A collaboration between the University of Leeds Poetry Centre and the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures, this ‘versioned’ canto from Dante's Commedia was written by Kimberly Campanello in conversation with Markus Fraundorfer, especially in relation to his work on riverkin and indigenous thought and law. For commentary on Dante’s original canto in which he considers Empire see: Digital Dante (Teodolinda Barolini, Columbia University).
PARADISO 6
from This Knot: A New Version of Dante’s Commedia with the Poet K by Kimberly Campanello
Academia.edu Full PDF Package Pre-Roman Daunia
QUERIES?: Sanità & Sanniti + Trasumanar & Transumanza
Giovanni Dell’Aquila/John Quillo, 1890 (Volturino) – 1918 (Elkhart)
Strada Statale 17 / Empire bypass via Isernia and so on…
April 2025
ARGOMENTO
There’s the question of origins. And the level of planning needed to find them.
And the sacrality of narrative. And the figures required to be foregrounded as intertwined. The stoppage of digging or printing as finding or writing contradicts a forceful line.
Questions and replies.
There’s story depicted with characters as images. The story you are in or to which you ascribe your state of undermine. The shift to centrality when things get triumphant.
In your favour.
In favour of you and yours whom you style in this or that form both in and not of your making. Until. Tough comes anyway
And so you wait retrospectively for rationale for the ultimate apostasy.
Light, food, medicine withdrawn from anywhere or anyone in this whole one now meanwhile always then in which all are tied.
Solely this here and everywhere is any way built and building at a steep price. Us and them. Ruined vestiges.
Dropping means carrying on and on to off.
Words unshelved. Example. Carrion.
There’s the issue of time. What was seen by ancestors. In what light. When. Where we are beneath the planets. The holes we dig ourselves. To be or symbolise sky. Falling in.
Empire. Dug in and in so generating evidence for a storyline.
Any day now go for learning darkness in an unknown language.
At last shades and shades show up in contrast. Soothe by blinking. Moon and stars. A line. Frayed and forked.
Vessels. Beaking.
Sensible skin. Leaking
Now ask again. From where we came are we there yet.
CANTO
the road the pattern the thread
you want as you voice the leader
that start and then this one you so
so love to circle to spy on to talon
to nest forever till you decline then
to breathe future propped and hung
and nailed as if inevitable I say not this
time that line claims forever merely lends
plot to story wrapped up in telling but
not sensing voice speaking in breath
or before breath which is not a thing
and is all things and is nowhere and is
just here this track crossing meanwhile
before eagle meant power and flew for this
or that redeemer before is before is before
is this first old fire
beside this tooth
a child’s
this road this one this does it does all this
way back to the tunnel the wolf the wind
the bridge the light the plain the forest
the snakes the vow the grain the bones
hold faces of skin rub to soften to salve to last
as pages as I’m now just so just plain confident
the eagle is the eagle its name is everywhere
no one is not of it or it the more you repeat it
of eagle of eagle of eagle of eagle the more
you find its sound is water brother mother
weight of a body the salt spread round river
crossing sounds sister so hurry so hurry the way
is upon us the wolves are hurtling toward
pain just drawn out by elixers herbing surfaces
till ah we’ve just realised this road is just
one layer and beneath and beneath any
direction is everywhere just over there
unseen rivers paved over shrines so rerouted
to the way as such so no it’s not unexpected
keep light burning host wrong
turnings in soft beds wake early find
embers still burning
COMMENTO
From high up, hovering at the midpoint, at the door to the city that’s long gone, the poet K nests on a mat in the doorway to her room, cross-legged. One knee over the frame for the screen, one knee through the bars at the edge of her perch. She surveys. From here she measures time by the sun, by loss, which is death absenting fleshly presence from that house and that too in just five days.
She surveys by winds, unheard of or none, by temperature, still neither here nor there, by colour, one minute grey and three greens and then blasting yellow and fuchsia and least seventeen shades.
She surveys by sounds of birds, of wolves, of sobs running out onto the street, of soft sighs as the visitor arrives just after the news reaches the other side.
Other siding this here, this village, which is just one place, yes, of course, but like everywhere it is covered in veins.
Veins through skin. Veins through stone. Veins through leaves. Veins through a single phrase pushing and pulling at meaning so much and more, which is what comes each time sun touches a face, or loss comes like strong winds, or colour burns time as it runs.
Veins through a phrase to speak going out and in and on no matter the name, the type, the family, hence the territory, of the bird the poet K might have referenced more specifically.
But didn’t.
A bird. What is it.
Given. Taken.
Granted. Wait.
Seems. Same.
As. Like. A. The. For. To Be. Wings. Wings.
Wings. Seed.
Floating thing.
Hope. Mother
pain. Rain love.
Bird.
Good.
Day.
Joy join
flesh in
time cross
all lines
fleshing
out from
inside. Bird is
me. Whatever
my name. See.