Francolando Marano, born in Capo dOrlando in 1952, attended the "Gulli e Pennisi" high school in Acireale and obtained a degree in economic sociology from the University of Salerno. Married and father of three children, he carries out the business of employment consultant and statutory auditor. In the first years of his life he got to know different geographical realities, from Sicily to Friuli, passing through Lazio and Liguria, immersing himself in them with the technique of participant observation. It is from these intense acquaintances which derives the setting of his poems in different places and also very distant from each other. "The house of the thirty-seven spears", for example, really exists and is in Lauria, but the other land and other times project us into the very distant and archaic Sicily of the early 1960s; "Arbatax" is obviously set in Ogliastra, precisely in Arbatax, in Sardinia, where "Afternoon of August" was also written; the riverfront of "The end of the storm" is that of the Basento, the river of Potenza, "The wounded lantern" is inspired by an ancient Sicilian legend, while "Il Cercatore" and "Il Pierfaone" take up historical or legendary facts of Basilicata. The setting changes with the changing places; what does not change is the "population" or rather the "family" of the protagonists who populate the "microcosm" built over the years by the Author: men and women who apparently live a normal life, but who carry within themselves a modicum of eternity, in their opinion worthy of being handed down. The result is a world populated by giants of the spirit, always in struggle with dark forces, giants who most often suffer terrifying defeats, but never give up; they simply retreat in an orderly fashion, without ever turning their backs on the adversary, they take refuge and wait, even for millennia, for the new dawn: a people who never sleeps, who are always ready to rush wherever Leonidas calls, a people who are always on their feet, who he watches while waiting for the exchange. He has lived and worked in Potenza since 1977, a city to which he is strongly linked, but, for professional reasons, he has continued to travel a lot, staying for long periods in various locations throughout the Centre-South, including Sardinia. During his numerous trips, always made with an attentive eye to local customs and traditions, he paid particular attention to small towns and internal realities, obtaining an unimaginable enrichment both from a human and cultural point of view. His poems are present in dozens of series and anthological publications, both locally and nationally. One of his poems, "Infortnio in itinere", was included in a publication by various authors entitled "Work of the Author", edited by Inail to raise public awareness of the scourge of accidents at work.
Marano Francolando
