Sabrina Giovine gives absence a poetic voice
The Naples radiologist’s first collection gathers poems shaped by listening to women, relationships and memory.
In L’assenza. Poesie d’amore, published by Edizioni Dialoghi, Sabrina Giovine brings to readers a body of writing developed over many years alongside her medical career. Director of general and emergency radiology at Naples’ Cardarelli Hospital, she builds the collection around an absence that is not only loss: it can become memory, trace and quiet presence. The poems are inhabited by real and imagined women, including friends, patients and colleagues encountered through life. Her sister Maria Luce, who had preserved the poems, encouraged her to publish them. The 85-page volume therefore marks a passage from a private practice of poetry to a shared space where individual experiences can meet a wider, recognisable feeling.