On blue
What is the measure of this blue that’s birthed us?
Will I be by your side, I ask.
Will I be languid. Will I be azure. Or blue.
Touch me once for azure.
Touch me twice for blue.
I know you’ll go for blue, you see.
I watch your savage clawing
the way you ravish pillow and taut muscle.
I haven’t starched the sheets.
And what you want to say,
what you’d like to say is that the sheets are blue as night.
The only way we are exalted
will be as weight on these blue sheets.
And the bundled smell of you pierces me through.
On “there”
There is the sky showering me with stars
the guileless colour of your mother’s milk
and the bay overflowing with red sand
waiting for us to bury ourselves there.
There is this bay waiting to feel
the wholesome pressure of our warm footfalls.
Whenever we let go, I heard,
there the sea froths forth and
dies for you a little and for me.
from The Blue Room Inventory
Leanne Ellul
translated from the Maltese by Albert Gatt
Listen to "On blue" read in the original Maltese by the author:
These two poems form part of Leanne Ellul’s L-Inventarju tal-Kamra l-Kaħla (The Blue Room Inventory). The poems in that collection are all “on” something (though it need not be a “thing”). In the original collection, they are organized in alphabetical order.
Translating fragments of this inventory presents particular challenges. While each poem stands on its own, its place in the collection—its position in this tally of non-things—cannot be arbitrary. And yet, that organizational principle has to be broken, the elements reordered. In translation, each element speaks differently to the whole. It also speaks differently. The poems are wrought out of allusion; their deeply personal roots only ever break the surface through the play of puns, internal rhyme, imagery that depends as much on sound as meaning. As if the subject matter, should it be brought to heel by direct reference, would be rendered trivial, a mere thing. Which is what it is not.
Translating fragments of this inventory presents particular challenges. While each poem stands on its own, its place in the collection—its position in this tally of non-things—cannot be arbitrary. And yet, that organizational principle has to be broken, the elements reordered. In translation, each element speaks differently to the whole. It also speaks differently. The poems are wrought out of allusion; their deeply personal roots only ever break the surface through the play of puns, internal rhyme, imagery that depends as much on sound as meaning. As if the subject matter, should it be brought to heel by direct reference, would be rendered trivial, a mere thing. Which is what it is not.
Leanne Ellul writes poetry and prose and has published works for both adults and children. She was named Best Emerging Author in the 2016 Malta National Book Prize, and her works for children have garnered various awards. L-Inventarju tal-Kamra l-Kaħla (The Blue Room Inventory; Merlin Publishers, 2020) was her first poetry collection. Her second collection, Bjuda (Whiteness; Aġenzija Żgħażagħ, 2022), is part of an interdisciplinary project. Her latest poetry collection is entitled Il-Manifest tas-Siġar (The Trees’ Manifest; EDE Books, 2022). Her spoken-word poetry was recently chosen for publication by adda magazine. In 2015, Ellul published her first novel for young adults, Gramma (Gram, Merlin Publishers). Her second novel for young adults, Be;n il-Kmiem (Between the Sleeves), is set to come out in the following months. Both YA novels won The Novels for Youth Literary Contest in Malta. Ellul lectures in Maltese literature and creative writing, and is active in a number of NGOs, namely Inizjamed and HELA Foundation.
Albert Gatt has translated several works of poetry and prose, including Klin u Kapriċċi Oħra by Adrian Grima (Last-Ditch Ecstasy; Midsea Books and Paperwall Publishing, 2017), Fl-Isem tal-MIssier (u tal-Iben) by Immanuel Mifsud (In the Name of the Father (and of the Son); Parthian, 2019), L-Eżodu taċ-Ċikonji by Walid Nabhan (Exodus of the Storks; Peter Owen, 2022) and Castillo by Clare Azzopardi (The Lives and Deaths of K Penza; Praspar Press, 2022). Excerpts from his translation of the modernist classic Ulied in-Nanna Venut fl-Amerka by Juann Mamo (Nanna Venut’s Children in America; 1934) have appeared in the journal CounterText. His poetry translations have appeared in several journals, including Asymptote and the Columbia Journal. He is a professor of natural language generation at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and is affiliated with the University of Malta. His research focuses on the use of language in artificial (AI) and natural (human) systems, and on the relationship between perceptual and symbolic data.
