A welcome addition to Malta’s poetical repertoire was recently presented to the Rector, Professor Alfred Vella. Entitled Aporija Mill-Ġdid by Roderick (Rigu) Bovingdon, here is an anthology of the poet’s entire life’s verse, until present times.
These latest verses comprise a revised and supplemented compilation of Bovingdon’s earlier ouvre entitled simply Aporija (2001) – an ancient word chosen from the Classical Greek literary tradition for its wide semantics as applied variously by the masters of Greek verse. Bovingdon’s choice of title Aporija illustrates his existentialist philosophical doubt as a minuscule human entity within the grandeur of our cosmos.
But the humanity within himself never drifts too far from his perceived reality along his eternal journey in time and space.
Whilst the basic thrust leans towards a collection of poetry in the Maltese vernacular, two additional segments expound the poet’s linguistic upbringing with one separate portion in Italian and another in English versification.
Revealingly yet subliminally autobiographical, the poet’s perennial journey leaves no doubt where his strong ethnic sentiments lean to. Bovingdon’s earlier poetical works as published in Bejn Ħaltejn (1982) and Irjieħ (1986) as well as the occasional verse published singularly in various journals and newspapers’ literary segments have been included as diligently as one’s research permitted to provide as complete as possible a totality.