La Memoria Famigliare / The Familial Memory
Martina Fernanda Amato
La Memoria Famigliare involves transforming through translation the poetry of my great uncle, Antonio Seccareccia, including autobiographical insertions of my own into his writing. This means re-identifying with my temporally and spatially displaced cultural heritage, and re-aligning and re-inserting myself within this space of family.
Through a careful selection of Antonio’s original poetry, a new collection of his work has emerged through my creative visual and written responses to it. These reflect and converse with his work in various ways, and each is dedicated to a specific person or place in Italy or Montréal, to whom I have sent my translation. These translations are an homage to Antonio’s work, through a feminine contemporary re-reading, and as such they symbolise a channel of communication through family, place, language and culture.
The sites of the project span the towns of Galluccio and Frascati in Italy, where Antonio was born and where he lived; Montréal, Canada where I was born, and my current domicile in London, England. A crucial aspect of the work has involved a recent personal engagement with my familial lineage, and with members of the Gallucciani community over the course of the summer months, including the reading of his and my own poetry at the fourth Annual Immigrant Festival, an event that has been scheduled for next year.
