Dop Amina, poet, Naples

 

Your life in a few lines, until you became ‘Dop Amina’ Saracino

I was born and grew up in Naples by not Neapolitan parents; I was raised in Secondigliano amidst US tv series, cipster (a ’70 snack), big babol (a popular chewing gum, which spelling is original Big Bubble but in Italy is often told and written babol) and fake Barbies (the original ones were too expensive). I started working early, first in Naples and then in Rovereto for a long while. I was then returning back in South Italy and got into theatre for a few years including the learning and the performing phases. I always used the most of my wages to buy books, vhs and dvd. Dop Amina has been born as a Facebook profile: a virtual identity I use nowadays to let my texts circulating.

Poetry in Italy seems like the hill in watched from the ascendent slope side if you look at its official publishing side while, if you browse the reading rooms which are often full and the social networks either, you may gain a different perspective. Where is, according you, the truth? Is just the traditional publishing in troubles?

I am not able to answer this question. On a personal side, I am not very interested in the traditional publishing, I can say it’s a proper, net choice. I do not want to let my work treated as a product which is the subject of a purchase. I prefer to sell the territory of the performance, of the ‘here and now’. Who likes me can find out where I am reading my pieces. How do I dwell? With another job as many authors (also those who were belonging also to other time frames), it’s not a great news. There are just two possibilities: you are rich, you have another job, doesn’t matter what it is. 

All in all, the contact with real life, with people, with the things of this world can only be worth for those working in artistic fields. I am not complaining.

 

I love your stunning verses: your poetry mixes irony and violence, sweetness and cruelness and I happened to understand, I hope to be right, that it’s often confronting the ‘comfort zones’ everyone – sooner or later – self-surrounds. If you would review yourself what else you should quote (or erase by my vision) to describe your poetry?

I would highlight a concept. I use words like sweetie, baby, sweet heart in some texts and address these words to the audience: to any single man or women among the listeners. I do that with a sweet and charming voice but all in all I chant terrible things because I feel that an heavy code of our contemporaneity consists in the infantilization of our society – the trend to keep people in a persistent state of need and dependance through the constant use of seduction and fake promises: a kind of ‘maternal’ exercise of power. 

 

You as a reader: which places, which ways and which preferences. And what book (not among your poems) are you handling now?

In bed, preferably.

At night.

Contemporary fiction. Short, fast texts.

I just found it online, And the Ass Saw the Angel, by Nick Cave. It will be my next book to read.

 

Which music do you listen to now?

What the radio spins. I normally listen to rock radio stations but I am not an expert.

 

Joys and hurdles of your job?

I love what I do and love, everyone knows, can be hurting.

 

What do you gift to your city and what do you get back?

I search, and hope to give back, emotions. I do not only refer to the positive ones. My city gives me lots of materials to work on.

 

Where do you see yourself in ten years from now?

Can we skip to the next question?

 

What did you learn from life so far?

To doubt about always of everything. I do not know if it is good. I’ve doubts.

 

 

We interviewed Mena when she just returnend from Genoa where on June 16 and 17, 2018, she was performing in the National Final of the LIPS Poetry Slam (Lega Italiana Poetry Slam) after having qualified at the Regional competition organized by Caspar.

We published two poems of her we translated in English in our Poetry section: SLOT MACHINE and A NICE PLACE.

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