"On a bicycle / like children on a bicycle / like children on their father's / mother's bicycle young giants sitting behind or in front saying / oh look who's there wave your little hand don't put / your feet in the wheels, on a bicycle / with one hand with no hands and who do you / root for who do you root for Bartali or Coppi?"

On a bicycle like Vivian Lamarque (in the photo, from the family archive and published in BC magazine). Poet, writer, translator, the first Strega Prize winner for poetry in history (in 2023 with "Love in Old Age"), Vivian pedals lightly toward her 80th birthday. She will turn 80 on April 19th, but she will already be celebrated on Saturday the 11th at 5 PM in Ardea (Rome), at the Giacomo Manzù Museum. Vivian will have a dialogue with poet Claudio Damiani. There will also be an exhibition of miniature theaters by Fernanda Pessolano inspired by Lamarque's writings such as "Petrushka – From Igor Stravinsky's Opera", "Story with Sea Sky and Fear" (Inge Feltrinelli Prize 2025), "The Beautiful Girl and the Bully Boy and Other Children" and other books that enrich the exhibition dedicated to "Italian Fairy Tales – Miniature Theater" (works by Fernanda Pessolano, texts by Lorenzo Cantatore, curated by Fernanda Pessolano and Maria Sole Cardulli, open until June 8, 2026). Admission is free.

Between Lamarque and the bicycle there has always been a great love: "My cousins taught me to pedal and keep my balance. I pedaled on their bicycle, I didn't have one of my own. And it was there that for the first time, from the roadside, I saw a cycling race go by, a long long line that never seemed to end, everyone was applauding so much, and so I applauded too, and I still remember it after about seventy years. At school the children always asked who do you root for, who do you root for? Coppi or Bartali? Milan or Inter? I would answer Coppi because maybe I didn't even know Bartali and I would answer Juventus because my father, whom I lost when I was four years old, was from Piedmont and that had always been his team, and it seemed to me I could keep him more alive if I answered that way".

Then the city bike: "The change came many years later, I got off the bike around age 15 and got back on around 30, because in Milan, in the QT8 neighborhood, the metro line 1 hadn't arrived yet and buses weren't very frequent. Until, with the new millennium, having become a grandmother, I discovered a different use for the bike: with my little niece Micol in the basket I took long... walks... yes, walks, I wasn't pedaling, she and I the same height chatted wonderfully, and no fear of falling off the bike with such a precious cargo. When Davide was born, double seats on the bike, and double chats while walking". Her ideal bicycle? "The color of the bicycle: I wouldn't know, but full of flowers. I love flowers and plants. I often collect and transplant them. I have a green thumb. Type of bicycle: low for me, all my bicycles are low. Abroad they always rented me tall ones, I struggled so much, sometimes I gave up". Her feelings on a bicycle? "Joy. It transformed even the most boring destinations into pleasure, for example post offices, where you have to stand in line".

The bicycle, then, as poetry. And poetry, then, on a bicycle.

"On a bicycle / like Jung in a photo from '10 / in Italy with a big hat / on big wheels, on a bicycle / like Doctor B.M. on his Holland / racing to us left breathless / like punctured wheels, on a bicycle / like me with flowers in the basket / childhood went away on a bicycle / from a garden". https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qykUj0hjZR4