When one thinks of contemporary Canadian poetry, Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen and Mark Strand immediately come to mind. With this second publication in Italy, "Galestro" Translation by Andrea Sirotti, we must rightfully add Bruce Hunter.

 

His poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in over 80 international blogs, magazines and anthologies in Italy, Canada, China, India, Romania, the United Kingdom and the United States. Bruce is the author of six books of poetry.

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Born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1952, Bruce was deafened as an infant and suffered from low vision for much of his adult life. He grew up in the working-class neighborhood of Ogden, in the shadow of Esso's Imperial Oil Refinery and the now-decommissioned Canadian Pacific Railway's (C.P.R.) Ogden Shops. In early adolescence, Bruce discovered poetry as a compass to navigate in a chaotic world like that of hearing. In poetry he could hear everything – and be heard.

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Known in Italy for his publications in the Internopoesia.com magazine (17/10/2022) and the publication last year again for the Lecce publisher, I Quaderni del Bardo “A Life in Poetry, Poems selected from Two O'clock Creek , QdB, Lecce, 2022.”

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As the author himself forewarns us, in his foreword to the book, “Galestro (ɡaˈlɛ.stro) is a sandy soil, rich in minerals, found in the Chianti vineyards in Tuscany, which gives the wines of the region a unique flavour. Star matter." And Galestro is precisely the title of the book we are talking about.

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A book that teaches us first of all the ability to listen to the world and the essence of things and then the importance of poetry for man. Bruce gives us micro-stories in verse of his life and his verses become "Hooks for the sky", the title of his poem of which I transcribe the incipit:

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Hooks for the sky
And now, mid-week,mid-life,
with my brothers and their children
at the foot of the hills in our hometown.
With our brilliant sky hooks ‒ a name
really appropriate for these kites:
a sky full of flying noise
in the scornful wind
on the Rockies ‒ a red box,
a flying blue carp and warrior dragon tails.

Each of them goes fishing for light,
linked by thread between existence and dream
fishing for celestial fish or wandering angels
lost in the lure of the clouds…”

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Bruce is a poet and a man always connected to the smallest vibrations of life and to the cosmic roads that connect us to it, and he warns us in one of his poems:

“Here, in this fabulous street
west of hipster, south of money,
I am never alone. Deaf man
but not silenced, always connected.

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There is no shortage of touching and visionary verses as in the poem dedicated to the painter Georgia O'Keeffe:

White Rose, Abstraction (1927) Georgia O'Keeffe

I have never forgotten the rose
in that art gallery years ago.
Blooms voluminous and inviting.
Painted by a brush dipped in clouds. Velvet entrance
and escapism. As big as a table top.
O'Keeffe sees as I see. And as I do in my work,
I open my palms
to cradle her. Until a guard warns me.
Gentleman. Please. Don't touch the paintings.
For a gardener, a rose is not
a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.*
It is all in all. A tidal curl.…”

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Bruce loves Italy very much and in a beautiful poem entitled "There is a road" where you can enjoy the rolling hills of Tuscany, he reveals the metaphor of poetry as a road:

“…On the road from everywhere to everywhere,
as Fabio the poet says.
I have always traveled in my dreams.
And dreams where I can see and hear everything.
The road that always goes home, wherever I am.…”.

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And the road returns in the other poem that gives the book its title:

“Galestro
This spring in Tuscany
on the dirt roads,
on that white road we travel on
a country lane, next to a stone wall.…”

It's still:

 

“Historical places that I have wanted to visit all my life.
The Romans kept their wine in caves
and the Etruscans too, their ruined tombs behind us.
The ancient is recent here and around us.”

Bruce tells us with his verses that life is like the earth, matter of love, listening…

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Donato Di Poce was born in Sora in 1958 but has lived in Milan since 1982. He is a poet, art critic, writer of aphorisms and photographer. Public attention comes with remarkable interest with the publication of the beautiful Berlin Notebook, a collection of five portfolios. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, curator of art exhibitions. An artist at 360°. His last, in order of time, poetic work is Lampi di Verità, published by iQdB editions of Stefano Donno, in the series edited by the poet and literary critic Nicola Vacca.