Dispatches from Italy: The Return!

Date
March 17, 2026

A few years ago, we published poems by students at G.B Vico in Tuscany, and now they are back to share some new work! Mrs. Maestrini and Mrs. Magani teach their middle school students English as a foreign language. Recently, the teachers led their student through a unit on bullying. It is a critical mission at G.B. Vico to raise awareness about empathy and inclusion, and to teach students to stand up for anyone who suffers from any type of discrimination. The students have been working on poetry, and they wrote poems from the perspective of a bullied student. These poems were first written in Italian, then translated by the young poets into English. Read on to see the great passion, commitment, and effort these students made to express the complex emotions involved with bullying in their second language.

Mrs. Maestrini and Mrs. Magani Middle School

Colors Kevini D'Amico

I remember
Years ago
Friends playing in the yard,
And I alone:
I was a ghost

A green meadow
Everyone saw,
for me it was grey

No one would speak to me
No one wanted to get to know me

Then
All of the sudden
Someone looked at me:
Only then
I began
to see the colors again

Anger Carmen Benvenuto

What I feel inside
When I get angry
I feel a pain
That seems to stab my heart

I feel like I’m in a hell of
lightning, storms and fire.

Red,
Flaming,
Threatening.
And my heart is burning

The nature out there
Is shaken by a mighty wind
And I
Inside
I can feel all its anger

Loneliness Anass Chatir

I fall asleep
Thinking of the best,
I wake up
And see the worst

I want to play
But they insult me
Words of anger

I want to be gone
And leave everything behind me

Wounds Dreni Koci

I remember a time
When everyone laughed at me
My heart was dark
My mind kept thinking and thinking

The sky around me was grey
The rain was falling and falling and falling
my emotions carried away by the wind.

Sadness: a wound, deep inside my heart