Immanuel Mifsud: Bateau Noir, Bilingual edition (Maltese and French), Trans. (French) Nadia Mifsud and Catherine Camilleri, Edizzjonijiet Emmadelezio, 2011.

Poetry is sometimes mistakenly believed to be for the select few. Immanuel Mifsud’s bilingual collection titled Bateau Noir seems to defy that prejudice. The collection is dense not with complexity of thought but with a darkness that backlit tablet computing and smart phones are bent to keep at bay.

Larinġa (Orange) opens this collection with a cross-cultural triptych that Mifsud packs with a simplistic yet powerful poetic irony. The primary concerns are there: fear, rejection, forgiveness and that blackness that binds the poems together.

It draws parallel worlds to which we have sadly become numb to. Media proliferation has made us insensitive to scenes of immigration and suffering. Mifsud skillfully deconstructs that very same distance with two halves of the same blood orange but we are left uncertain about the possibility of reconciliation.

There is a dominant circular structure in Bateau Noir, as present in the seasonal leaves that fall in the title poem, and folds and leaves in Bibbja. The same circularity is also present in Daħlet Qorrot where water is the prime storyteller. In this regard, Mifsud is also donning the cape of a ‘Prophet of Nature’ and one can feel the romantic overtones inherent in Mifsud’s poetry.

Yet these are distempered times beyond the possibility of achieving, or even listening to nature without the silent acknowledgment that it has been tampered with.

For instance in Madrigal the biblical connection with honey and water are reduced merely to a simulation of what honey really is, after it hits the bathtub. Mifsud makes sure that inevitable listlessness and inability of action closes most of the poems in this collection.

Madrigal is certainly a love poem whose plurality of voice is in elaborate counterpoint to the descending rhythm of artificially honey scented water down the plughole.

Bateau Noir is dominated by a solipsistic tone. Like any other poetry that is personal, it is uncomfortable in its revelations.

Auschwitz, Il-Gaġġa and Il-Kantiku tad-Dipressi among others, will haunt and are terrible in their intensity. This collection is primarily intended for French audiences and translation is always a treacherous path.

However, Nadia Mifsud and Catherine Camilleri have treaded carefully and their translation is commendable. The words of Mifsud are clearly words that can only be placed in your hands for you to feel and look at, hoping that, incidentally you might accept the grime underneath your fingernails.

Reading Bateau Noir is not dissimilar to boarding Charon’s infamous boat. The fluctuating currents beneath Mifsud’s poetry are the driving force that leads us to the shores of that which we have forgotten: to be human in all our complexity.

Thankfully there is no coin in our mouth, only the silence that ensues after the epiphany we failed to notice. One hopes you will invite your Francophiles aboard Mifsud’s Bateau Noir. However, do let them know that the sun still shines here.

For further information visit www.immanuelmifsud.com or e-mail the publishers on emmadelezio@live.com.