Child sexual abuse, the fragility of body, giving birth, Syria... The topics of female writers at this year’s Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival are all weighty subjects. Making something beautiful out of a hard topic is a challenge these writers have set out to conquer, they tell Veronica Stivala.
Out of a total of 11 participants, this year sees the highest number of female participants (five) at the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival, now in its ninth edition and previously dominated by male writers.
This year celebrates the European Day of Languages and will see at least eight languages being used.
As Clare Azzopardi, who has been involved in the organisation for some eight years, notes this is “more than just a festival”.
“The translation workshop goes hand in hand with it and writers have the opportunity to get to know each other and work on each other’s translations for a whole week before the festival takes place.”
This year Azzopardi is participating again as a writer and will be presenting three short stories: Sandra, Rita and Polly, about very different women from her latest collection Kulħadd Ħalla Isem Warajh.
The writers hail from a diverse list of countries, including Algeria, France, the UK, Spain, Slovenia, Italy, Hungary and Malta.
They will be in Malta throughout this week to take part in the translation workshop , where they will be translating each other’s works into their languages and then reading some of these translations during the festival.
What is pertinent about this festival is that it often serves as a means for exposing the writings to so many countries .
The translations produced are often published in the various countries from where the festival authors hail.
Last year, festival organisersInizjamed published two collections of poetry and prose in translation: Għaraq xort’oħra (poems and prose by Slovenian writers Brane Mozetic and Suzana Tratnik) and Klijenti Antipatiċi u Kapuċċini Kesħin (short stories by authors who have participated in the festival since its inception).
In addition to the traditional readings and interviews, this year’s festival will see short poetry films from Reel Festivals and another directed by Kenneth Scicluna, as well as performances by Maltese bands Plato’s Dream Machine and Kantilena.
I spoke to the other four participating women writers about their views on the festival. Bel Olid is from Catalonia, Spain.
Her writing focuses on everyday violence, the difficulties people have connecting with one another and the strangeness of life.
At this festival she will be presenting poems from her book Mans lligades (Tied hands), which deal with sexual abuse during childhood and the scars it leaves, but also with the beauty of some moments in life and the empowering feeling of surviving.
Today Syria seems to be a lost place and it can be [seen as] a forgotten childhood room
“I chose these poems,” she says, “because somehow they represent one of the things I like most about writing: taking a hard topic and trying to make something beautiful and powerful out of it, something that will touch the reader.”
Olid will also present some short stories from La Mala Reputació (Bad reputation), which has been very well received by critics in Catalonia.
These stories show the way Olid writes narrative, from an intimate point of view, narrating violence but trying to keep a certain sensitivity for small, beautiful details.
Algerian Noria Adel will be presenting poems and texts to tell intimate stories about the fragility of the body and the notions of home and departure.
She has written about her journey in Syria and new poems last winter while in Algiers.
“Today Syria seems to be a lost place, and it can be [seen as] a forgotten childhood room, the silence of a partner or leaving oneself behind. However, there must be pieces of life to mend and someone to celebrate life in the intimacy of a departure and in the memory of lost places. It is what my works talk about and it is what I hope to share.”
Anna Szabó, from Hungary, will be presenting poems, including the one most important to her so far, She Leaves Me, which is about the mutual vulnerability and love of child and parent.
“Love is everything, but not enough,” she says, “It cannot give the right protection against death. By giving birth the mother opens the gate to every possible danger. “
Speaking about what she tries to bring across with her writing Szabó notes she has always tried to write about “some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing”, as T.S. Eliot put it, which is not only the human being, but the world as a whole, from the twigs to the stars.
Her main question is whether there is enough joy in the world to counterbalance all the pain.
Marlene Saliba will be presenting works in Maltese and English from her poetry book Time-Faring (1994) and from her bilingual poetry book Xbihat tal-Antenati / Ancestral Visions (2011).
In an age where we do not read as much as we used to, all the less when it comes to poetry, one cannot help but ask why Saliba has chosen this medium.
Her answer certainly provides food for thought when she says that she likes writing poetry because she thinks it is “an effective medium to record different thoughts and experiences in an intense, evocative and concise manner”.
Speed and intensity are the key words here and Saliba finds that “poetry, like song, is a strong and quick way of communication”.
The Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival takes place at the Msida Bastion Historic Garden in Floriana from Thursday until Saturday from 8 pm each day.
www.inizjamed.org