Maurice Cauchi profiles two more Maltese women writers of Maltese descent in Australia.

All Maltese, not only those living in Australia, should justifiably feel proud of the achievements of these people of Maltese origin. They will undeniably leave a mark on the increasing body of literature which in many cases owes its origin to influences first experienced in Malta. In other instances, the Maltese connection is more tenuous, a feature one expects will become increasingly evident with future generations of Maltese-Australian writers.

Anna Maria Weldon

Anna Maria Weldon, née Mercieca, who is the granddaughter of former Chief Justice Sir Arturo Mercieca, was born to Maltese parents at Naxxar in 1950 and spent her childhood in North Africa, Central America and the UK.

Weldon’s latest prose work, ‘Threshold Country’, has brought her international recognition

The family returned to Malta when she was 10, and she went to school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. She still corresponds weekly with former classmates.

She married Adrian Castillo on 1971 and lived in Lija until they moved to Western Australia in 1984 with their two young children.

Weldon now has two Australian-born grandchildren, and all the family still live in Western Australia. She has maintained close ties with Malta over the years, making numerous visits to see family and friends.

Weldon started out as a journalist in 1978, writing features for The Sunday Times of Malta. She then worked as an editor for Associated Press, who published her first volume of poetry, Ropes of Sand, in 1983. After settling in Perth, she wrote for The West Australian newspaper for several years.

Weldon’s second collection of poetry, The Roof Milkers, was published by Sunline Press in Australia in 2008. Although known best as a poet, she has written in several genres over the years, including creative non-fiction, reviews and short stories, published under her Australian surname since her 1997 marriage to Wayne Weldon, who has since passed away.

She has recently been awarded two prestigious writing prizes – the Tom Collins Poetry Prize 2010, and The Nature Conservancy Australia’s inaugural Prize for Nature Writing 2010-11.

Her former credits include the Ena Taylor Award 2007 and the Creatrix Poetry Prize 2008. But her award-winning streak began in Malta in 1962, when she won a national essay prize for students.

Weldon’s latest prose work, an essay entitled ‘Threshold Country’, has brought her international recognition when it was awarded the 2010-2011 inaugural Nature Conservancy Australia Nature Essay Writing Prize. It has been described as “a marvellously orchestrated, complex meditation on belonging”, and can be read online at www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/australia/tnca-threshold-coun try-by-annamaria-weldon-for-tnc_ may-2011.pdf.

She is currently completing a landscape journal of memoirs, poems and photos from Yalgorup National Park, where she recently held a two-year artist residency hosted by Symbiotica, the University of Western Australia’s art and science laboratory, working on its adaptation pro-ject with the Lake Clifton’s thrombolites.

It has been said that “her writing is grounded in a love of country and appreciation for the many languages we have for landscape. These include memoirs, the wisdom of traditional cultures and natural sciences”.

It also emphasises the relevance of her Maltese heritage and migrant experience.

Weldon’s work has been the subject of a recent Contem­porary Art gallery installation (Bush Journal), has been broadcast on Australian national radio programmes (ABC Poetica, Short Story), recorded on several CDs and widely published in Australian literary journals and anthologies including Science Made Marvellous (Poets Union), 22 (Writing WA), Island, Westerly, Stylus, Five Bells, Landscapes, Red Room Company, Indigo and ­Dotdotdash.

She has also presented her poetry as theatre, with indigenous and contemporary music and dance. She is known for her work throughout the community.

Last year she held 20 writing workshops based on her writing, travelling from Perth and Fremantle to Mandurah and Denmark, sponsored by Writing WA, City of Mandurah, Country Arts Network WA, Community First Intern­ational, Poets Union and Denmark Arts.

A popular and seasoned public speaker and poet, she is welcomed by Australian-born, migrant and indigenous audien-ces alike, from high school and universities to writers’ clubs and disadvantaged communities, because her narratives of place navigate natural science, local tradition and personal stories as they explore cross-cultural experiences of country.

www.annamariaweldon.com.au

Pauline Curmi

Pauline Curmi, née Zammit is an educator, writer, literary translator and poet.

Curmi writes spontaneously, delving into the ‘instinctive and intuitive depths of the psyche

She was born and raised in Victoria, where she qualified as a secondary school teacher and taught English and French at St Mary Grammar School in Gozo.

She and her family left the island in 1967 when her father accepted the post of migration attaché in the diplomatic corps in the Malta Embassy in Canberra. Curmi and her husband chose to settle and raise their three children in Melbourne.

Following her first teaching degree, Curmi upgraded her qualifications by studying in a number of universities in Australia, obtaining a Dip.Ed., B.Ed., M.A. in Applied Linguistics, a diploma in professional creative writing and a Master of Letters.

Her current interests in aca­demia range from Jungian psy­chology to mythology, mysticism and the hidden wisdom, traces of which are evident in her writing.

She has held various teaching, tutoring and lecturing positions in secondary schools and colleges of advanced education in Mel­bourne. In interim, she served as a member of various educational professional bodies.

Curmi has written children’s fiction, created the Children’s page for the newspapers The Herald Sun, New South Wales, and The Mail in Melbourne. She has trans­lated short story books and other resource material for the Edu­cation Department in Victoria.

She has broadcast and published children’s books in the Maltese language. Her first book, Ħolm u Fantasija, published in 1987, was awarded a Premju Letterarju and a silver medal by the Maltese government. Another book, L-Avventuri ta’ Alice, pub­lished in 1998, is a creative trans­lation of The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

Her Maltese poems have appeared in journals and anthologies published by the Maltese Literature Group in Australia. Lecturers reviewing her English poetry manuscripts describe her as an esoteric poet.

According to their comments, Curmi writes spontaneously, delving into the “instinctive and intuitive depths of the psyche”.

One critic notes that “her images burst into reality with archetypal messages”. She herself sees her poems like ‘soul-dreams’ arising from the unconscious.

The ancient lore of her first island home has left an indelible mark on her psyche and this is subtly revealed in her writing.

Concluded

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