The 50th anniversary of the death of national Poet Dun Karm Psaila was marked on Thursday.

In a literary evening at the Presidential Palace in Valletta, President George Abela lauded Dun Karm for enriching Maltese culture through his works.

The event was laced with hymns written by Dun Karm himself and sung by the Laudate Pueri Choir while the National Philharmonic Orchestra performed In Memoriam – Dun Karm, composed by the late Charles Camilleri. Some of the priest’s poems were also read out.

It was in the same Palace in Valletta that, in 1912, Dun Karm met Mgr Pawl Galea and Ġużè Muscat Azzopardi who asked him to write a poem in Maltese to appear in the publication Il-Ħabib. Dun Karm had written in Italian for the previous 40 years but, on February 1 of that year, Il-Ħabib published what is now one of his most remembered poems, Quddiem ix-Xbiha tal-Madonna.

About 10 years later, Dun Karm wrote l-Innu Malti to music composed by Robert Samut but it was in the 1940s that the poem was officially recognised as the national anthem, a status confirmed by the Constitution in 1964.

Dun Karm died just five days before his 90th birthday.

The Labour Party described Dun Karm as a radical for choosing to artistically express himself in Maltese, after years of writing in Italian, as most other poets did. Education spokesman Owen Bonnici said the Maltese language would certainly have been poorer had Dun Karm not cultivated it.

The Nationalist Party said Dun Karm’s patriotic poems also showed admiration for other nationalities. Dun Karm, “the poet of the Maltese identity”, clothed the Maltese tongue with prestige and his poems mirrored the Maltese people’s ties to their values, the PN said

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