By Camilla Sarra. Cover image by Anna Yenina on unsplash.
What happens when you stop scrolling, look at a plant and start writing? For Cristina Tedde, the answer might be poetry. Born in Sardinia and now based in Florence, the writer and poet is bringing Semi di poesia to Piantala, taking place from 16 to 18 October at Manifattura Tabacchi. Her workshop begins with something simple: observing nature. From there, words become “seeds”, growing first into individual poems and eventually into a collective Garden of Words. It feels particularly relevant at a time when we rarely give ourselves the space to stop and notice what is around us. Piantala returns to Florence with more than 15,000 plants across 350 varieties, alongside workshops and events designed to create a community around the world of plants. We spoke to Tedde about writing as a personal space, finding inspiration in nature and what poetry can teach us about slowing down.
How Semi di poesia began
How did Semi di poesia come about?
I was looking for something different and contemporary that genuinely felt in tune with the Piantala community. That is how Semi di poesia began: as a project that allows me to bring the world of words closer to nature and to use observation as the first gesture from which everything else can grow.
Writing as a Tool for Self-Discovery
How important is writing outside a professional context?
For me, it is essential, because the moment I step away from articles and work-related writing, I enter a much more personal space. Writing becomes an outlet, almost a form of therapy, and gives me room for something that belongs entirely to me.
Understanding Ourselves
Can writing help us understand what we are feeling more clearly?
I think it is one of the strongest and most useful tools we have. I have often reread something I wrote years earlier and found a part of myself that I had almost forgotten; returning to those words has helped me rediscover myself and understand myself more deeply.
How to Keep Creativity Alive
How do you nurture your creativity?
I read a lot and pay attention to what is happening around me, while travelling whenever I can. I never stay in the same place for too long, and I try to surround myself with people whose minds feel close to mine, because that exchange also keeps the way I look at things alive.
How Nature Inspires Writing
What is the connection between being surrounded by greenery and finding your centre again?
I write best when I have nature around me. My two poetry books were written in the silence of my house by the sea, surrounded by salt air and Mediterranean scrub, so landscape inevitably becomes part of the way I find concentration and allow words to arrive.
Words as Seeds
If a word can become a “seed”, what can it grow into at the right moment?
It can create the awareness that what we write for ourselves can often reach someone else too. A word born from something deeply intimate can end up embracing another person and finding a resonance that goes beyond the person who first wrote it.
Letting Go of Control
How important is the unexpected in writing?
Very important, because writing is one of the few things in my life that escapes my control. It arrives suddenly, often when I least expect it, and that unpredictability is part of what makes it feel so free and personal to me.
Nature, Storytelling and Transformation
What changes when we tell a story from the perspective of a plant or a natural element?
Nature teaches us a great deal, especially through the cycle of life and the constant idea of transformation. I am fascinated by death as a form of rebirth and by the cycle itself as a form of waiting, because it reminds us that everything has its own timing and that what appears to end can also open onto something new.
A Garden of Words
How important is it to share writing with others?
For me, poetry has always been a collective embrace. It can begin with something deeply personal, then encounter someone else’s experience and take on a meaning that goes beyond the person who wrote it. That possibility of recognising ourselves in someone else’s words is something I find very precious.
Poetry Is Everywhere
What would you say to someone who thinks they cannot write poetry?
I would say that poetry really is everywhere and that everyone has one inside them, even when they feel they do not have the tools to write it. Sometimes we simply need to give ourselves enough time to listen to what is inside us and try to turn it into words without worrying too much about the result.
Journalism vs Poetry
How does your way of looking at things change between journalism and poetry?
Poetry is the room where I dance alone, a space where I can truly be whoever I want to be. In poetic writing I feel a different kind of freedom, because I can allow a more personal part of myself to emerge without the demands that inevitably come with journalistic work.
The Art of Slowing Down
In a world that moves so quickly, what can poetry still teach us?
Patience and the value of taking things slowly, both of which we risk forgetting today. I also like the idea that poetry can teach us to see imperfection as a form of beauty, allowing things the time they need instead of expecting everything to be immediately complete.
Still Surprised
What can still surprise you enough to become a line of poetry?
The sea, and water more generally, is still what most easily surprises me. It is the element I feel closest to, especially because of its ability to adapt and constantly change shape while remaining itself.
Keeping Wonder Alive
How do we protect a childlike sense of wonder?
By practising kindness and continuing to surround ourselves with things that can still create a sense of wonder, like flowers and books. For me, it is mainly about the way we look at the world: noticing beauty and still being able to be surprised by it every day, without ever taking it for granted.
Green Florence
What are your favourite green spaces in Florence?
I live next to Boboli, so the first view I see when I open my windows in the morning is already something wonderful. I also love Villa Bardini for its view over the city and the Four Seasons garden for its elegance; they are very different places, and what connects me to them is the way greenery becomes part of the Florentine landscape.
