Horizons, the local publishers, have just released a new-style book entited Malta Poema Viżiva  by Victor Fenech. The book is a paean to the Maltese islands through selected episodes from local history by means of authentic photos and colour designs. It can in fact be taken as a series of  tableaux accompanied by a small body of poems on historical timescapes and also some socio-political comments on our times.  Into these themes the author has injected a generous mixture of "caprices" with the word Malta, as also examples of "Concrete Poetry" which in the latter half of the 20th century had enjoyed a bonanza in both the Americas and in European countries like France, Switzerland and the UK. These contrasting styles of communication are meant to convey a literary message by means of graphic structuring of words, the "word-image" in this case being Malta. Inevitably the book has a certain idiosyncratic nature.  It is a hybrid project which the author started on his typewriter in the 1960, has worked on it in fits and starts, and has now deemed it time to deliver.  It is a lively and colourful book, instructive without being pedantic and at times even entertaining. Horizons are confident that local readers will appreciate it as an interesting variant in the niche of Maltese literature.