The ridge and the song

This book in English is an intense manifesto boldly presenting poetry as a crucial event in the evolution of Homo Sapiens – a salvific practice, a dissident action and a shamanic exploration of reality. Starting from the prehistoric nomination of the world and illustrating how for millions of years, leaves, branches, stones and souls have never stopped transforming into words, in a bustle of images and visions, Benozzo takes the reader to the awareness that we were poets before being able to speak. Even if poetry may seem superfluous and marginal, like the molecules and particles constituting matter, its very essence is powerful. Indeed, only poetry, for its pre-verbal, pre-mythological and pre-religious nature will be able to create, now more than ever, a new imagination, a shamanic practice restoring freedom and beauty to those who have been deprived of them.

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Francesco Benozzo

Francesco Benozzo, Professor of Philology at the University of Bologna, is a poet and musician internationally renowned for his epic and oral poetry. Among his latest works, Autoktonia. Poema del suicidio (2021) and Poeti della marea (2022). As harp player, singer and songwriter he published many albums in Italy, Great Britain and Denmark. Honoured with prestigious accolades for his activity of poet and contemporary bard, in 2022 he won the International Prize Poets from the Frontier.