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THIS WEEK POETRY maltatoday | SUNDAY • 15 SEPTEMBER 2019 4 Poet John Aquilina speaks to TEODOR RELJIC about his upcoming collection 'Tluq', which will be launched at The Mill in Birkirkara on September 21 Teodor Reljic The rich tapestries of memory When did you first realise you had an inclination towards poetry? And how did you act on this desire in those early days? In Malta we have – or at least we had, back then – the strange situation that sec- ondary school students are exposed to English Literature before they even get to hear about Maltese authors. My interest in Literature started at that time. However, it was thanks to the classes in Mal- tese Literature, some years later, that this morphed into, as you say, an "inclination". The syllabus was based on the well-known 'Qawsalla' textbook covering the liter- ary output in our language over the years and many of the works struck a chord with me. For instance, I remember our teacher discussing one of Carmel Attard's poems and remarking in passing that At- tard was born into a world not made for him. That I re- member this remark and not others is one answer to your question, because it auto- matically exposes a style and poetic attitude that I was re- sponsive to. In the early '90s, Oliver Friggieri had started a week- ly radio show on Wednes- days, called 'Imsiebaħ bil- lejl' ('Lanterns at Night'), during which he would talk about topics from philoso- phy and World Literature. Needless to say, the school material did not hint at any of this – especially because I was in the Sciences stream – so every Wednesday even- ing brought with it a hum- bling new list of authors and works and arguments I felt compelled to catch up on and learn about. I feel I am still in catch-up mode today. Meanwhile, I also got a copy of Oliver's book 'Mal-fanal hemm ħarstek tixgħel' which I internalised to the extent that at some point I knew the content by heart. I think it is mainly as a result of this that I mostly write in hendeca- syllable. Immanuel Mifsud also had a weekly radio show about the Classical Music and the lives of the Compos- ers. I found this fascinating and of course it spurred me to read Immanuel's own lit- erary work, which remains among my favourites. My first attempts at writing were not exclusively poetry. For instance, I still have the manuscripts of some futile attempts at writing plays, prompted mostly by Francis Ebejer's plays (his 'Bwani' disturbs me to this day). I also tried writing some short stories, one of which I redis- covered recently by coinci- dence and which will be pub- lished this year. In the end, what I have been consistent in is poetry. The poetry I wrote early on served the purpose of honing technical skills and finding my own style, subject mat- ter and choice of words. I am my own harshest critic when it comes to filtering out what is not good. My first book, 'Leħnek il-Libsa Tiegħi' ('Your Voice My Only Cloth- ing'), which came out in 2010 and covered 15 years' worth of writing, had very little of my early stuff in it. The style and imagery have evolved over the years in line with the particular experiences life has thrown at me. What have been some of the themes and subjects that you found yourself returning to, and how do they manifest themselves in 'Tluq', your latest collection? This question segues nicely from what I said above. It is now nine years since my first book. I have kept on writ- ing, and for some years have been more prolific than oth- ers, but this is not something I could or wanted to control. Whatever I wrote could only be valid if it was 'discovered' or 'caught', if it represented a rare moment when an emo- tion magically resonated with an image and created something that worked on a linguistic, metaphorical and musical level. "At an institutional level, all that matters is greed and speed" PHOTO BY VIRGINIA MONTEFORTE John Aquilina reading at the 2017 edition of the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival at Fort St Elmo, Valletta