“In the beginning, there is always an incandescence. A word, a wild bird.”
In her collection Fireflies (Bored Wolves, 2024, working title / shaping phase), the Italian poet and translator Mariadonata Villa examines liminal moments on Modena’s wildland–urban interface from driven pavement to Po valley glaciation. Throughout there are encounters with animal beings whose mythical nature is not enough to shield them from chassis and strobe. Their panic and disorientation is the poet’s, their threatenedness her responsibility.
And if it was all just a dream? The edge of a blunt knife is still a knife’s edge.
