Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1439469
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 DECEMBER 2021 8 My essentials IMMANUEL MIFSUD 54, writer, lecturer at the University of Malta I'm a university lecture and writer of poetry and prose. For a time, I was involved in research theatre. I have written six collections of short stories, six poetry collections, and also children's stories. I was also the Maltese writer to win the European Union Prize for Literature and was hosted at the Library of Congress in Washington. 1 2 4 5 1. Book 3 2. Film/TV 3. Internet 4. Music 5. Place I was struck by Ryszard Bugajski's 2016 film Blind- ness. Polish cinema direc- tors and film writers have something unique in the way they discuss profound philosophical and (in this case) theological questions. In a way Polish arts are still haunted by their country's 20th century history, the suffering of a people because of Nazi invasion and then the Soviet led communist dictatorship. There is con- stant revisiting and maybe also revising of history, a clear sign of the intellectual depth of Polish arts. WELL, as for the internet I always find myself visiting the same few sites. I'm not a very adventurous traveller of the virtual world and to be honest I am not sure what a social me- dia influencer is. Television ... well I never watch Maltese tel- evision because I find nothing interesting to watch; on the contrary the last time I spent some time zapping from one TV station to another I was struck by how poor our pro- ductions still are. There are some Italian programmes I do enjoy watching: Chi l'Ha Visto is a favourite which I seldom miss, and then the beauty of such programmes as Passato e Presente and Scritto Letto Detto on Rai Storia. If only we could at least try to imitate these programmes! I have noticed lately that I lis- ten to much less music than I used to before. And I really do not know why. I do listen my Mahlers (under the baton of different orchestra directors) every now and then, particu- larly the Second (because there is the whole world encapsulat- ed in it) and the Ninth (be- cause it terrifies me) sympho- nies. Some months ago I was listening to Anna von Hauss- wolff and even bought her CDs (I don't like listening to MP3s... I'm very conservative when it comes to music and books, which explains why I don't use an ebook reader but still go for the real thing). A song: Brikkuni's 'Fomm ir-Riħ' (but I think that's more than a year old now, right? I listen to it very frequently.) WELL, because of the pan- demic I haven't moved since March 2020. I used to travel quite a lot before then. I miss going abroad, especially to my second home which is the city of Martin in North Slovakia, bordering with Poland. I miss the fresh air, the cleanleness, the greenery, the trees (be- cause there they don't chop them to widen roads), the Slavic language and cuisine and the cold weather. And also the anonymity I enjoy there. I read many books because it is my job to read. That makes it quite difficult to choose one book I have read in one whole year, but if I were to single a book I read some months ago, I'd choose Digital Souls: A Philosophy of Online Death, by Patrick Stokes. The book shows how the concept of death has changed, quite rad- ically, since we started living online. ALMANAC