Verso is a dual language, dual annual culture and arts magazine based in Siena, Italy. The magazine was founded in 2003 by the Siena School for Liberal Arts, a cultural institution dedicated to promoting dialogue between contemporary American and Italian cultures. Its mission, like Verso's, is to reach out to the larger community - its visitors and residents - in the province. This unique combination of the social, cultural and artistic can be found in the pages of Verso: each issue features the work of one contemporary Italian or English language writer (Scrivere); one contemporary artist (Guardare); an oral history with a wide variety of individuals in the province (Parlare); and an up-close report on a social or artistic project in the province (Realizzare). Not to mention our new events section, which highlights the best things going on around town.
Some of the issues we have explored:
Portraits of the Artist - Summer 2007
Our fifth issue pays tribute to a wide variety of talented, notorious, up and coming and longstanding members of the literary and arts communities: poems by Geoffrey Brock (renowned translator and winner of the Yale Younger Series Award); an in-depth interview with sculptor Matthew Spender; images from photographer Bill Hayward's ambitious portraiture project about Americans & memory; and a wild trip to the theatre of Volterra.
Boundaries - Summer 2006
We asked writers, artists and various others to consider boundaries - physical, social, political - when making their contributions. We expected reflections on natural borders, nationalities and race. We figured on confrontation, specialization and isolation. But surprisingly few 'boundaries' emerged. Instead, we found in most contributors and the subjects of their contributions, the intuition to blur the lines between work and way of life, fiction and non-fiction, insider and outsider. There was a special tendency to expand the circle of workplace: a gynaecologist who teaches non-violence classes, a medic who uses art to remedy mental illness, and an artist who invites passers-by into his studio to work alongside him. That this was the general trend hints at a significant change in today's work culture, or at least a change in how people in the culture see themselves. So we give you boundaries, or the levelling thereof.
Life and Death - Summer 2005
Life and Death is a theme near and dear to the heart of Verso's staff as the magazine is full of energy in its early stages, yet faces the disquieting odds against the survival of such start-up publications. We have had to relearn the fine line between rising up and going under. The decision for this issue's theme was slightly influenced by a number of events in the last half-year: the floods in Asia, the ongoing euthanasia battle, the passing of the Pope, to name a few. In Issue 3, we present essays, stories, interviews & art work that reflect upon the coming and going of things.
