The war that dissolved Yugoslavia was deliberately removed from the collective consciousness of Europeans, yet that devastation ended in 2001, not too far from today, when there is erroneous talk of peace in the Old Continent that had lasted from the end of World War II until the conflict that broke out in Ukraine. That painful decade was commemorated by the 19th edition of Ottobre in Poesia, which, not coincidentally, was titled "Human in the Mirror." The festival created by Leonardo Onida concluded in Sassari with a series of performances. of very intense events.
Among the guests was the Serbian writer Sinan Gudžević. The Balkan philologist and intellectual, famous for his "Roman Epigrams," a collection of over a hundred texts in elegiac couplets, shared with the festival audience the drama of those who remain, the loneliness of those who remain after a war. The National Art Gallery hosted the exhibition entitled “ Former Yugoslavia 1992/1995 We shouted: "Never again! ". Precious material saved from the bombings and collected by Antonella Iaschi, poet and member of the POP board, which was donated to the October in Poetry project.
Among the special guests of this edition, also The poet Guido Oldani, creator of the poetics of Terminal Realism in 2010, will be the protagonist of the meeting on Saturday afternoon at the Arci “Tom Benetollo” cultural centre in Piazza Castello with the economist Pierangelo Dacrema.
The grand finale will take place on Sunday at the Teatro Civico in Sassari with the concert "Spiriti guida" by singer-songwriter Cristina Donà and composer and record producer Saverio Lanza . This rich and diverse show features Donà's repertoire enriched by the works of those artists (the spirit guides, in fact) who nourished their souls and influenced the two artists' journeys, in a reinterpretation that draws from Battisti to the Bee Gees, from composer Claudio Monteverdi to the Beatles and Sinead O'Connor, via De Gregori, Bjork, Bowie, and many others.