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3 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 14 JUNE 2026 BOOKS Once I Forget: Poems by John P. Portelli Book review Published by Daraja Press, Canada, and Horizons, Malta, 72 pages, and translated from Maltese by Aaron Aquilina and John Martin & LA DARBA NINSA: POEZIJI, JOHN P. PORTELLI (Horizons, Malta, 84 pages) Commentary by Tarcisio Zarb PERHAPS because of the fear that what is once forgotten can then become eternal. Perhaps because of this fear, the poet remembers. And he enters the world of what used to be. Because in what used to be, there is a great chance that he will find himself... The self and more, even if perhaps a "self " that wonders, is amazed, experienced, sor- rowful, desolate, and cut off from what once was. There are the elements in poetry, like threads, that bind the persona to his events, his structures, his participations in this meandering process we call life, and which is nothing other than the same intimate history embedded in the depth of the poet, that which enriched him, nourished him, and even "drowned" him in its very afflic- tions and troubles. And the poet weaves, shapes, and experiences just as much as he experiences from these states of the soul built on past times, journeys, and distances from the fog into Ħad-Dingli and the inti- mate Maltese landscape. And this precipitated spirit can- not stop painting, narrating, and dialoguing with the depth of his soul and the surroundings about the places around, which now no longer exist outside, but have become his own inti- mate physiognomy. A narrative physiognomy that con- stantly asks him to narrate it. To give it a voice. And this voice of his takes on intimistic forums, full of emo- tions and varied mental states that diversify without stopping, with consistency and persistence from these passages of this per- sona—passages that even if at some point they stop physically traveling through them, they re- main right there, with more strength in the deep depth of his inti- mate itinerary. And this itinerary is nothing other than the same landscape that now, the poet can carry with him, whether he wants to or not, because it is he himself—his very existentialism. The existentialism of who the poet- ic image reigns strongly in this eternal and in- finite landscape even when refer- ring to definite landscapes of a country or definite beings. And the journey, or rath- er the itinerary, continues and strongly continues to ask him not to leave them orphaned from his cartography, because the in- timate landscape, just as much as the surroundings, is nothing other than the same poet-seek- er passing by, voyaging through these intimate r e a l i - ties, of those who see in the poet- ic act, life itself. The Ħad-Dingli of the past and the time from it that shaped John Peter Portelli continues to urge today's John Peter to narrate it and do everything so that it is not forgotten and never forgot- ten, because if it is ever forgotten, the same John Peter would lose his own conscious-uncon- sciousness—a con- sciousness that takes its light from that endemic poeticity channeled into him. And in the light of all this, it would be interesting and bene- ficial for every one of us to take a look and walk our path in the poetic path of "Once I forget: Poems" by John P. Portelli. In this way, there is a high chance that we will look and enrich ourselves in our journey. Lest there is a chance that we for- get—and forgetting can be the forgetting of our- selves, and who we are. Because, perhaps, there is someone here who says: we, we, because we are the memory. And who are we without memo- ry?! THE distinguished ac- ademic publisher Peter Lang has recently released The Sirens' Chant: Bloom & Chichikov, a new schol- arly work authored by Prof. Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci. In a period marked by significant geopolitical realignments and shift- ing cultural paradigms, Schembri Bonaci's study explores how literature reflects and interrogates moments of societal transition. The research centres on two seminal Homeric-inspired wan- derings emerging from markedly different his- torical contexts: Chichik- ov's travels across Russia in Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls and Leopold Bloom's one-day odyssey through Dublin in James Joyce's Ulysses. The work offers a novel comparative frame- work by bringing these narratives into direct dia- logue, a juxtaposition not previously undertaken in such a comprehensive and dialectical manner. Extending this compar- ative analysis, the author adopts an interdiscipli- nary and intercultural ap- proach that incorporates two additional narratives of wandering and transfor- mation: Nikolai Ableuk- hov's movements through the symbolic landscape of Andrei Bely's Petersburg and the Joad family's jour- ney along Route 66 in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. These paral- lel narratives function as sub-textual pathways that deepen the study's explo- ration of modernity, social upheaval, and human re- silience. Through the examina- tion of these four literary masterpieces, Schembri Bonaci demonstrates how writers from different historical periods, geo- graphical settings, social classes, and ideological backgrounds confront analogous existential, po- litical, and cultural chal- lenges. The study reveals striking parallels in their responses while high- lighting a distinctive and subversive humour that is somewhat dreaded in contemporary discourse. Schembri Bonaci believes that Bloom and Chichik- ov are still today waiting for some kind of possibil- ity to return. Schembri Bonaci, for- merly a full-time aca- demic at the University of Malta, specialises in Art History and Philoso- phy, Philosophy of Law, and Comparative Studies. Throughout his academic career, he established the Modern and Contempo- rary Art and Fine Arts programmes within the Department of Art and Art History at the Uni- versity of Malta, aside from other academic ini- tiatives. Renowned academic publisher Peter Lang publishes Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci's The Sirens' Chant: Bloom & Chichikov