A Maltese artist has featured the previous punk newspaper that I used to edit as a university student, Ir-Realta’, in an exhibition at the Malta Biennale. The exhibition is about previously banned books and newspapers in Malta.
I’m still receiving details of he exhibition and they will be listed here soon.
The student newspaper was always very controversial ever since it started. The newspaper was founded in 2006 and the first issue of the newspaper was banned at the Junior College because it had an article about irregularities of the working conditions of the cleaners of the College. The article raised a lot of controversy back then and it cintributed to an improvement in the working conditions provided by the next tender issued for cleaning services. The previous company that had won the cleaning contract for several consecutive times was finally replaced.
However, the newspaper became a national sensation when we published Alex Vella Gera’s story “Li Tkisser Sewwi” in the literary page: this was a short-story of a man, written from the first-person who ends up raping a sixteen-year old. The story predated the Me Too movement, unwittingly, aligning Malta with the emerging historical trends of women and art taking an anti-patriarchal turn.
We used to print the newspaper at Union Print to support the General Workers’ Union with whom I had a very good working-relationship during that time. This was during the Nationalist administrations when national issues were mostly tied to economic issues in the context of the financial crisis and then also the Euro crisis of that time.
Personally, It’s quite strange for me to see my pieces exhibited like this because it makes me feel very old and transient in life (I am 38 today), and therefore it gives me a sense of anxiety about my eventual absence in this world. At the same time, it also gives me a lot of satisfaction for having made significant contributions to the history of Maltese publishing. It also motivates me for my work because it proves that someone is reading.
You can read Alex Vella Gera’s story in L-Antoloġija tal-Letteratura Mqarba and you can also read its English translation by Clare Azzopardi (the copies of the books have also been banned from being exhibited at the London Book Fair – but for different reasons – simply for personal and petty (political) revenge and pique by very petty and infantile Labour government executives.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
Leave a Reply