Incredibly, this time next year it will be 40 years since the Movement for the Promotion of Literature, better and popularly known in Maltese as il-Moviment Qawmien Letterarju, was announced to a somewhat bemused public that was still trying to come to terms with the rights and responsibilities it had assumed on attaining a curious kind of political independence a mere three years earlier.

“A Maltese Malta” was the natural, post-natal aspiration of the one or two generations then actually aware of the arduous road ahead the new status of nationhood naturally brought with it. Suddenly, Maltese pop music found its voice in Freddie Portelli's Malta Bums, the refreshing Francis Ebejer took the theatre by storm, tourism started thriving and a hitherto hidden local cuisine belatedly surfaced from the confines of nanna's little kitchen.

At that time we were a small group of young men, made up mostly of university students, budding poets, journalists and writers, who had been meeting regularly in the popular bars of Valletta where the spirit of the sixties grew in chorus with the volume of Cisk lager and the then trendy Courvoisier that was consumed during those unofficial meetings. While Malta was still toying with her newly-acquired identity, we came to the conclusion – sometimes casually, sometimes all too loudly – that a literary revival was not only required, but definitely a prerequisite for the times that were fast achanging.

The launch of the Moviment Qawmien Letterarju (MQL) in 1967 was initially perceived by many as “yet another literary organisation” destined to start holding poetry-and-pizza sessions for a dozen or so bored patrons. But they were soon to be proved wrong. MQL activities were, for the first time in Maltese literary history, craftily intertwined with a concentrated Media campaign that included nationwide questionnaires and public-opinion surveys carried out with the assistance of the major Sunday newspapers of the time, including those not necessarily in tune or in synch with the slogan of a “Maltese Malta”.

Modern Maltese and international literature was presented down in the early Christian catacombs, on the bastions of the Knights and along the colourful seafronts of Marsaxlokk and Senglea to ever-growing audiences. Radio programmes such as “Beat U Letteratura” on the old Rediffusion network became a delight to produce and listen to.

What took place in those few years of social and literary upheaval is today part of recent history, chapters of which are captured in a vast amount of literary works which in turn have given the modern Maltese book a new, much more professional image. Consequently, Maltese publishing houses have since sprouted like mushrooms.

But 40 years on, how durable has that “Maltese Malta” campaign been? What has the nation done with its hard-won freedoms? The bitter truth is that for all our books and publishing opportunities, for all our thematic diversity and for all the pretty little niches in history, the situation today is worse than it was when the MQL first saw the light of day. So while the forthcoming 40th anniversary of the MQL deserves to be celebrated, perhaps it is also time for a rethink. Malta's literary environment is parched and faded. It needs a new injection. There is no lack of young and highly-committed poets and writers - Simone Inguanez, Louis Briffa, Ganni Buttigieg, Immanuel Mifsud, Adrian Grima, Noel Fabri, Patrick Sammut, Stephen Cachia, Guze' Stagno and Sergio Grech, among others, readily come to mind. In the meantime, it would be lovely next year to meet, over drinks (even if for some it has to be sugar-free lemonade), the old “Premier” friends who later formed and spearheaded the MQL – Charles Coleiro, Joe A. Grima, Mario Azzopardi, Frans Sammut, Alfred Degabriele, Albert Marshall, Raymond Mahoney, Oliver Friggieri, Victor Fenech and some others who are all, in one way or another, still active if not vociferous in the creative field.