDARITY WAVE, RRM3, etc. Awarded several times for peace and poetry at the national and international levels, she is recipient of n. 4 Honorary Ph.D. and was nominated Researcher and Executive Director in  behalf of the International Association RRM3 – RINASCIMENTO RENAISSANCE - Millennium III,  founded and presided over by Prof. George Onsy  (Cairo, EGYPT).