Essays beyond borders : writing with place

Abstract

The essays in this collection all begin from a conscious effort to think from, with, and in a place. They seek to stay, to linger, to absorb, and to be present. They attend to physical spaces, the sensations they provoke, and the memories they evoke. In so doing, they inevitably move, digress, and depart as, in their essayistic spirit, they engage in reflection, contemplation, and a continuous attempt to make sense of experience. The places and spaces inhabited by these essays give witness to a range of human experiences. Some of them are recognisable in their local colours and flavours. The Maltese stone, with its golden hues and crumbly impermanence recurs, as does the sun with its never ending and sometimes oppressive brilliance. The essays take us to places marked by the stamp and weight of history, but they also make us feel the grief for that which has been or will be lost. Dust drifts across the digital pages of this collection. It rises from the ruins of the metaphorical assaults of time but also from the all too real threat of human greed and destructive wars. The sense of having lost one’s home, even when one is still living in it, is something that several essays in this collection confront. Sometimes, even the body that carries us or the mind that we inhabit makes us experience similar states of dispossession, and it is this distance from ourselves that provides us with the reflective space needed for thought to appear. Occasionally, however, the essays make us feel what it means to feel at home in our bodies and in the spaces we inhabit, and the essayists assay to make their way through a difficult, but also beautiful world that still demands to be tasted and tested in its subtle complexity. These essays persevere. They hope. They search, and sometimes, they find.