Bejn il-Binarji: Poeżiji

by John P. Portelli

published by Horizons, 2022

Prolific author John P. Portelli once again offers the public a meditative and provocative collection of poems entitled Bejn il-Binarji (Between the Tracks).

Portelli’s unique style moves the reader into an journey of feelings, imaginations and concerns motivated by his hope for freedom. Bejn il-Binarji reflects the personality of Portelli, an eminent professor from the University of Toronto, as well as his ease with informality and subversion – utterly alien from pomp and formalities.

Portelli’s poems meander through his personal experiences, always standing bet­ween two tracks: tragedy and humour.

The tragedy is when Portelli struggles with death in different forms: human suffering, environmental decline, the destruction of memories and others.

In contrast, humour in Portelli’s pen becomes the perception of the ridicule of human ambition and objectives that leads to the void. With no hesitation, Portelli can be easily included in artistic movements, such as the post-World War I Dada movement, which dares to confront institutions that generated death by marketing solemnity and seriousness.

As for the Dada movement, Portelli’s perception of death in ideologies and institutions that value themselves more than they value human lives motivates him to embody a way of life where miġnun (crazy) becomes a force for liberation.

For Portelli’s pen, miġnun is no longer an insult but the sister virtue of wisdom. Through a miġnun way of life, human life, relations, and joy move back from the margins into the centre stage of human existence.

Though tinted with tragedy, Portelli’s poems become a miġnun’s call to reawaken humanity’s essentials and leave behind the absurdity of gravity that kills. 

The book of poems by John P. Portelli is accompanied by photographic works by Rachel Micallef Somerville.

In his poem Wasal April (April is with us), in a simple but compelling way, Portelli, with his penetrating gaze, overcomes the flamboyance of a fountain, and instead, his eye rests on the scene of fish floating on the surface of stagnant water: “il-ħut tal-funtana tela’ f’wiċċ l-ilma mdardar”.

Phrases like these motivate the reader to go beyond the superficiality of the make-believe and to dare to explore the depth and complexity of life. Though Portelli’s poems sometimes give a feeling of resignation or fatalism, they are a call that motivates the reader to move from a state of passivity to a state of critical thinking, inspired by soul searching in the form of introspection.

The reader should be ready to wander in perplexity

Unlike Cartesian introspection, where the engagement with the world is perceived as alienation from thinking, Portelli’s introspection is formulated on a radical engagement with the world that generates thinking through dia­logue with oneself and others. 

In the poem L-Oraklu (The Oracle), Portelli brings his histori­cal and philosophical reading of the Oracle of Delphi, where the search for a quest is sabotaged by the fear of mistakes and the need for hasty answers.

Portelli notices the irony when the oracle halts the hasty request by offering an ambiguous solution, which takes back the audience into their mental labyrinth, leaving them breathless when hearing her words: “Taqta’ nifsek tieħu n-nifs kif tisma’ kelmet l-oraklu.”

Reading Bejn il-Binarji has this haunting, and at the same time, therapeutic effect of taking readers away from mundane frivolity and alienation and moving them into a state of wonder and perplexity.

Portelli’s poetry offers a companionship that assists us, the reader, in a self-exploration of our once-own-forgotten dreams, aspirations and fears.

Rachel Micallef Somerville’s photographs embellish this collection of poems.

Like Virgil and Beatrice, who accompany Dante through hell, purgatory and heaven, Portelli’s pen accompanies the reader through the anxieties and joys of life. Still, it always stands between the tracks of tragedy and humour. 

Who should read Bejn il-Binarji? It is for the intelligent reader, who considers wisdom as not tied to schooling and universities but to the ability to transform every encounter into a contemplative experience.

The reader should be ready to wander in perplexity and to feel the tension of ambiguity but also to encounter serenity and hope behind a glass that is broken because it cannot hold back the love of a mother expressed in prayer, as in the poem Ir-Ritratt (The Photograph). 

Bejn il-Binarji is a book that does not hold back the danger of staying between the tracks of life, but at the same time, it also offers a reassurance that between tracks is where we should be to experience life as a journey. 

François Mifsud is a senior lecturer at the University of Malta.