Eugenia Bulat’s Poetry: Geometaphors among the Stones of Venice

Abstract

ABSTRACT The city of Venice has historically been open to travellers and newcomers, and its stones have spoken in many languages, engendering a myriad of cross-cultural dialogues between the human and the nonhuman environment. With its waters reflecting multiple images, the city is an apt example for a proposed new theory on geometaphors that considers the poetic metaphors in their exact geographical and physical location. This essay applies this concept to Eugenia Bulat's contemporary poetry. A unique figure in the Italian literary landscape, Bulat invites an innovative geocritical reading of the city and her verses. In Moldova she was the first democratically elected mayor of her town, but in Venice she was a caretaker for the elderly. This experiential clash inspired three collections of poems. Through her gaze, elements of the amphibious Venetian ecosystem – water and stone – become metaphors of migrant femininity and stimulate an ethic of openness and respect.