Poetry in Georgia has always played a dominant role; in this regard there is a saying of a foreign poet who recites: in Georgia every Georgian is a poet and every Georgian poet doubly poet. The Georgians themselves like to repeat an old adage: a Georgian always held the sword in one hand and the inkwell in the other; this tells us that, due to its long troubled history, being at a geo-political crossroads between East and West, Georgia is always the scene of wars in defense of its identity, its ancient language and its independence. Obviously, he hardly ever had time to expand his rich poetry abroad. Resuming its relations with Europe sorely suspended by the Bolshevika invasion in 1921, today Georgia traces its way to Europe as an independent state, and confidently overlooks the panorama of Italian poetry, of which this small collection is testimony poetics created at the International Festival of Poetry in Genoa during a conversation with its artistic director, poet and considerate friend of Georgia, Claudio Pozzani.
This is how the Italianogeorgiano living books project in Italy began, which involves translating some poems to each other, first of all participating in the International Literature Festival in Tbilisi, then in Genoa and finally in publishing this book. Four Italian poets in Georgian and four Georgian poets in Italian published together is an unprecedented event, a favorable example of cultural exchange, collaboration and mutual dissemination of the poetry of our peoples, a project strongly desired by me and subsidized by the Ministry of Culture and sport, in collaboration with the Italian Embassy in Georgia and the Book Center of Georgia (Dr. Ketevan Dumbadze).