Maria Teresa Liuzzo

INTERVIEW OF MARIA TERESA LIUZZO TAKEN BY IRMA KURTI

1. Can you please introduce yourself?

I was bornin Saline di Montebello Jonico and live in   Reggio di Calabria (Italy). I am President of “Lirico- Drammatica” Association“P. Benintende''; –Journalist -Editor- Chief Director of the Literary Magazine “LE MUSE''-Writer -Doctor of Psychology at Leibniz University in Santa Fe (New Mexico, U.S.A.), Modern Literature and Philosophy Teacher.

I am a correspondent for many head newspapers as the“Il PonteItalo-Americano'' (The Italian American Bridge), USA and “Nuova Corvina'' EUROPA.

2. What is the name of your most popular book, project, or upcoming events?

All of my writings (articles, essays, poems and novels) have achieved considerable circulation. My literary production, ever since the first volume of poems published, i.e. 'Radici (Roots/Poems of Childhood)', has been covered by great names in Italian and foreign literature, from Prof. Maria Luisa Spaziani (Nobel Prize candidate) to the famous British poet Peter Russell (defined as 'The Last of the Great Moderns' by the great Thomas Fleming and also a six-time Nobel Prize candidate). It was precisely Peter Russell who presented my book 'Apeiron' at the 'F. Cilea' Municipal Theatre of Reggio Calabria, prefaced my volume 'Humanity' and presented and translated, with facing text, the volume 'Genesis'.

*Asking me which is my most beautiful book is equivalent to asking a mother whom of her children is the most beautiful, because books are my own body, my flesh and blood, my prison and my freedom: they are shroud and memory.

*Important projects include the making of a neo-realist film based on the now famous and successful trilogy of novels, which is also being translated in Japan and China. One of the two directors involved is translating the second volume 'Don't tell me I loved the wind!' into English. The plans are many and, like future events, are in God's hands, as no one can foretell the future or have a prior encounter with destiny.

3. Have you won any awards, certificates, honors, stickers, or any other accomplishments you want to share with the world?

I don’t trust the contests, in principle, I think that theyare childishand piloted.This is the main reason I didn’t go to receive the prizes I won in the contests,whereI didn’teven ask to participate,nor I thought to be present or get any kinds of assignments.Rather, I consider among the most significant honors received to be the Honoris Causa degrees with teaching faculty in US universities and those conferred by the Prime Minister's Office for culture and publishing.

I wish to share peace, joy, hope, truth without 'stretch marks', honesty without hypocrisywith the world. I dislike mafia behaviors and pathetic carnivals.

4. What are your hobbies?

My hobbies are writing and being a 'missionary'. I have dedicated much of my life to the needy persons through my human, educational and psychological support, with deeds and not words.

5. What is the best thing about your accomplishments?

The nicest thing isto stay away from the spiral of hatred that leads to the death of the spirit –where the Creativity (writing)is the expression of Sacred Molecular (Parmenide). The endless Dream is the emotion of silence is to feel the sea heartbeating in my chest, to see the flower hatching, to feel the sun kissing me, hearing the sacred breathing of nature into the voices of the time. They are the joy of existing “just because I found what is in my deep inside”, and leave the darkness away from my shoulders, as Lao -Tzu said. It pains me think about those who, because of their unbridled and sneaky running to be famous, they forgot to have a look beyond the barbed wire, to the egoist peoples that think to brag and weaving prices “baked by thunder” of the arrogance of certain media poker which snort in order to search a water throne. About the hatred there will be nothing left but a monster imprisoned by its tail. These “fellows” that says good and scratch badly, don’t think to millions of deaths under the rubble, or to the children that have just a brick for sky. They go on struggling in a war for a “piece of paper” at the service of countless matryoshka dolls, and forgive pick the nicest flower that’s the LIFE. They didn’t realize that originality has no lookalike and all the rest is just a copy. On the meandering wickedness, only love give sense to the life.

6. You have published numerous books up to now. What do they represent for you?

My books had traveled for me; in the last thirty years they have reached the far India, America, Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe. They had been my legs, my mouth. I never loved walkways just like “a good evening showgirl.”

7. Is there any opinion that you want to share with our readers?

I do not need to discredit anyone to stand out. I consider those who do so to be stinging people, and I am inspired by pity for the human miseries that wear the treacherous habit of the lowest slander. I dedicate precious time to my magazine of International Culture, known and appreciated throughout the world. On its pages the best Central European and world criticism has 'passed'. I prefer quality, quantity is made up of scraps and leaves time to find its own. My works have been appreciated worldwide by critics of high value and undoubted professionalism.

I am a free spirit and I leave you with my motto: ''Above me only God and the stars, after me the flood!". Like Confucius, I wait on the riverbank to see 'the corpse of my enemies' pass by.

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY FRANCESCO DI ROCCO & IRMA KURTI