In Cinematic Taxi, Corrado Paina revisits the poems of Hoarse Legend, his first Mansfield Press title published in 2000. Those poems were an incisive critique of language and race that explored the themes of multicultural city life and personal and social identity. Now in Cinematic Taxi, Paina has returned with a simultaneous translation of the English poems, but not into any language you will recognize. Instead he has created his own language out of the creative confusion of the modern multicultural wanderer. The language might be called an idiolect or a 'grammelot,' which is a kind of gibberish used in satirical theatre as far back as the 16th century Commedia dell'arte. Paina's grammelot is made up of Italian, Spanish, Italian dialects, some French derivatives, and of course, English, the language of power. It is an experimental suite of poems that could only have come from someone within earshot of the creative babel of Toronto, ground zero of the great Canadian experiment in multicultural life.

Corrado Paina lives and writes in Toronto. He is published in Canada by Mansfield Press: Hoarse Legend (2000), The Dowry of Education (2004), The Alphabet of the Traveler (2006), and Souls in Plain Clothes (2008). He was the editor of College Street -- Little Italy Toronto's Renaissance Strip, a finalist for the Toronto Heritage Award. In Italy he has published a collection of short stories entitled di corsa (Monteleone/Mapograph -- Vibo Valentia), the novel tra Rothko e tre finestre (Ibiskos), the collections of poetry tempo rubato (Atelier 14 -- Milano) darsena inquinata (Moderata durant -- Latina), l'alfabeto del viaggiatore (Silvio Editrice) and Abecedario (with etchings by Sandro Martini, printed by Paolo Nava).

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