Ghosts of the 14th & Il sacco di Roma (revisited)

In this project, the author collaborated with DISCOllective, a Slovene dancer and choreographer who works on numerous projects across the globe, and with Colin Black, an Australian composer, sound artist, and musician whose work has been broadcast on national radio stations across Europe and Australia.

The first poem, The Ghosts of the 14th, is presented together with a video created by DISCOllective. Between the beginning of 2017 and the end of 2019, the author lived in North Kensington, London, close to Grenfell Tower, which burned down on 14 June 2017, resulting in seventy-two fatalities. On the night of the fire, he walked past the tower on his way home, likely around an hour before the fire started. The following morning, he was awakened by the sound of helicopters circling the site. In the months that followed, silent memorial walks were held every month on the 14th to honour those who lost their lives. The author took part in these walks and documented them with his camera, but felt a strong need to process the experience through other means as well—one of which became this poem.

The second poem, Il sacco di Roma (revisited), was written during the global economic crisis that began with the collapse of major banks in 2008. The poem emerged as a reaction to the European Union’s financial pressure on Greece, which was applied largely in order to safeguard German and French banks. For the author, this moment marked a symbolic collapse of the EU’s foundational values, as it represented the prioritisation of capital over people—particularly people from a country that, while part of the European Union, was not among its most powerful members. For this poem, he collaborated with Colin Black, who created the soundscape accompanying the text. Black’s works have been widely presented on national radio stations worldwide and have received numerous awards.

The project is part of the subthemes Writing After – Catastrophe, Memory, and the Archive of Loss, Symbiotic Futures – Ecopoetics in the Age of Extinction, Disrupted Realities – Poetry and the Politics of Truth.