Image and Poetry

Young Girl Dreams of Love, after Matisse (Interior with a Young Girl)
by Adel Gorgy

IMMAGINE & POESIA (IMAGE & POETRY) is an international artistic literary movement, founded at Alfa Teatro in Torino, Italy, in 2007. Since its inception, hundreds of poets and artists from all over the world have participated, and the movement now reaches international audiences.

The manifesto of the movement consists of 10 points and has been translated into 28 languages. The fourth point suggests moments of cross fertilization for artists and poets in order to support the thesis that a literary text may inspire the creation of a figurative art work and vice versa: the result is a new and complete form of art.


"Young Girl Dreams of Love, after Matisse" is a painting by Adel Gorgy of New York inspired by a poem by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

My Daughter at 14, Christmas Dance

Panic in your face, you write questions
to ask him. When he arrives,
you are serene, your fear
unbetrayed. How unlike me you are.

After the dance,
I see your happiness; he holds
your hand. Though you barely speak,
your body pulses messages I can read

all too well. He kisses you goodnight,
his body moving toward yours, and yours
responding. I am frightened, guard my
tongue for fear my mother will pop out

of my mouth. "He is not shy," I say. You giggle,
a little girl again, but you tell me he
kissed you on the dance floor. "Once?"
I ask. "No, a lot."

We ride through rain-shining 1 a.m.
streets. I bite back words which long
to be said, knowing I must not shatter your
moment, fragile as a spun-glass bird,

you, the moment, poised on the edge of
flight, and I, on the ground, afraid.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Copyright © 1995