Uncharted Waters by Paola Caronni
Hong Kong, a city I always wanted to visit, is expressed in vivid detail in Paola Caronni’s UNCHARTED WATERS, a collection of poetry that won the Proverse Prize in 2020.
Paola’s book of poetry, often focused upon Hong Kong, does not only dwell there. Readers are taken to Malaysia in the poem, Flashback of Lemanak River: “As we land in Kuching, / the cold clouds, / hit by the mocking sun, / fade.”
And Cuba, in one of the book’s longer poems, Cuba Libre: “He followed me to Havana, / a stowaway in the bus / exchanging poetry for meals”.
UNCHARTED WATERS is at once a travel guide of Paola Caronni’s experiences. The poetry is strong in narrative as we experience the nuances of daily life in foreign locales. “My shower ritual / was simply to sit on the toilet bowl, / one hand holding the hose, / the other a bar of soap.” These moments test the traveler’s patience, but when looked back upon, one realizes that they create a tapestry of what it is to be an explorer and an expat; what it is to go on an adventure outside of the ordinary and your comfort zone and into the strange, exciting, and oft-times taxing unknown.
After a ten minute interview with Paola Caronni, it became evident that the vibrancy with which she speaks manifests clearly in her poetry. There are strong verbs within the lines of her poems that make the stanzas echo in the reader’s thoughts and create exotic images that place you directly within the moment being conveyed, along with the music of the language, as distinct as the black words on the white page.
I have often suggested to my prose-writing students to study poetry, and Paola Caronni is definitely one that should be analyzed for the clear yet concise language she uses that invokes lyric yet concrete imagery. “I harvest red tomatoes, bite their sweet inviting meat / dripping joyous blood that tickles my naked arms.”
One of the poems that speaks to the effects of pandemic so many have been dealing with over the last three years is We, Social Animals. The international news of the ravishes of COVID upon the Italian population was seen quite early in the pandemic, and was a forewarning of what the rest of the world would soon be dealing with. Tales of hospitals filling with the dead, of Italians restricted to their buildings, and the singing that commenced so that the people could feel connected to each other as they were forced to live in isolation from the general public, were commonly seen online. The news reports showed so much death and disaster in Italy, but authentic Italian voices and their personal woes did not make it into the reports shown in English-speaking media. In the aforementioned poem, We, Social Animals, we hear the genuine voice of someone Italian describing what it was like during that dark and tragic period of the early pandemic:
“The sirens of ambulances passing by our homes,
The IC departments overflown,
Hospitals on the brink of collapse,
Retired doctors and nurses called back to work
Around the clock.
The fear that not only we had not enough resources
But that we were all mortal.
Regardless of age,
We could not ignore
We had to fight another war.”
Paola’s UNCHARTED WATERS also gives great depth to images through personification. Rain abandons, skies boast, and windows are scarred by banging panels. The life of inanimate objects gives greater personality to the mundane, so that the world seems like a characters in the poem, and it is delightful to watch their actions as they cavort upon the page.
Paola Caronni’s UNCHARTED WATERS was a wonderful read, and is highly recommended to poetry readers and non-poetry readers alike. The book encourages you to venture forth out of your domestic reading zone into the foreign and unknown frontiers.
PAOLA CARONNI was born in Italy and has been living in Asia for over twenty years. Now in Hong Kong, she works as a translator, interpreter and tutor of the Italian language, and as Director of the English edition of the online lifestyle, travel and culture magazine, Ciao Magazine, for which she regularly writes articles in English and Italian.
Read more about her here.
Photo by Margot Errante.
