Norbert Bugeja graduated with first class honours in English Language
and Literature from the University of Malta in 2002 and was awarded a Masters degree with distinction in contemporary critical theory in 2004. In the course of his writing, Bugeja has sought to explore new possibilities of literary expression articulating the nuances that characterize the ‘here and now’ of contemporary living. His poetry has been published in newspapers and anthologies, and aired on radio and TV stations. His recent poetry has also been published in Cadences, the literary journal of the University of Cyprus. Bugeja has worked as a tutor at the University of Malta Junior College and is currently preparing his doctoral research in English literature and critical theory. His latest publication is ‘Stay, Fairy Tale, Stay! Memoirs of a City Cast Adrift’, a collection of poetry in English translation.
NORBERT'S INFLUENCES:
J.M. COETZEE
Each new Coetzeean text exposes, from different angles, the anatomy of an existence that we cling to so desperately... his raw, even excremental vision of unaccomodated man sends shivers of naked truth down one’s spine… Coetzee exposes a different ‘me’ for me each time I turn to his writing… he has been described as perhaps the greatest philosopher-narrator of our times…and there’s a lot of truth in that.
For a profile of Coetzee on the Guardian Unlimited website, click hereor for an interview with Coetzee on the Bulletin website, click here
ZUCCHERO ‘SUGAR’ FORNACIARI
I still can’t figure out what draws me to this man. It might be his love of Tuscan wine, or even the way he shuffles across the stage. The hoarse depths of his voice keep haunting my sleep: it vacillates between the euphoric split-seconds that extend our unwritten contract with life and those longer, darker moments that pull us with insane determination towards a breach of contract…in any case, just get a copy of his ‘Zu&Co;’ - worth its every penny.
To visit Zucchero's official website, click hereor for the unofficial Zucchero website, click here
PABLO NERUDA
Well, just read poems like ‘Poetry’, ‘The Wind on the Island’, ‘Ode to the Sea’, ‘Tonight I can Write’, ‘The Song of Despair’, ‘Rapa Nui’ and his collections generally… ‘Fully Empowered’ hands him over to us as a politically mature writer, ‘The Captain’s Verses’, ‘Alturas de macchu Picchu’, ‘Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair’, ‘Residence on Earth’ and ‘Memoirs’ as a wholesome being with a bleeding heart. He has exposed his being on paper in a singular way, and with linguistic dexterity that can give not only glass-quality to glass and water-quality to water, but even blood-quality to a stone.
For a profile of Neruda on the Kirjasto website, click hereor to read 60 of Neruda's poems in translation, click here
JACQUES LACAN
Perhaps because he concluded, without ever being too sure of it himself, that desire is fundamentally tragic, and that the Other's world is largely uninhabitable, unless one makes recourse to the space of fiction…and there he scores again … the word falls to the soul like dew to the pasture, as Neruda himself would have it…
To visit the Lacan Dot Com website, click hereor for the Lacan page on the Mythos and Logos website, click here
JACQUES DERRIDA
Once more, and again and again, Derrida. I’ve just finished reading ‘aporias’, where he elaborates on the notion of death as an essentially aporetic (non)experience, and addressed Heidegger’s fine but unfinished distinction between human and animal death. Perhaps his greatest insight in ‘Aporias’ is that, the moment one man condemns another with the word ‘die!’, that would be precisely the moment when the former acknowledges the Dasein, the being-as-such endowed with the (im)possibility of death-as-such, rather than the perishing, of the other.
Click image to visit the Derrida Online website; for the Remembering Jacques Derrida website, click here or for related items on Amazon, click here
VIA FORI IMPERIALI, AFTER THE CONCERT (Bookends Theme)
Some 30 metres away,
a pit of couples kissing in the darkness of acacias
which divides us, in the mischievous city
dusting scooters from its face
to clear her vision,
we gazed at each other's silence
and decided to break it
with the same bundle of smoke-filled breaths ...
Time it was,
and what a time it was, it was:
And even the moon, damn it, which loves to take the piss
pretending its a new foetus huddling in the night,
has stripped naked tonight
and chased the darkness with its moonie,
a time of innocence,
a time of confidences –
We raised our palms and were stunned
because they chanced to be of the same hue
and like the bodies of the ruins all lit up,
like Garfunkel's hair weaving through the crowd
searching for the muse who has escaped.
long ago it must be, I have a photograph
We gazed upon the silence of each other,
and since silence had fallen on the ruins
we realized
that we had better do with our memories
what adults do – discard them
before we got to the first corner
and then tomorrow, we'll see
if in the darkness of the photo-cemetries
we will be able to discover the yellow flower
we bought to please a pakistani
and also to fool each other that one day
we'll cherish one another with the same song ...
meanwhile this street lies down, a spent guitar,
and the moon's found a shrine to hide behind,
and yet this pauper boy who loves you
still rummages
in the bongs and the green bottles for an evening
which welcomes him like home,
which strokes his hair,
which dances and sings to the same story
he found there.
(Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you)
Your fingers defy the chill of a new morning
that cracked the floor and the oriental carpets;
among the luxuries and lusts of the soft room
the ordeals and regrets of a thousand knives reek;
Don't worry, your cheeks are nothing but mirrors
of the sick reflections melting around you,
and the green stones that decorate your breast
were stringed into a necklace, and not the cruel noose.
