“Gregge romane” returns to Poggio Cancelli, the home village of its author

GREGGE ROMANE. POEMA
Book presentation

Casa Rascelli
Poggio Cancelli, Campotosto (L’Aquila)
Italy
May 23rd, 2026

This is an initiative of Bambun as part of the “Creative Europe Tramontana IV” project.

The book “Gregge romane. Poema”, edited by Elio Di Michele, Giampiero Giamogante and Roberta Tucci, with a preface by Gianfranco Spitilli and an afterword by Giovanni Kezich, published by Bambun/Centro Studi Don Nicola Jobbi in December 2025, was presented at Casa Rascelli in Poggio Cancelli, the home village of its author. The presentation was coordinated by Roberto Gualandri, with remarks by Vittorio Camacci, Gianfranco Spitilli, the book’s editors and improvisational poets, before an audience of 45 people.

“Gregge romane” was completed in 1942 by Agostino Annibaldi, a shepherd from Poggio Cancelli (L’Aquila) who moved his flocks to the Roman countryside. Written in hendecasyllables, with more than two thousand five hundred verses divided into twelve chapters, the poem follows the transhumant shepherd through the whole year, from the ascent to the mountain pastures to the return to the Roman countryside. Almost entirely unpublished until now, it is offered to readers as a “classic” of Apennine pastoral civilisation.