water, fire, earth and i

by Simone Inguanez

The poetry of Simone Inguanez.

32 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1991

About the author

Author of ftit mara ftit tifa (Malta: Klabb Kotba Maltin) and water, fire, earth and i (Malta: Inizjamed and Midsea Books Ltd ) and co-author of 7 poets 4 days 1 book (Texas: Trinity Press).

Writer in residence at the University of Iowa International Writers Program in 2007. She has read her poetry at a number of transnational festivals and her work has been translated into English, French, Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Latvian and Finnish.

She holds a doctorate in Laws and is Arts Executive for Literature at the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts and Vice-President of the Malta National Council for the Maltese Language.

Reviews

[Maricruz Ramirez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew very little about Malta before reading Simone Inguanez’s poetry, but her words transported me to the small island country. Through her poems, I could taste the salt of the ocean and feel the wind rolling off the waves.

Inguanez also captures the essence of nostalgia beautifully, particularly in “what i remember,” where she writes, “the classroom by the corridor patched in pictures, low chairs painted glossy green, children babbling. coming in with pa, i hold his little finger.”

Her yearning for spring during cold days and difficult times is also beautifully expressed in “the four seasons are ours: we start with spring; spring opens up; grows even lovelier and at its ripest.” There is something particularly poignant about the way she uses the changing seasons to evoke hope and longing.

When it comes to poetry, I tend to prefer work that is less abstract and vague, so I especially appreciated Inguanez’s emphasis on lyricism, vivid imagery, and clear description. Her poems feel grounded in place and memory, making Water, Fire, Earth, and I a beautiful introduction to both her work and Malta itself.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of a series called Contemporary Maltese Literature in translation, published by Inizjamed – Midsea books. Other poets in the series are Clare Azzopardi, Stanley Borg, Norbert Bugeja, Maria Grech Ganado and Adrian Grima. It is Simone Inguanez first collection in translation although her poems have been widely published and her work has appeared in book form in Seven Poets, Four Days, One book.

Most of the poems in water, fire, earth and i are in English, translated by Maria Grech Ganado but there are some pages with the Maltese and English versions facing each other. My knowledge of Maltese is close to non-existent but I liked having the original versions of the poems to see how they look on the page and to try to imagine how it might sound.

These are playful poems…

ninfa – nymph
i came from water – dive and surface…
if you come close i’ll dart away

but they are also imbued with a sense of loss

this land – nixtieq titbissem
this land in which i was bred is choked by dust
it is buried by gravel by concrete

i left
i left my country and too much behind me

You can sense the Mediterranean in the background, sometimes more evident

there’s naples sicily and sardinia
there’s crete and athens cyprus and madrid
- locked into the look of her fixed eyes

And there are also people in the poems, a girl peeping, the old woman who sleeps sitting up, the smell of an absent man and my grandpa sowing.