The author was born in Malta but after a period of studying and teaching in Malta, has spent most of his adult life in Canada where he held various professorships in a number of universities there.
He never forgot his native land and in fact this is the second book of poetry he has come up with.
His academic specialisation is in the field of education and he has authored no less than eight books on philosophy of education and educational theory apart from academic articles in specialised journals.
The book being reviewed contains 37 poems and 100 haiku/senryu originally written in Maltese with an English translation by Joe Ruggier for the poems and Dr John Baldacchino for the haiku.
In the book the poems/haiku are printed in the English translation first with the Maltese original on the facing page.
In his introduction, Adrian Grima points out that just like the poets of the 1960s, Portelli reacts against the insularity of the Maltese environment of his youth, especially when confronted by the wide-open environment of Canada.
There is also anger against a world where leaders abuse their own powers, economical or political, to build their own spheres of influence upon the ruins left by the shattering of others.
"The poet strongly contests neoliberalism: he denounces the rules designed by the richest leaders of large companies to protect their own vested interests against those who do not have the strength to withstand them; he denounces the hypocrisy of leaders who preach one thing and in their public and private life practice another; he denounces the 'exaggerated individualism' of those who abuse their strength and power to ride roughshod over the common good; he denounces the individuals and political and economic establishments whose only thought is to cool down and blow out the anger of all those who end up underneath in an unjust system; he also denounces the Gospel of consumerism and the illusion offered by capitalism of liberty and freedom of choice."
He mentions President George Bush whose advice to the American people after the 9/11 terrorist attacks was to buy and forget so that the wheel may carry on turning and so nothing may change:
President Bush, without mincing his words
encouraged everyone
to carry on buying and selling
as usual
because here
nobody threatens
the choices of neoliberalism.
Though far from his native country, Portelli is still au courant with what is happening around Malta. "In 'Without an end' Portelli beholds the tragedy of 'This funeral march / never ending' of illegal immigrants in the Mediterranean and in other seas, as a fault of the 'deception of the mighty', those who with their false narratives, within the dominant reality of consumerism, and within a media dominated by a few corporations and individuals, fabricate a convenient world which in reality does not exist for anyone except themselves. The powerful are also those who abuse their greater or lesser power to accumulate wealth at the expense of the tragedy of innocent victims at the hands of unjust systems in the relationships between people and between nations.
"As in Karl Schembri's poem 'Biljett miftuh', Portelli dreams of 'nations without frontiers' where the spirit and the mind, but also crucially, the body (or it shall otherwise be but an illusion) are free. The birds are after all eternal 'emigrants' and their luggage is always empty (Haiku No. 15). And Haiku No. 16 comments ironically about the 'illegal' birds who escaped 'without visas and passports'."
Portelli does not ignore the sorry aspects of his own professional calling. A powerful chain of three haiku (76 - 78) followed by haiku 87 and 91, pursues the theme of formal education, which does not feature in the poems of the first section of this book.
The poet's critique of the school system is harsh and direct: the "indifferent tutors" terrorize the students and the instruction only starts in summer when the children are rid of all classes and their spirit can wander. Portelli denounces the educational system, which obstructs the student's natural education - we come to the conclusion that the children would be better off not going to school at all.
"In the metaphors of terrorism and fermentation there is clear evidence of the entire wrath, not only of a poet and a father, but also of a professor on the philosophy of education, who is conscientiously denouncing his own profession for a tragic failure."