Drunken Boat

The current issue of the The Drunken Boat (Fall/Winter 2007) features contemporary poetry from Malta. It is edited by Maria Grech Ganado and includes work by thirteen Maltes poets as well as essays by Maria, Adrian Grima and Bernard Micallef. From Adrian Grima's essay:

The work that marks the beginning of the new wave of Maltese literature is Henry Holland's largely unknown short collection of poetry, L-Artist tat-Trapiz (1996). It is not Mr. Holland's fault that the book hasn't attracted the attention it deserves. A literature is so much more than a body of works written over a stretch of time "by" a community: It is, perhaps first and foremost, about that body of works being read, coming alive in the consciousness of individuals in the community in a very real way. And this cannot happen if that community lacks a solid infrastructure that first produces the book and presents it to its potential readers.

The book infrastructure is as important in the creative process as the writer: Good editors, publishers, critics, TV presenters, school teachers, cultural officers, festival organisers, literary magazines make the book. Can we have a literature if we don't have any of that? Isn't it telling that the fate of what is arguably one of the most interesting books of Maltese poetry of the 1990s so eloquently sums up the predicament, or should we say "challenges," to choose a popular euphemism, of Maltese literature today?

One cannot say, of course, that Mr Holland's book, with its crisp new voice and perspectives, with the honesty of its literary language and the personal stories he tells about recent Maltese history, had a profound effect, as it certainly could have had, on the literature that came after it. The argument here is that in his book, and in the poems that he has published since, readers will find new Maltese poetry, a literary voice that one cannot place among those of the established writers. The book got one prominent review in The Times of Malta: “The sudden, brusque opening lines,” wrote Louis Scerri, “the unusual imagery, the 'violent' language, the cerebral content, all make Holland's poetry a very intriguing experiment that frequently captures the reader's attention.”