Saturday April 27 2019 from 14:00 to 16:00 EDT. NYPL Mulberry Street Library, 10 Jersey St, New York 10012. Be Part of Versetto Libero. Translation Experience with Laura Caparrotti and Dave Johnson. At the IAWA event, Italian artists and Free Verse poets will recite poems in their original version followed by the Italian translations. The audience is invited to participate by bringing a short poem that will be translated.

Laura Caparrotti (Kairos Italy Theater) Since 2014, In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY has brought Italian artists to the Free Verse Poetry Workshops in the South Bronx to collaborate. Hosted in the heart of the waiting room of the NYC Department of Probation, the Italian artists translate poems written by the Free Verse participants, which include probation clients, their families, the staff, and community members.

The Italian artists perform the poems together with their authors. In 2018, this experience became a book, Versetto Libero: a celebration, published by Kairos Italy Theater. The collection features poems, stories, photos that bear witness to four years of pure love and shared art, culture, and life.

Dave Johnson is the author of the play, Baptized To The Bone (Dramatists Books), a book of poems, Marble Shoot (Hummingbird Press/Wake Forest University), and the editor of an anthology of poems, Movin' (Scholastic/Orchard Books). Johnson is a Lecturer at Yale University, a Visiting Faculty member of the MFA Program at The New School University, and an Instructor at The Cooper Union School of Art. He teaches extensively in public libraries and with Poets House, in the nationwide Poetry in The Branches Public Library Initiative. Dave appeared as guest artist for The Manhattan Borough President’s inauguration 2006 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And appointed by the NYC Mayor's Office, Johnson is currently serving as Poet in Residence for The Department of Probation of New York City.

Hosted by Camilla Trinchieri