Dance of the Equinox

Floriana Ferro's first collection of poems, Danza di Equinozi won the Italian national literary prize Cardinal Branda Castiglioni in 2011. Published now in English in her own translation, Dance of the Equinox explores the idea of poetry as means of cultural and political emancipation. In particular, these poems locate the author's sexual and political identity in a country still dominated by conservative and religious ideas about women and sexuality.Each of these short and fragmentary poems is a piece of a broken mirror, clues in a game of hermetic illusions. Some are meant to be read vertically, some horizontally, while others are designed to be understood by reading alternate lines. The result is a modern lyrical vision celebrating love, Nature, the delirium of art and the capacity of poetry to resist the alienating pressures of capitalist globalization.