GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE INTERVIEW

NILAVRONILL TALKING WITH

POET OF THE MONTH 

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE

June 2025 

NILAVRONILL: Why do literature and poetry in particular interest you so much? Please give us some idea about your own perception of literature or poetry in general. 

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: Since I was a child, I have felt the necessity to express my feelings, emotions and to record on paper the most important people and events of my life, in order to remember them forever.  For me poetry is also a way to celebrate   beauty, life and to express the condemnation of war, the necessity of peace and social justice all over the world. Poetry and prose are an important vehicle of ideas in the world.

NILAVRONILL: Do you believe that your literary self is actually an extension of your soul? We would like to know the factors and the peoples who have influenced you immensely in the growing phase of your literary life.

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: Yes, I think so.  My literary self is the expression in words of what I feel and discover into myself. When I was a child, I already felt a great passion and interest in nature, in history, but also in fantastic and adventurous stories.  After reading a lot of tales and novels, I started to write simple poems and tales. Then my interest increased a lot and I continued to read and compose tales and poems. I had a great interest in the romantic poets and writers, in the contemporary authors, but also in the masterpieces of the previous Italian, Greek and Latin literature.  

NILAVRONILL: Do you think the primary obligation of a poet should be to communicate with the temporal as well as with the eternal essence of life and the universe? If so, how can one fulfil that particular obligation?

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: I think that a poet has to express above all what he feels inside his heart, he has to denude his soul.  But he has also the   task to speak about eternal themes and universal values like peace, solidarity, among all peoples in the world, brotherhood.  In this historical period, it is very important, useful, necessary.

NILAVRONILL: It is an established fact that every poet should create his or her own poetic language as an unique literary signature that would eventually keep him or her alive beyond his or her time. I would like to know your personal experience in this regard, and how can one achieve that unique literary language in his or her lifetime? 

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: Every poet and writer are able to create his own literary style. It happens through hard reading and writing. I personally think that my personal way of writing is the result of practice, attempts and reading. To read a lot of writers of different periods and literary currents helps to find a personal artistic style.

NILAVRONILL: Do you consider particular language, culture and nationality shape up the poet’s literary self? What is your personal experience being an Italian? I would like to understand how much and in what way your language, your culture as well as your nationality paved your literary self. 

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: National culture and language greatly influence the development of the literary self. I’ m Italian and as a consequence of that I studied the great Greek and Latin authors and the great literary representatives of my country. So at the beginning my way of writing, my vocabulary and my themes were influenced by them.  Then little by little I started to develop a personal way of writing, expressing my literary self.

NILAVRONILL: No literature can survive without communicating with different languages and cultures, as well as various literary and cultural traditions and heritages. I would like to know your opinion regarding the growth and evolution of Italian literature. 

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: Italian literature was influenced by the great heritage of Greek and Latin culture.  Italy was the cradle of classical culture and influenced other countries in different historical periods (France, Spain, also England were greatly influenced).   Then they started to develop a national culture. The contacts among different languages and cultures were a benefit for all countries. Italian culture, for example, enriched its vocabulary and was influenced   by new literary movements, developed abroad (in Spain, France, England, Russia).

NILAVRONILL: Italian literature has a great heritage. I would like to know your viewpoints on the contemporary Italian literature. Where does it stand now in comparison with its past glory?

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: Contemporary Italian Literature continues to have a great importance in the world. Probably it doesn’t have the same importance of the past, when it influenced the cultural development abroad, but remains great.  Its greatness is showed by the flourishing production in prose and poetry.

NILAVRONILL: Literature encompasses every aspect of life; it blends the various shades and textures of human aspirations as well as drawbacks. It also lights up the new horizons and new dimensions of human capabilities relentlessly. I would like to know your particular viewpoints; how do you relate all these in your own writings? 

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: I try   to be faithful to the contemporary world, so I create characters full of aspirations, dreams, plans and expectations.  But only some of them will be successful because life presents a lot of difficulties, due to social, political, economic, religious, racial reasons, that people have to face and overcome. Just a few are able to do so. Characters, in my novels and tales, are presented in a real setting, with their emotions, feelings, joy, happiness, solitude, despair, moral suffering, problems. So in them we find   a mixture of smiles and tears (as in C. Dickens’ s novels).

NILAVRONILL: We cannot live immune to the sociopolitical disturbances of our surroundings. How much these disturbances make substantial impacts upon your literary self? Do you actually respond to all these factors through your words? I mean in your poetry, especially.

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: What happens around me and in other countries in the world greatly influences my literary production, above all poetry, in which I try to express my strong indignation against war, poverty, injustice, suffering of so many people and children. I express the necessity of peace, love, brotherhood, human solidarity among all people in the world.

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

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: I think that as a poet I can express the necessity of a universal peace, the condemnation of war and social injustice but I can’t express all I feel, because it could be dangerous.  

NILAVRONILL: How would you evaluate your contemporaries and what are your aspirations for or expectation from the younger generation?

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: My contemporaries   believe in peace, freedom, equal universal rights, social justice. They are disappointed by political and social contemporary events.  But they do nothing against what they dislike: just words. As to younger generations I’d like to see them more engaged in social, political, cultural life in order to create a better world, in which all people could live at peace, even people with disabilities.

NILAVRONILL: We are almost at the end of the interview. I remain obliged to you for your participation. Now, personally I would like to know your honest opinion about Our Poetry Archive. Since April 2015 we are publishing and archiving contemporary world poetry each and every month. Thank you for sharing your views and spending much time with us.

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE: “Our Poetry Archive” is a great and successful  way  to spread  the poetical  voice of different poets  in the world. Thank you so much!

GIUSEPPINA GIUDICE is an Italian writer and poet. She taught at High school for about 41 years. She loves writing and has received a lot of awards and prizes in her Country for poetry and prose. Among the most important ones: an award received in Rome by the Italian National Television (RAI); another one in Rome with a medal by Senate; then an award for her literary carrier. She won a lot of prizes in literary completions. Her novels were presented in a lot of exhibitions in Italy and abroad. She is a member of Wikipoesia and of the Republic of poets. She has been included in the “Roll of Honour for poetical solidarity”. She was appointed “Academician” three times: in Reggio Calabria (2011); in Rome (2003) and in Reggio Emilia (2024). Then she was appointed “Membru De Honore” in Mihailesti (Romania) for cultural merits. She obtained a Diploma De Excelenta (Romania 2004). Then “A mention of Honour” 2010 (Salerno). Twice she has been on the cultural page of an important newspaper (edited in Napoli).  She wrote articles, poems, rewiews of books on some magazines, local newspapers, and on websites. She has published four collections of poems, five novels, a collection of tales and some fables. Her lyrics   have been translated into French, English, Spanish, Polish, Albanian, Romanian, Serbian and are in a lot of Italian and international anthologies and cultural magazines.