Bartolomeo Smaldone presenta PADRE

On Thursday, February 12, 2026, at 6:30 PM, at the “Tommaso Fiore” Municipal Library in Cisternino, there will be a presentation of the book FATHER by Bartolomeo Smaldone, as part of the cultural activities organized by the association Poli…giò, the managing entity of the library in collaboration with the Municipality of Cisternino.

“To speak to the dead through their voice, to speak to oneself through the voice of the dead: to be the dead” (from the Preface by Andrea Laiolo)
Father opens with a prophecy, the work of Bartolomeo Smaldone that erases the boundaries between yesterday, today, and tomorrow, between author and reader, between the living and the dead. It is an intense and visionary narrative poetry in which time loses its measure and becomes a shared space, a place of revelation and metamorphosis.
It is Christmas Eve: a son watches over his dying father, and in the suspended moment before the farewell, the two embark on a dreamlike journey back in time. The journey takes them to the rural Lucania of the 1940s and 1950s, an archaic world populated by memories, spectral presences, and unspoken truths. The son’s visions lead him to the events that precede and follow his father’s birth; those of the father take him back to his adolescence, among encounters that seem alive but actually belong to the shadow. The two paths, distinct and distant, end up overlapping, until they coincide in the ultimate moment of farewell: where voices merge and one becomes the other.
Bartolomeo Smaldone, born in Altamura, is the author of numerous poetry collections, including: Del vento e del rovescio della medaglia (2003), Gente (2009), Atomi (2011), Sottrazioni (2018), Ontologia erotica (2021), Dels calçots al 3d10 La meva Catalunya (2022), Nella schiusa rosa dei venti (2023). He has also published novels: Se i tuoi occhi un giorno (2012) and Sub noctem (2016), as well as collections of short stories and nursery rhymes. Founder of the Cultural Movement Spiragli, he is a member of the Red Internacional de Escritores por la Tierra and the delegate in Italy of the Catalan cultural association Etcètera. In 2020, he received the Premio Montale Fuori di Casa – Mediterranean section for Poetry.

Renza De Cesare and Giulio Lorusso will engage in dialogue with the author.
🗓 Thursday, February 12, 2026
🕡 6:30 PM
📚 “Tommaso Fiore” Municipal Library – Cisternino