Mario Azzopardi’s latest collection of poetry and prose-poems reminds us why we read his work.  He does not demand linear readers who rush headlong into the text; in fact the manner in which he uses language precludes this. 

Actively seeking out detours, the Azzopardi reader engages with the work in a palpable manner; in fact it is the reader who is tasked with mediating the poet’s struggle between his linguistic and metaphorical accomplishments and his repeated pronouncements on the inadequacy and failure of language.  Poetry, one of the last remaining havens for an author who, for well over forty years, seems to have shaken most tenets of stability, is also compromised in a series of vitriolic attacks in an incriminating “manifesto”.  Hence, the poetic self, riveted as it is with mortality and the end of time is perceived as an aberration in an apocalyptic scenario where poetry has lost its currency.  The poem Mhux Necessarja (Superfluity) extends the analogy in is presentation of the devastating image of a poet who has lost “his tongue and language”.  Similarly, Aphasia takes its cue from the linguistic and medical condition of the breakdown and subsequent loss of speech to explore the nature of silence and muteness.

These islands of stillness and silence (paradoxically mediated through language at its extremes of possibility) seem to obsess the Azzopardi of Il-Fabbrikant tal-Marjunetti (The Puppet Maker).  The stillness of God, who has been diminished and appropriated by humans to suit their ends, be they legislative,  in the controversy surrounding the enactment of divorce legislation in Malta  (Gesù Hdejn l-Istazzjon tal-Petrol), or cultural in nature (Piss Christ), is expressed in a style and form that continue to provoke and disturb.  This has, after all, always been Azzopardi’s hallmark, with every new anthology insisting on an reinvention of the poetic self.

The poet’s magpie lexical choices, picking and choosing from different registers, from that of officialdom and bureaucracy to slang and academic discourse, act as a double bind.  When opting for a word of mainly Italian origin he is stretching the limits of Maltese but this would lend him open to charges of an unnatural use of the language. However, it would be a mistake to conclude it is is being capriciously or nonchalantly: on close inspection one perceives irony, parody or even no-holds barred social inquiry.  

 Likewise, in his most recent anthologies, Azzopardi has been stressing theatricality.  It is a truism that performance is ethereal.  Documenting a theatre play or dance performance through written records or videotaping changes its dynamic.  If one were to mirror the same process in creative writing (leaving aside theatre scripts), the question that naturally arises is: how does writing that contains a strong performative element alters the accepted conventions between text and readers?  It is fascinating to watch Azzopardi confronting the issue in this new collection.

I would argue that even at its most hermetic and  “intractable” moments Mario Azzopardi’s latest collection is intent on projecting a poetic self that, similar to the heightened unpredictability of a live performance, is sensitive to the urgent  need to communicate.  And, paradoxically, communicating has become most difficult in an age in which the technological means to do so have consistently become uncomplicated.  With this volume, Azzopardi seems to be implying that meaningful communication nowadays can only occur when distancing mechanisms are in place.  Thus, although seemingly illogical, the need to create distance in order to establish a more intimate rapport defines the writing in this collection. 

Ranging from the poet aligning himself with the gamut of evolutionary and human civilization (Tranzmutazzjoni), to the creation of the alter ego character of the puppeteer, it is only through disguise that communication is possible.  Hence, the puppeteer in the title piece (is he also a metaphor for God?) is depicted as sustained by an abundance of theatrical allusions, where language itself purports to be a masquerade.

We are confronted with constantly shifting goalposts, with the aim of doing away with the demarcation between the writing, the author and his readers, who, as previously stated, are never regarded as passive listeners but, very often, are consciously co-opted into the creative process itself.  Azzopardi still uses the “complicity method” to great effect and one can never remain indifferent to his writing.   

What is basically at work in Mario Azzopardi’s latest collection of poetry and prose is a constant shifting of mood that sways the reader at every turn. Caution: this is no comfortable ride.  The anthology is full of hidden and not-so-hidden daemons, driven as forcefully as we have come to expect from an uncompromising writer.