10 Questions with John Portelli
John P. Portelli, originally from Malta, is a professor emeritus in the Department of Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto. He has taught in Canadian universities since 1982. Besides 11 academic books, he has published ten collections of poetry (four in Maltese and English, one in English and French, three in Maltese, one in English (Here Was, available from Amazon) and one in Greek, The Loves of Yesterday), two collections of short stories (one translated into English and published as Everyday Encounters), and a novel, Everyone but Faiza (Burlington, ON: Word and Deed, 2021). His literary work has been translated into Italian, Romanian, Greek, Farsi, Arabic, Korean, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish. His latest collection, Here Was, has been translated and published in Romanian by Rocart Publishers in July 2023, and in Arabic in December 2023 by Alferdaws in Tunisia. Six of his books have been short-listed for the Malta Book Council Annual Literary Award. He now lives between Toronto and Malta, and beyond!
I was introduced to John’s work fairly recently by fellow Canadian poet Hollay Ghadery. While John was kind enough to send me a digital copy of his collection Here Was, I found it so resonant I quickly ordered myself a physical copy to keep near to my desk, where I find myself returning to certain pieces again and again.
1. Did reading and writing play an important role in your childhood? Were there any specific books or stories that left a mark on you as a young reader?
Not really. I was a lazy reader. This changed drastically when I turned 16. I was impressed by the poetry of Dylan Thomas which I read and re-read. I also enjoyed reading the Italian poets referred to as “Crepuscolari.” Remember I grew in Malta. I was also influenced by two Maltese authors Francis Ebejer and Frans Sammut, the former a playwright, the latter a novelist. Both translated into English.
2. What is the best hour of the day for writing?
It used to vary. Now preferably mornings or late evenings.
3. If you were to throw a dinner party for any 10 people, living or dead, who would you invite? Where in the world would you gather? What would be on the menu?
Paulo Freire, Noam Chomsky, Archbishop Romero, Ibn Sina, Maxine Greene, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Albert Camus, Hannah Arendt, Pope Francis, Italo Calvino.
Rabat, Morocco.
Onion soup, lasagna, tuna and veggies, chocolate ice cream.
4. You were so kind as to share with me a copy of your remarkable poetry collection Here Was. That title, of course, cues the reader to the central role that questions of time and place will play throughout the book. Your poems often immerse the reader in a single moment through the use of evocative, incredibly specific description, while at the same time gesturing towards the distance between that moment and a remembered past. Similarly, these pieces are almost always firmly rooted in a specific geographical setting, but when one reads them together as parts of a whole, taking note of the motifs and thematic concerns that are woven throughout, they seem to point towards a commonality of human experience, particularly in reference to trauma, displacement, and migration. In you treatment of both time and place, then, there is a remarkable tension between closeness and distance, what unites and what separates. All of this got me wondering about your writing process. How close do you prefer to be to the subject you are describing when you write? Do you pull out a notebook and draft while you are absorbed in a particular moment, or do you need some distance in order to see what it is you want to say or evoke?
Many thanks for the simply superb commentary and questions. You have truly understood the spirit of the writing in Here Was. You are absolutely correct that while there is “a commonality of human experience” at the same time there is “a remarkable tension between closeness and distance, what unites and separates.” This is exactly what I tried to attain in this collection by utilizing what I refer to as the “dialectic style between binaries and contradictions”. This is not meant as a defense of relativism but of relationality in life which cannot occur without a dialectic of some sort, in my view. So, in reply to your questions, and I am not being diplomatic or avoiding an answer, I have to be both close and distant from the subject; yes, occasionally I do grab a notebook or whatever and scribble my emotions and thoughts and later with distance revise even drastically; other times the dialectic of writing happens instantly.
5. Of all the motifs woven throughout these pieces—cats, birds, bees, sunbathers, fish—perhaps the most persistent is the sea. Can you speak to this a little bit?
Although I have lived in Canada (Montreal, Halifax and Toronto) for 46 years, deep down I am a child of the Mediterranean Sea! I feel for the sea, I love the sea, I get angry with the sea, it appeases me and torments me at the same time. How can I live without it or its memories?!
6. Having experienced your poetry, I am excited to add your novel and short story collection to my list of books to read in 2024. Do you think of your poetic and fiction writing practices as connected, or are they totally separate animals?
While prose and poetry are of a different genre, after all I am still the author – notwithstanding the different emotions, thoughts, conflicts and joys and possibly identities one goes through in life. Most of the time all my writing is what I describe as “critical minimalist” writing very much influenced by the existential experience of life including migration, trauma, the ordinary and social justice. Deep down my writing, I believe, exhibits a socially constructed epistemology without denying the existence of what Paulo Freire refers to as “the universal human ethic” which is derived from our existential, dialectical life experience.
