https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/15625 2026-10-08T02:22:24Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149704 Title: Drifting still on reading, writing, drawing the sea Authors: Attard, Matthew; Grech, Marija Abstract: There seems to be no single word with which to properly refer to the surface of the sea as seen from below. Under surface could work, perhaps, were it not that this term takes as its orienting principle a position above water–one from which the surface remains a surface, and the below remains below. Gazed up at, this ropey ceiling that rolls and churns, that sweeps down and swells up, is not an under but an above; and if it is a surface, then it is a surface of depth– the uppermost layer of a body of water whose skin seems to move as its own separate beast: thick, viscous, full-bodied; part sea, part tumultuous sky. Perhaps this surface– this above-below, below-above of the sea–is simply an inside out, a double take, the seams of the sea made visible. [extract] 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149703 Title: Countertextualities of the sea : reading the Mediterranean Authors: Grech, Marija Abstract: The positing of a direct link between sea and text seems, at first glance, counterintuitive. The sea may very well be the subject of innumerable texts, literary or otherwise, but to claim that it might itself be textual, even if counter-textual in some way, feels somewhat odd. The sea has been described as both ‘noninscriptive’ and ‘nonsignifying’ (Jue 2020: 31; Steinberg and Peters 2015: 249; Pezzani 2014: 156)–incapable of preserving any mark on its fluid surface or holding any single true meaning. If rock served as the first textual substrate for the human–the first canvas, first parchment, first palimpsest– and will, according to recent figurations of the Anthropocene, be the last to bear its mark, then the sea supposedly knows nothing of such histories. The sea appears to dissolve, dissipate, and dispel; it does not preserve or record. Viewed from afar, its smooth uninterrupted surface could be mistaken for a solid substrate, but, in the end, it is the sea’s fluidity that always seems to win out, rushing in to smooth itself over and erase any visible mark or trace of a disturbance. [extract] 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149086 Title: Psyche at sea : outline for a memory in fragments Authors: Bugeja, Norbert Abstract: In this part-memoir, part-theory-essay, the author meditates on the delicate nexus between the tragic loss of his mother, and the manner in which this experience has permeated his poetic voice and understanding of the Mediterranean over the decades. The impulse to respond to her elsewheres, he comes to realise, is at once bound to the need to write his own Mediterranean decolonially, as well as to recognise it as a geography of poetically suggestive spaces. Taking his reader on a creative-critical journey from the beaches of his childhood to Sicily, Rome, and Delphi, across the ocean to Buenos Aires and then back to Malta’s megalithic structures, Bugeja embarks on a quest for a Mediterranean poetics that reaches into those other openings which address or affect us today as a voicing-unto-ourselves. The author reflects on insights raised by Massimo Cacciari, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Barbara Cassin, Iain Chambers, George Seferis, Stephanos Stephanides, and others in order to elicit perspectives towards ‘poetic intuition’ (E. Glissant) as an indispensable means for re-visiting and re-writing the region today. To attest to the Mediterranean now would entail deciding towards which facets of its burgeoning palimpsest we should feel compelled to direct our answerability – as well as to sustain a heightened rapport with the quality, tenor, nuances and fissures within the sea’s voices clamouring our way. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148604 Title: The ring metaphor and the spirit of Sofia and other essays, by Lino Bianco [Book review] Authors: Bugeja, Norbert Abstract: Alongside his profession as an architect, engineer and scholar, H.E. Lino Bianco has also placed an active contribution to the strengthening of his country’s ties and foreign relations through his diplomatic roles over the years. These have included a highly productive stint as Ambassador of Malta to the Republic of Bulgaria. And the sense that stayed with me as I leafed slowly through the pages of his latest book, a collection of essays titled The Ring Metaphor and the Spirit of Sofia, is precisely Bianco’s seamless ability to bring diverse views gained as an architect of many years, together with historiographic reach and diplomatic nous, to bear on the cities, urban and cultural spaces he revisits in these writings. 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z