BAO: How would you define your art? What do you want to communicate and convey?
Eleonora: My art is writing, more precisely poetry. Through poetry I want to communicate the way I feel about life, my emotions, reactions and the deepest part of me. But I also want to convey complicity to the reader, I want to make him understand that he is not alone in facing everyday life, that we are similar, that he is understood and loved. Each of us has different feelings, but often we can find ourselves in literature because someone else was able to write down those feelings that we have. I want to be that someone else and give hope to those who read my poems. You can cope with everything as well as I can, there are other people who experience similar emotions and that we can support eachother..
BAO: What difficulties, if any, do you face today in making your art known? What would you need?
Eleonora: In today’s world, which relies everything on digital, it is difficult to make my art known because it should pass through social networks. By now, poets and writers are known for their posts on Instagram and then for their books. To have a popular Instagram page would take a lot of my time, regardless of the fact that I wouldn’t be able to run it. Often the known poetry writers are the ones who have a nice feed, or write common sense sentences and poems. Well, not that I consider myself a great writer, but I don’t feel like editing my art to become a trend on social. The digital world lacks simplicity, variety and authenticity. I would need an intermediary who knows how to make my art known for what it is, without having to adapt or shrink it in the historical context from which we come.
BAO: How did your passion start?
Eleonora: I don’t remember the precise moment when I started to be passionate about literature and writing. I have a very vivid memory of when, at the age of two, I constantly forced my mother to read the ugly duckling to me every night. As she worked late, she was often tired and fell asleep while reading it. One evening, as she was about to fall asleep, I told her all the parts of the story that she had missed because she was so tired. That was the moment when my mother realised that the “story” belonged to me. It was then a spontaneous process. Since primary school, I spent my days reading and only felt understood by books. I always saw in literature a purpose in life, a hope and the certainty that I could not be abandoned. My childhood was not too difficult, but it was not easy. But having the comfort of a book has always helped me to move forward. Knowing that someone else could understand me so well and save me from reality cheered me up and made me hope for the best. So I started writing too, I wanted to give back to literature all that it had given me.
BAO: How does your creative process come about? What inspires you?
Eleonora: I’ve always written to clear my mind and understand what was happening to me and around me. Ever since I was a little girl, writing has been a way for me to release myself and also, in a certain sense, to calm down. I remember once when I was 9 years old, after a terrible fight with my aunt and sister, I started to write a poem. Even though I had pen and paper and was actually writing a poem, it was as if I didn’t realise what I was doing. I felt like I was simply ‘spitting out’ words. In the end the result was a beautiful poem, but the process of writing had completely escaped my perception. While writing I feel as if time stops and only a small part of me remains active in the process. Before writing I feel full of emotions, memories, moments, lives, encounters and stories but as soon as I finish writing I feel at peace, almost empty. An emptiness that envelops me, relaxing. It’s really a feeling of tranquillity that I don’t experience at any other time. As if the whole kaleidoscope of emotions has transferred onto the paper and left me emotionally stable.
For me, writing is a filter with which to look at reality. Everything around me becomes poetry and a story.
BAO: How do you think authenticity relates to artistic creation? How do you live it in your creative process?
Eleonora: Authenticity is everything. It is the lighthouse of writing, at least of my writing. I can only write about emotions that I really feel, or by identifying with a character and feeling those emotions. My poems are very simple, they have no rhetorical figures, no rhymes, no courtly or clever style. They are streams of thought that materialise in my hands. When I write a poem, I do not re-read it later, I do not re-write it or edit it. I no longer work on it. Once it is written, it has taken breath and I let it live independently on the paper. I don’t feel like the creator of those poems. They have a life of their own and take shape through me. So I don’t feel I have the power or the right to change them. Authenticity is fundamental, because my poems represent reality as seen through my eyes, not an imaginary construction of it.