7. In addition to publishing poetry and fiction, you’re also an esteemed academic—a professor emeritus in the Department of Social Justice Education, and the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at OISE, University of Toronto. If fact, I remember being assigned some of your remarkable writing when I was a student at OISE in 2010, in what was then called “The Inner City Option.”
I’m wondering if you can speak a little bit about how these two sides of your work life fit together. Certainly, both your creative and academic work reflect a deep commitment to justice, and to acknowledging and engaging with the full humanity of others. Are there other ways in which your poetic and pedagogical practices inform one another?
You are correct, in my case, my academic focus and literary focus intermingle when it comes to the commitment to justice and the ethics of relationality and subversion. However, in the last 8 years of my career, I have become disappointed with the bureaucracy and the conservative rigidity of the academia both in process and content. I started to seriously doubt the value of my own academic publications given my beliefs in the importance of changing the world for the better. Gradually I have come to the conclusion that literary work has more potential than the academic work. Having said that, for a long time in my academic work including teaching, I have included the use of the literary, mostly poetry. And I was fortunate enough that my institution, the University of Toronto from which I have benefitted a lot (while also giving me pains because of what I consider to be archaic academic rituals and pomposity), has allowed me to develop and teach many times in the last 8 years a course entitled “Narratives of Migration and Exile: Implications for Education” in which we primarily read literary works (novels, short stories and poetry) and the students are allowed to experiment with creative writing in relation to the focus of the course.
8. Although you are not (as far as I know) a writer of books for children, you are someone who has spent a lot of time researching and reflecting on what best serves students and school communities. Do you have any advice for me, and other writers of books for young readers? What kind of literature are students in need of right now? What do they most need from us in order to grow into passionate, confident readers and writers and empathetic human beings?
Wow! Thanks. Your question is taking me into another era in my own career. Although I have never written books for children (which in my view, are most probably the most important literary works to be written and the most difficult), given my interest and research in doing philosophy with children during the 1980s and 1990s, I became very much aware of using good literary children’s books to encourage open and philosophical conversations in schools. I used a lot of children’s books in my work with schools, books like “Pierre” by Maurice Sendak, and others my Arnold Lobel, Robert Munsch, Dr. Seuss and others. In 1996 I co-edited a book entitled “Children, Philosophy and Democracy”.
9. I came across a video clip in which you read a selection of poems as part of the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival in April of 2020. In your introduction, you said that “reasonable hope is very much needed, especially in these trying times.” Of course you were speaking those words in the early days of the Covid pandemic. We are now in the midst of another extremely difficult time; reading Here Was in November of 2023, I could not help but view pieces such as “Haifa,” “Tears of Gaza,” and the title poem “Here Was” through the prism of the current war in Gaza. What do you think it might mean to have “reasonable hope” in this very traumatic historical moment?
Not an easy question to answer. But I will answer sincerely. In moments like these I start to doubt even “reasonable hope.” I have to admit it. When you see such horror and unjust actions. And, yet, part of me believes that we cannot move forward without some element of hope. What is reasonable hope at the moment? Very difficult to describe. But I communicate with Palestinian and Jewish friends of good will. Notwithstanding the context, they give me hope. Notwithstanding the tears they shed and the sorrow they go through, I can feel hope in their words. I hope I am being reasonable!
10. Speaking of hope, we are currently in the midst of the winter holiday season, which for me is about finding warmth and light in the middle of a cold, dark season. Are there any holiday or winter time rituals that feel especially comforting or meaningful to you?
I used to be a big fan of Christmas as a young child and in my youth when I was very active in the local youth centre village I was raised in, in Malta. I used to be an avid accordian player and in the small village of about 1000 people we used to have several Christmas activities including Christmas caroling. Today I find this time to be too commercialised. However, I do my best to keep the spirit of hope. I cannot but recall the title of a book by Don Helder Camara (a Brazilian bishop who dedicated his life to the poor and wretched) entitled Hoping against all Hope which I read as a Master’s student in philosphy at McGill and made a huge impression on my outlook of life.
CONNECT WITH JOHN ONLINE:
Website: www.johnpportelli.com
Facebook: @johnpeterportelli
Instagram: @johnpeterportelli
FORTHCOMING FROM JOHN IN 2024:
A collection of poems in Italian (translation) to be published by Gruppo Albatros Il Filo, Rome
A collection of poems in Farsi to be published by Ashk Publishing, Iran.
