Once I forget: Poems by John P.Portelli

Commentary by Tarcisio Zarb

Perhaps because of the fear that what is once forgotten can then become eternal. Perhaps because of this fear, the poet remembers. And he enters the world of what used to be. Because in what used to be, there is a great chance that he will find himself... The self and more, even if perhaps a "self" that wonders, is amazed, experienced, sorrowful, desolate, and cut off from what once was.

There are the elements in poetry, like threads, that bind the persona to his events, his structures, his participations in this meandering process we call life, and which is nothing other than the same intimate history embedded in the depth of the poet, that which enriched him, nourished him, and even "drowned" him in its very afflictions and troubles.

And the poet weaves, shapes, and experiences just as much as he experiences from these states of the soul built on past times, journeys, and distances from the fog into Ħad-Dingli and the intimate Maltese landscape.

And this precipitated spirit cannot stop painting, narrating, and dialoguing with the depth of his soul and the surroundings about the places around, which now no longer exist outside, but have become his own intimate physiognomy. A narrative physiognomy that constantly asks him to narrate it. To give it a voice.

And this voice of his takes on intimistic forums, full of emotions and varied mental states that diversify without stopping, with consistency and persistence from these passages of this persona—passages that even if at some point they stop physically travelling through them, they remain right there, with more strength in the deep depth of his intimate itinerary.

And this itinerary is nothing other than the same landscape that now the poet can carry with him, whether he wants to or not, because it is he himself—his very existentialism. The existentialism of who the poetic image reigns strongly in this eternal and infinite landscape even when referring to definite landscapes of a country or definite beings.

And the journey, or rather the itinerary, continues and strongly continues to ask him not to leave them orphaned from his cartography, because the intimate landscape, just as much as the surroundings, is nothing other than the same poet-seeker passing by, voyaging through these intimate realities, of those who see in the poetic act, life itself.

The Ħad-Dingli of the past and the time from it that shaped John Peter Portelli continues to urge today’s John Peter to narrate it and do everything so that it is not forgotten and never forgotten, because if it is ever forgotten, the same John Peter would lose his own conscious-unconsciousness—a consciousness that takes its light from that endemic poeticity channeled into him.

And in the light of all this, it would be interesting and beneficial for every one of us to take a look and walk our path in the poetic path of "Once I forget: Poems" by John P. Portelli. In this way, there is a high chance that we will look and enrich ourselves in our journey. Lest there is a chance that we forget—and forgetting can be the forgetting of ourselves, and who we are. Because, perhaps, there is someone here who says: we, we, because we are the memory. And who are we without memory?!

La Darba Ninsa: Poeziji (Once I forget: Poems by John P. Portelli is being published by Horizons Malta and is 84 pages long.