Mario Azzopardi, Maltese Poetry and a Few Notes on Albanian Poetry

I just added a link to a wonderful site on Maltese poet Mario Azzopardi. Contains a generous number of poems, interviews, critical articles, etc.

Grazio Galzon, translator of the only volume of Azzopardi's work available "Naked As Water" (Xenos Books 1996) says of this work in the introduction, "His poetry is a verbal pyrotechnics sprawling in a phantasmagoria of sounds, images and rhythms."

excerpt from "Persona":

...I am Kafka's insect

and the piece of bread mildewing

in the orphan's basket.

I am the image of an eclipse

a colony of snakes

and lepers.

The stillness of the departed

or

the formless aura

of crazed whiteness...

Number 1100

Coffee grounds scraped my guts

my soul weighed by heavy bells

resounding a pat Ave Maria

on the roof hanging by wooden pins

scorched by a violet sun

dried genitals withered impotent

a tired sun agonizes and in the evening

I taste again infected coffee

and start again threading beads of empty wishes.

Unfortunately Malta is in the company of countries whose poetries have received almost no attention from translators. There is a possibility that this will change one day in the future. Albania was one such country until just a little over one year ago. Since then we have seen the release of Moikom Zeqo's "I Don't Believe in Ghosts" (BOA Editions, translated by Wayne Miller), Azem Shkreli's "Blood of the Quill" (Green Integer, translated by Robert Elsie), & "Lightning from the Depths: An Anthology of Albanian Poetry" (Northwestern University Press translated & edited by Robert Elsie & Janice Mathie-Heck). Speaking of Albanian poetry I must also mention Visar Zhiti, whose book "The Condemned Apple" is also published by Green Integer and is also translated by Robert Elsie. Luljeta Lleshanaku's "Fresco" (New Directions) the first among these to be published and featuring an introduction by Eliot Weinberger is also quite stunning. I can safely predict that despite the difficulties American publishers & translators face due to the trade embargo, Cuba will be another such country.

Back to Malta...here is a link to the special feature The Drunken Boat ran: http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/maltapge.html

& here is a link to poets reading their work:

http://hbulastirati.blogspot.com/2007/07/test.html#mario