Your trembling is quite natural – the edge glistens
and your words slide along it and accumulate
in your heart, in this deep well of patience and of waiting ...
Stay, fairy tale, stay! This land was built upon you,
and knows the direction of your mistress' freedom;
your wrinkles are like lanes forking into lecherous fingers,
and it was Good that formed the princess' tears!
The last knife slit into the tender skin;
her fingers stopped; in the dusk the air went silent.
You knew it by heart –
Great Portland Street.
You knew the lit alleys and the front steps
From which, until the roof above you darkened
You'd squeeze $10
In coins which had been marinated in human pain.
Then every day you'd drag yourself to its very end
With half your body wrapped in white trousers,
Soiled by all the many stories which pass before you.
Once you had told me
That you can wake and sleep, eat and live
Upon a dream
As long as it remains a dream,
and before you lay down
on the only bit of marble without piss
you even told me
that before you sleep you spend a quarter of an hour
savouring the white beaches I had tempted you with
and the pine trees which sing under the sun.
Till your eyes almost burnt with salt
of tears or the sea
and you slept content
until the roof over your head woke you once more
to search by heart
for yet another story
Then once, my good leg hurt
and they took me to a big white building and told me
that in the ward where many legs pass
there's no room for more legs
and I had to be put in a terminal ward
and I told them,
after a week of being unable to sleep a wink
that though in the subway as well
I can hear people moan and pee in their pants
at least I can find a bit of comfort,
a bit more space,
perhaps
When I sought her this year
her mates told me,
her heart gave out
Without a dream.
Where does this wind come from?
Where from this darkness?
Where are these ripe words falling from the trees?
From the street’s end a voice was heard announcing:
"the city’s lost itself in the poet’s hair!”
Deep in the green bone-marrow of time-worn doors,
accents which slept through centuries crack open,
sentences invade the narrow alleys,
words ride the rain like earrings,
each syllable woven into a red mane
which screams its way amongst the curling streets.
In rue de l’union at five a.m.
the elderly Arab gazes at the sky:
“Somewhere a slightly alien phrase
must have been uttered,
and the city’s lost control of her own body.”
On the city’s outskirts, a little girl emerges,
her eyes dancing together with the roadsigns:
“why all this wind, mama, why all this darkness?”
And then she gets up on her bike without another word
and disappears in the anarchy of cadence.
The Sailor sits beneath the bastions of El Corte Ingles,
a scrawny cat, gnawing at the sun with his vile oaths
and unknotting the yarns that prod him in his sleep.
The very shape of him, like waves of vintage radios
stinks in between one country and another,
snatches words uttered, and those slain,
and then transmits the moral of the story –
an olive-skinned giggle, a filterless cigarette
and two italians trailing a one-nighter.
Ola mujer, que pasa? Ostia puta.
If you come into the complex and start climbing
one floor after another,you can look down
and see him curse from every point of view:
trussardi, zegna, fnac and valentino
regard you with a slightly bizarre beard
downing the sun beneath a scorching beer…
And if you get to the top floor and gaze,
down at this city that loves you by the rate
you may be late – by then the Sailor will have picked
the pick of tales to date.
From me to you there’s a second, a laugh,
there’s a full clothesline looking out to sea.
After the larking at It-Toqba z-Zghira*
I tried to reach you. And maybe because
there are no lights in this house,
in its still-echoing hallway,
in the rooms upstairs and down, at the bottom of this well
that moans and mumbles your barren words,
I found no one. By myself in your kitchen,
my starving intestines grumble about the boy
who wanted to be born and found himself hanging
on the parched breast that sprouted in the wasteland;
almost like a city which everyone has fled.
And it is useless to hide behind ancient walls,
and to walk barefoot along your mothers’ roads,
inhabiting the ruins of your beauty with pride;
since you were never a mother, you will never be.
From your neighbour’s door a girl exploded,
her eyes, two cannonballs crossed
on the cornettoat the small door of her mouth.
She gazes at you, she does not try to reach you.
Like a mine on the port sea bed which never blasted
she regards you, the peeling paint, and laughs
for a second, at you, lying that you are beautiful.
*It-Toqba z-Zghira is an inlet beneath the bastions of the historic maritime city of Vittoriosa in Malta.
Between this city’s legs a young woman weeps,
yesterday’s worries staining her uniform,
on her face the green of thie white registers
and the sadness recycled in the office.
A young man wears a laugh and a black blasphemy,
the sleepless night engraved upon his tie:
he recalls how often he almost slipped
on the uncertain words lounging against the pavements.
For what he’d heard was right, this city of faceless looks
and white staircases had never come into its own.
In the morning she hurries by without a nod,
at night there’s not a soul with whom to talk…
This morning I rubbed my eyes, wiped off the jam
and thought of you. Offering me the first one
of the day, and that forced smile.
It’s the boss. She wouldn’t give in to him last night. Good morning.
J.M. COETZEE
ZUCCHERO ‘SUGAR’ FORNACIARI
PABLO NERUDA
JACQUES DERRIDA
