Cinematic Taxi

In Cinematic Taxi, Corrado Paina revisits the poems of Hoarse Legend, his first Mansfield Press title published in 2000. Those poems were an incisive critique of language and race that explored the themes of multicultural city life and personal and social identity. Now in Cinematic Taxi, Paina has returned with a simultaneous translation of the English poems, but not into any language you will recognize. Instead he has created his own language out of the creative confusion of the modern multicultural wanderer. The language might be called an idiolect or a ‘grammelot,’ which is a kind of gibberish used in satirical theatre as far back as the 16th century Commedia dell’arte. Paina’s grammelot is made up of Italian, Spanish, Italian dialects, some French derivatives, and of course, English, the language of power. It is an experimental suite of poems that could only have come from someone within earshot of the creative babel of Toronto, ground zero of the great Canadian experiment in multicultural life.

AUTHOR

Corrado Paina

Born in Milan, Italy, Corrado Paina has been living in Toronto 1987, where he serves as editorial director of the quarterly magazine ItalyCanada Trade. He is also the Deputy Director and Editor of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Toronto News. Paina’s work has been published in several literary magazines in Italy, Canada, Ireland and the US. He has published Hoarse Legend, The Dowry of Education and The Alphabet of the Traveler with Mansfield Press, and short story collections and a book of poetry in Italy. He also edited with Denis De Klerck a book entitled College Street – Little Italy – Toronto’s Renaissance Strip, published by Mansfield Press.