For poet, novelist and translator Nadia Mifsud, literature represents an entryway into another world, securing passage across varied geographical and emotional trajectories. Perhaps this is an even less surprising trajectory for Mifsud, born in Bormla, Malta in 1976 and now living in France and engaged as a freelance translator.
The international dimension of Mifsud’s work is further bolstered by her taking charge of the translation workshop which forms part of the annual Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival. Organised by Inizjamed, an NGO that fosters literary and cultural encounters (and of which Mifsud is a core member), the event brings together an international array of visiting writers who translate each others’ work before presenting it on stage during the festival nights.
And so, with a life now defined by the language of literature and firmly embedded among the coterie of local writing colleagues, a younger Mifsud was in fact shocked to discover that most of her peers did not, in fact, write poetry as a matter of course. She began to experiment with the genre to console a sick cousin, penning a poem while the relative was ill with appendicitis.
But poetry was to take a back seat during Mifsud’s university days, during which time she dedicated her energies to pursuing her dream of permanently relocating to France, so that mastering the French language became top priority. “It took me a while to come back to poetry,” she said in retrospect. “It is actually poetry that came back to me.”
Mifsud has three poetry collections, a novel, Ir-rota daret dawra (kważi) sħiħa (Going (almost) full circle, Merlin Publishers, 2017), and a book of short stories, żifna f’xifer irdum (Merlin Publishers, 2021), all of which bear out her recurring focus on the experience of womanhood, expressed in eloquent, but visceral, honesty.
But the act of journeying across words is never too far from Mifsud’s sphere of preoccupation, which is very much borne out in her second poetry collection, kantuniera ’l bogħod (Edizzjoni Skarta, 2015), which follows her 2009 debut, żugraga (Spinning Top). Indeed, the very title – translating into Just Around the Corner – is an intimately potent collation of Mifsud’s desire to explore the ambiguities of distance and proximity, of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Of how easily, in her own words, “our perspectives can shift”.
Mifsud won all three awards in the national poetry competition in 2017, and placed first again in 2018 and 2019. She was nominated for the national book prize with her novel Ir-rota daret dawra (kważi) sħiħa, and won it twice with her poetry collections kantuniera ‘l bogħod and varjazzjonijiet tas-skiet (Ede Books, 2021). Her latest work, also poetry, is called meta tinfetaq il-folla (Ede Books, 2022). Mifsud is currently serving as poet laureate.
Based on the biography written by Teodor Reljić for HELA. Photo by Viginia Monteforte.
