Meet NUNUM's Winter 2020 Contributor: Alessio Zanelli

NUNUM

Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Interview with Alessio Zanelli

Alessio Zanelli's lovely piece The Rag was a must publish the first time I read it but then when Marieken Cochius slipped some imagery our way this piece turned in an all-time favourite. 

Recently Alessio gifted us with a little of his time and we are all better of because of it, but before you dive into the interview take a second and see if you can guess the first book he bit into as a child.

David Copperfield, I think, or maybe Cuore (Heart), by Edmondo De Amicis.  I was a child, either 7 or 8.

The Rag words by Alessio Zanelli & art by Marieken Cochius

Ah, Cuore is a new one for me, but David Copperfield has been the answer to that question before. Okay, lets get more contemporary, what was the last book you read that made you think, damn that was a good book.

Nearly all those I read are damn good... I read fiction only every now and then, whereas I read a lot of essays and science books (mainly about physics and cosmology) and, of course, poetry. The last novel I read which really impressed me is maybe Apeirogon by Colum McCann.

Who are your go-to writers when you need something to read on holiday?

Basically, poets, from whatever period. I really read, and re-read, a lot of poetry.

After reading more of your own writing that answer makes perfect sense to me. What about when you were starting out, which writer(s) or which book(s) influenced your decision to become a writer? 

​No doubts about this one: Emily Dickinson and William Blake.
​
Always nice when they're easy right. Flipping to the contemporary again, is there a contemporary write you admire? 

The Rag words by Alessio Zanelli & art by Marieken Cochius

Milan Kundera, maybe.

The Rag words by Alessio Zanelli & art by Marieken Cochius

A lot of people turn to craft books at different points in their development, is there a writing craft book that you would recommend to new writers? 

Writing a Novel, by Richard Skinner.

​Ah, one I've actually read. What about you, is there a writer who has influenced your current writing style Alessio?

No one in particular: at times I kind of sense that I’m following the trails of various poets, changing in time.

Why write flash fiction?

I like it, the shorter the better. It can be deep though terse, but it’s never easy. Sometimes I start writing a poem to then realize it would better work as flash fiction (or prose poetry). Some other times I write flash fiction intentionally.

Do you have any advice for people who are just starting to send their work out to journals?

Read about the journals you’d like to submit to and, if possible, read them. Select them carefully, it will save you a huge lot of time, energy, and money. Above all, never give up, keep submitting: rejection slips may inundate you, keep on submitting regardless. And never renounce what you feel like writing: the hell with editors’ alleged needs and desiderata.

The Rag words by Alessio Zanelli & art by Marieken Cochius

Alessio, being Italian by birth, what lead you to write in English?

Alessio Zanelli 

That’s a long story to tell, I’ll try to summarize it. I never studied English at school, always German: basically, I’m self-taught in English. When I was a teenager, in the late ‘70s, I started listening to rock music (I still do, my favorite groups are the big ones of the ‘60s and ‘70s, such bands as Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, ELP and others, I call them “dinosaurs”), and the need to understand the lyrics spurred me on to learn English. Then one day, a few years later, I bumped into an old poetry book, titled The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse, and my love for English poetry literally burst out (despite the fact that at the Lyceum I hadn’t been that fond of literature in general). 

Later I began writing my first poems, even though I didn’t submit any work to journals until around the year 2000. And here I am today, with nearly 1,000 poems and a few flash fiction pieces published in some 180 literary magazines around the world, and 5 collections published in the USA and the UK. By the way, I adopted the American spelling, vocabulary and usage from the very beginning, which my English wife (also a poet) is not very happy about.

No worries there, in Canada we flip back and forth between the two all the time. Recently so many of us have been working through new routines and I'm curious about how it has affected your writing, for example, how much time do you devote to writing?

A lot. I earn my living as a financial advisor, but I devote to writing nearly as much time. I happen to write (which also includes jotting down quick notes for future development) anytime and anyplace (I can pick up my phone to type something even at the dead of night).

Well that answers my pen, pencil or phone question doesn't it. Okay, last one, so lets go deceptively simple, what is the purpose of writing?

This is the mother of all questions to any author. I don’t have an answer for that, I find writing instinctive, so I borrow three, from three completely different perspectives, from the many giants of English literature:
1) What’s the purpose of writing if not that of being read? George Bernard Shaw
2) We don’t write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand. Cecil Day Lewis
3) It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. William Carlos Williams

Well nothing from me can follow that, thank you Alessio. 

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English and whose work has appeared in over 180 literary journals from 16 countries including, in Canada, The Nashwaak Review, Existere and Vallum. His fifth original collection, titled The Secret Of Archery, was published in 2019 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.

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