A hurried entry as my life is utterly consumed at present by the imminent launch of NZ Book Month on Fathers Day this Sunday at Te Papa in Wellington. It's going to be a most entertaining day with a full programme of free events starring some of our most famous authors including Joy Cowley, Jenny Pattrick, Rachael King, Owen Marshall with, as Campbell Live watchers will know, a Hairy Maclary lookalike competition judged by Lynley Dodd. Lots of storytelling sessions for the kids too, so come on down. The full programme is here. I'll be there, on photography and note-taking duty, so come and say hello, I'll be wearing... a camera.

On Monday in Welly will be another not-to-be-missed Writers on Mondays, with the lovely Andrew Johnston talking to the equally admirable Damien Wilkins about the book he's writing on NZ contemporary poetry, about his own poetry and no doubt about life in general. If Andrew's gently riveting blogs on NZ Book Month are anything to go on, this will be a superb session - 1pm, City Gallery.

Just like last week's session was, with Vincent Moleta (pictured). And here, to tell us about it with her usual eagle eye, flair and damned quick note-taking, is Mary McCallum...

Writers on Monday at the Wellington City Gallery this week offered up two poets – one an Italian who wrote in the turbulent times at the first half of the 20th century and one a Renaissance sculptor and poet who wrote almost exactly 400 years earlier. Umberto Saba and Michelangelo Buonarroti were brought to a good-sized lunchtime crowd by visiting translator Vincent Moleta (pictured) in a cheery red bow-tie. Moleta grew up and worked in Wellington before moving to Perth, Australia.

Moleta’s passion is Saba, and he needed no encouragement from chair Marco Sonzogni to hold forth on the man and his substantial and highly-respected body of work. Saba wrote one thousand poems much of which stem from his difficult relationship with his wife, his daughter, and the plight of his beloved but marginal city which had been handed back and forth over the Italian border. The Jewish writer and second-hand book seller said, ‘I married Trieste to Italy with my song’ and along the way he expressed his reaction to both world wars, fascism and the condition of his fellow man. However, Saba felt he didn’t get the recognition he deserved – partly as a result of the treatment of Jews in World War Two – and as a result became depressed and self-pitying.

The poet’s influences included Leopardi, Dante, Freud and Nietzsche, and his work according to Moleta is ‘unrelievedly beautiful’ – seeking as it does to return the true meaning to Italian language and traditional poetic forms.

The work of Michelangelo is a more recent project of Moleta’s and a more problematic one. The Renaissance sculptor dashed off 300 poems in his lifetime – often love poems on the backs of letters, accounts and drawings – rarely revising them, and circulating them initially only among friends. Moleta said the work is dense with unusual rhyme schemes within traditional forms such as the sonnet, and it ‘pulses with the same contracted passion found in his sculptures and paintings.’ For that reason the translations have to work hard to tease the true meaning from the text and Moleta believes they still need polish.

Moleta explained that a translator of Italian poetry must pay due attention to the stresses and breaks within the lines as much as to the quality of words and rhymes. He said, ‘Every line in good Italian poetry has its own internal rhythm.’ Certainly hearing the poems read in their original form, you could hear the varying weight of each word and its questioning almost demanding relationship with the words around it. With the work of Saba, you feel Moleta has done the best he can do with the work of a much-loved, but old and rather tetchy friend. With Michelangelo there is still work for the translator to do to and he relishes the challenge. Moleta said of Michelangelo, but it could apply to his relationship with both poets: ‘It’s a humbling experience to be in contact with a very great soul.’

In 2004, Moleta was knighted by the Italian government for his contribution to Italian culture overseas. Unfortunately, his comprehensive work on Saba is not readily available in New Zealand but you can find out more about it and his Aeolian Press at this link:
www.fontecolombo.com.au Thanks to the International Institute of Modern Letters for another stimulating lunchtime event – especially to Moleta’s daughter Clare who is an award-winning writer in her own right.