The Goat of Regional Road

In this interview with MaltaToday's Karl Schembri, poet Mario Azzopardi says that 2006 will give us more of the same: "unfettered mediocrity, bigoted Christianity and more junk TV". His new book of poetry, The Politics of Poetry, is due to be published in the coming weeks:

A metaphor for drab, soulless Malta that went on free-for-all development without any sense of direction, in a cultural void vacated by artists, authors and intellectuals, who left the public agenda to be set solely by politicians and the Church. It’s a sad picture, the one explored by Azzopardi, the 61-year-old left-wing poet, theatre director and columnist.

Within its frame, it has shining in vulgar brush strokes episodes of high-pitched anti-immigration hysterics, an equally hysterical anti-IVF war, the birth of a fascist far-right movement, a crusade to entrench the ban on abortion in the constitution and the total collapse of public broadcasting, all happening during our first year and a half in the European Union.

And what’s even more depressing is that nothing, absolutely nothing, has changed on a cultural and intellectual level since Malta’s entry into the EU – an event much anticipated by Azzopardi himself for its supposed liberating experience for conservative Maltese society...

Translated Maltese poetry