Għażiż Ġismi is veteran poet Immanuel Mifsud’s latest collection of poetry with a focus on the Covid-19 pandemic. With a title like that (it is translated by Ruth Ward into English as My Dear Body), one would expect a love letter to one’s body, a vulnerable collection that touches upon mortality, futility, and loss.
My Dear Body, however, remains skin deep and does little more than palpate the surface of things. It doesn’t, so to speak, get to the heart.
The journey feels more like a scenic detour than an insightful exploration. Mifsud is a poet who clearly revels in language, but here the language often betrays him. Words like inħares, għajnejk, and demm appear with a frequency that borders on predictable, pulling the reader into a space of overused metaphors rather than fresh discovery.
When these clichés are absent, Mifsud falls on the abstract. In Qamardemm, he writes: “U jiena nitbissimlek/bid-disinni mingħajr forma/ħomor-kannella./Flok ninħasad,/flok ninkorla,/ninżel dlonk fuq irkupptejja/biex nitolbok tnixxi aktar.” Mifsud’s obsession with bodily fluids is not new — he has been writing about brown-red blood since his earliest collections. The trouble isn’t his taste but rather the overwrought and imprecise language and metaphor.
In Ftit Weraq mir-Rumanija, we see a combination of both clichéd idiom and abstract imagery: “Tilqgħek bil-fjuri Bukarest/malli tifrex riġlejk mill-istazzjon./Tgħattilek il-griż u l-kannella/bl-abjad u l-aħmar u l-isfar u r-roża u l-blu./(Tipprova)./Tħares f’għajnejk b’għajnejha niexfa qoxqox,/ tpinġilek dit-tbissima ftit antika.”
Lines like these force the reader to confront language and not the reality it’s trying to portray. Rather than illuminating the body or the poet’s anxieties, the language obscures them in layers of attempted meaning.
Rather than elevating the mundane or exposing it, Mifsud’s lyricism tends to mask a lack of depth. This is where the work falters most noticeably. It’s not that the language is particularly creative either because the clichés keep cropping up, there is hardly any new ground being broken here and the language is far from being imaginative or exciting.
There are brief moments when Mifsud’s language strikes an authentic chord. For example, in Mitluf f’Belgrade, one of the better poems, Mifsud writes: “iħażżeż fuq il-ħajt bil-lapes l-iswed/u jibki meta jmutu l-ġugarelli;/ipinġi nies irqaq u rashom kbira;”. Here, the imagery feels fresh, even fragile in its precision, standing in stark contrast to the rest of the collection. It is in these moments of simplicity that Mifsud’s potential shines through.
Unfortunately, such moments are few and far between. The absence of intellectual rigour or a more deliberate engagement with the language leaves the poems feeling vacuous. There is hardly any tension, no wrestling with meaning or sound, and the collection ends up being concerned with sounding poetic rather than being poetic.
As T.S. Eliot once wrote, “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” Għażiż Ġismi fails to achieve a level of clear communication — the poems declare themselves rather loudly but with little substance behind the noise.
Another trite poem which is an example of this is Is-Siġar. “Intebħu s-siġar li konna se noqtluhom./Setgħu jobsru meta rawna nħarsu lejhom/bid-daħqa fuq fommna, bix-xrar ġo għajnejna,/Fehmuha dik il-ħarsa s-siġar, fehmuha.”
Here, as in many other moments throughout the collection, one wishes for a deeper engagement with the subject matter, a willingness to probe beyond the surface of lyrical playfulness. Mifsud seems to trade an attention to detail or nuance for melodrama. In his efforts to write about the most profound elements of human experience, he reduces them to easily digestible sentiments. The work lacks the kind of ambiguity and tension that allows great poetry to resonate on multiple levels.
Għażiż Ġismi is a collection that will likely appeal to those who favour the musicality of language, but it offers little for readers seeking the kind of nuanced, intelligent poetry that rewards deep engagement. The occasional moments of beauty — where Mifsud‘s language finds its footing — are overshadowed by an overwhelming reliance on cliché and sentimentality. Mifsud may be capable of more, but in this collection, he falls short of achieving the kind of depth and precision that defines truly great poetry.
In a year when no novels and no short story collections were rewarded the National Book Prize, perhaps the judges felt that they would have been overdoing it had they not awarded a prize for poetry too. But such a statement would have been warranted. Għażiż Ġismi is not a collection that merits the highest literary prize in the country.
Culture Editor
Author and Literary Critic
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