Live Encounters Poetry & Writing April 2026
Genoa notebook, poem by Edward Caruso.
Genoa notebook
An open door
painted onto an interior wall
A few strokes of colour, brush following
previous lines across overlapping edges
A few more dabs
shades that dry
***
Eduardo Galeano, centuries of wind
those that couldn’t push back Columbus
***
The ticket master stops anyone from Russia
pronounces Doctor Zhivago and Anna Karenina clearly
shows me a handwritten list of Cyrillic characters
Distinguishes them from their Greek predecessors
Grateful to find tourists
he practises four languages
with whom he can
whenever he can
***
Kebab restaurant, dining area painted green, red and black. The assistants serve fava bean felafels and speak a mixture of Spanish, Arabic, English and Italian. No Genoese dialect.
***
An elderly man
faded green jacket
stares at the port
from a backstreet
He picks up
a bottle
takes a swig
and places it
by an entrance
He inhales on a cigarette
stumbles and disappears
***
Just the summer heat of late autumn
***
Never silence
***
Two women sleep next to each other
the room’s other inhabitants long gone
At breakfast
their voices whisper
gentle as birds
They wash their cups
tip-toe out, Indian file
hand in hand
***
nave
footsteps
outside voices
echoes and a hammering
***
The signature of passing sounds
***
The door in the Moroccan restaurant a lingering scrape back and forth. Its Miles Davis cadence, melody repeated each time someone enters and exits the bathroom, toilet malfunctioning.
***
Vico Angeli. Four sex workers in a circle. Post-middle age. Perfect hair. The weariness of waiting. A long beat.
***
S. Maria Assunta di Carignano. My gut feeling that the uphill walk from via xx Settembre would kill my writers block of the past two days pays off. On reaching the church entrance …
Medieval walls and renaissance quarters.
Woods overshadow a line of apartments
and obstruct this lookout above the sea.
Sunlight and overtaking clouds.
Gulls within reach, according to a whisper
from the church steps, romance has been stabbed
from behind. The voice, pledging a lifetime
of studying art, whispers: Se non sei finito sei infinito. [1]
***
Echoes in the nave the peal of thunder.
***
An aunt who died five years ago
appeared in my dream
claimed to have found out
how many women my father had slept with
before he’d met my mother.
The last time I saw her
my father’s funeral
as we were being driven to the service
she wept for him
before calming for the procession
to come.
***
Waiting room. Familial traits
in the figure who joins me.
Nondescript scrolling of pages on our mobiles.
A figure to grow into,
elderly features, rose-coloured shirt
brown jeans, pensive and waiting
hours in waiting, waiting
face resembling mine
two decades on, distant father figure
lost to the sound of a coffee machine
and train schedule announcements.
Whatever face in me I’ve gaped at
each morning
unaware of leaps to decades ahead
in this hour passing
weight of seniority
in a future figure.
I remain after my departure.
***
She strokes her ankle
brings her leg to a lotus position
& reads a novel titled She Dog
Her thumb tip
touches the second and third fingertips
of her right hand
mudra style
***
Views of fallow soil
Electricity wires. A solitary elm.
***
Phone conversation next to me:
1 + 0 = 10
[1] If you’re not finite you’re infinite.
© Edward Caruso
Edward Caruso has been published by A Voz Limpia, Australian Multilingual Writing Project, ‘La Bottega della Poesia’ (La Repubblica, Italy), Burrow, Communion, Kalliope X, Live Encounter P&W, Mediterranean Poetry, Meniscus, Melbourne Poets Union, n-Scribe, Right Now, P76, StylusLit, TEXT, Unusual Work and Well-Known Corners: Poetry on the Move. Since 2024 he has co-judged the Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize. In 2025, his third collection of poems, What Distance Means, was published by Hybrid Publishers. In October 2025, he featured on 3CR’s Spoken Word program.