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August 15- August 22,2004 |
Meditating on a Poet's Words
Priest Pier Giorgio Di Cicco envisions through the heart and human condition
By Janet Bellotto
Originally Published: 2004-03-21
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Poet: Pier Giorgio Di Cicco
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Pier Giorgio Di Cicco may not have been writing for 15 years while becoming a priest, but instead turned his creativity to capturing nature on video, hours of it. In 1998 he ran into Denis DeKlerck (they first met in 1986 during a course at the University of Toronto), who convinced him to share his art again.
Di Cicco can be the epitome of surprise. An ordained priest who celebrates mass in Woodbridge and lives in the countryside north of Toronto, his deep vocal tone sparkles with ideas that stream like barzellette. He comes up with these ideas discussing the world in an instance that gives light a whole other meaning.
Born in Arezzo, Italy in 1947, he emigrated with his family to Montreal, moved to Toronto in 1956 and then to the U.S.
His father Giuseppe was a barber, and during Di Cicco's interview with Tandem, his example of the accordion as an Italian cultural symbol mirrors his father's passion of the instrument. Like many Italians, they had left Italy after the war and landed at Pier 1, in search of rebuilding the spirit, of finding happiness.
He grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and readopted Canada in 1968 as a base of operation, where he lived with his sister.
Out of a need to be rescued from loneliness and isolation he began to write at the age of 16 and continued this into university. Soon he was writing until dawn and running the university bar.
By 1978 De Cicco had two or three books under his belt, and published one with McClelland & Stewart. After a visit to Italy, he banded 17 poets together and made the first Italian-Canadian anthology, where three or four can now be found. He was sort of a green sign for Italian-Canadian writers to come out of the closet as it were, to write and explore their roots.
Di Cicco was living via poetry, but felt a religious call in 1983. His peers thought this was strange, and although known as a man of extremes, this move was just absurd. He joined the order of Augustinian monks, but after four years, when he saw that the contemplative tradition was being dismantled, he joined the Archdiocese of Toronto. He began to minister to Italian-Canadians because, as he puts it, he had "a sentimental devotional streak to the immigrants that came over."
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