"There is an outpouring of poetry in Gibraltar," said Giordano Durante speaking at the Poetry Panel event during the Gibraltar Literary Festival earlier this month. As one of the founders and editor of Gibraltar's only literary journal, Patuka Press, as well as being a poet and one of the local champions for writing and literature in Gibraltar, Durante is perfectly placed to comment on a phenomenon people are beginning to notice.
I'm just going to look at Gibraltar's 'poetry scene' in the past couple of months to see what is happening to poetry here. Actually, I must pause. Even using the words 'poetry scene' would have been impossible a few years ago. To use the pandemic of 2020 / 2021 as a convenient time marker, pre-pandemic most of us who wrote poetry did so in isolation, and only a very few who had sufficient confidence, or the financial means, would self publish a small volume or pamphlet. Self publishing is not an easy feat, self promotion for some, myself included, is even harder, especially if you have to pay out for venues, advertising, a launch party and more, in the hope that enough readers will buy your scribblings so that you at least recover your costs. With poetry in particular, this is highly unlikely.
Nevertheless, there were some published works from local authors, including from Durante himself and also Gabriel Moreno, Humbert Hernandez, Sonia Golt among a very few others. Notably, there was also an 'Anthology of Contemporary Gibraltar Poets' published in 2019. Clearly Gibraltarian poets had made small but steady and impactful efforts to expand the readership of their work and to encourage others to write and be published. All very noble, but it was post-pandemic when things began to change, and, probably the most influential factor was the launch of Patuka Press in 2023.
In Gibraltar, other than self publishing, making a bit of a splash for a day or two in the local media and hoping people read what you write and like it, there is no other way of having your work published. You can, of course, submit to international presses and publishing houses and perhaps you will be successful, but in Gibraltar itself, there is no bar set for standards, no measure against which you can pit yourself as a writer and find ways of improving. You have to do it all online, with support either paid for if you can afford an editor or a literary consultant, or through online writing groups, which can be tremendously helpful but lack the "Gibraltar" context. How might an online group based in Australia, for example, wonderful though it might be for general content in English or Australian-based content, help with a piece written in Llanito?
For years, except for small, personal friendship groups for some, and except for occasional events such as workshops or the annual poetry competition organised by the local government agency, Gibraltar Cultural Services, poets have tinkered with their art alone, to a great extent isolated, if not entirely from the world of poetry, then to a degree isolated from each other.
There was another small barrier to the expansion of poetry as an art form in Gibraltar, in my view at least, and that was the elitism that surrounds art in general, and writing in particular. I am not going into the thorny argument of what constitutes literature in this post, but until recently, coinciding with the beginnings of the 'outpouring' referred to by Durante, if something wasn't 'classic' or comparable to the great poets, it was not considered literature. With the isolation and lack of support structures as part of our cultural infrastructure, Gibraltar was unlikely ever to grow its own Heaney, or Yeats, Lorca or Whitman, Plath or Oliver. Yet, our poets are in their own class, writing our Gibraltarian themes in our voices, whether those are expressed in Spanish or English or a code-switching version of both or in the more vernacular Llanito. Perhaps it is time for Gibraltar to create its own definition and understanding of what is "Gibraltarian literature" and where its poems and poets fit into it. What I can say in the context of this particular post, is that when Gibraltar's poets opened their arms to all of poetry's many and continuously evolving forms, we found a fountain of inspiration and in Patuka Press, an outlet for our work.
Back to my original intention which was to consider what this 'outpouring' looked like in the past few months.
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| The poets at the Bosom Buddies' fundraiser (with yours truly dressed in funereal black and with her eyes shut). Photo courtesy of The Gibraltar Chronicle |
In September, Sonia Golt organised a poetry recital at an event to raise funds for her charity 'Bosom Buddies'. She reached out to a few of us to offer our time and talent and we all jumped at the chance, to donate that time to a very worthy cause and also to take up the opportunity of showcasing our work. The event was a huge success in poetic terms: Sonia was incredibly intelligent about the mix of styles and languages that was presented and brought together a fine sample of local poetry from the serious to the saucy, from the emotional to the humorous, and some accompanied by music.
Just a few weeks later, Native Tongues was held at the Music Association of Gibraltar venue in Wellington Front. This has been organised by James Ablitt as James the Heartist, whose talent as a poet is breathtaking, and hosted by the inimitable Jonathan Teuma. Along with Patuka Press, I think this monthly gathering of spoken word artists is hugely influential. It is a small bar, a small stage, but with enormous heart and energy. Poets, singers, storytellers, rappers can take up the mic and offer up their work. It is received with interest and encouragement and I loved watching and listening and in particular, seeing young artists fish out bits of scrap paper from their back pockets, roll sleeves up over their tattoos, and read out the most tender, heartfelt words. Suddenly we (the old poets who have struggled to produce work alone in little garret rooms) felt that there was a place in this city for us, we felt part of a larger movement. It is a human impulse to belong to community and to tell stories. Native Tongues is another outlet that is instrumental in smashing open the dams and allowing that outpouring.
GBC Interview on Native Tongues
The following week, Gabriel Moreno was in town with some of his Quivering Poets promoting his new album "Nights in the Belly of Bohemia". His gigs are always a treat, always fun and always touching, because his lyrics are poems set to music and transport you from the earthy to the ethereal in a few bars. He was kind enough to ask me to recite a couple of my poems and also invited Naomi Duarte to read hers and Jonathan Bugeja added some of his own songs to the evening. I was downright honoured and loved the event, especially when unexpectedly, violinist Richard Moore, provided a backing to one of my poems "Grandmother's Hands". Amazing someone can do that without even rehearsing. I was awestruck by his talent.
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| Article on the Poetry Panel courtesy of The Gibraltar Chronicle |
Moving into November, the Poetry Panel was one of the later billings at the Literary Festival but provided an engaging discussion and well-attended event that caught the interest of local readers and perhaps an international audience with the presence of Trino Cruz, whose work around the Iberian peninsula and Morocco is key to Gibraltar's writers finding audiences outside not just Gibraltar, but the English-speaking world. Greek poet and organiser of Patras Word Poetry Festival, Tassos Pagliaslis, was also on the panel and he gave interesting insights from an outsider's perspective and spoke at length about AI and the creative process. Also on the panel was Tessa Rosado Standen who went on a few days later to give a recital and discussion of her beautiful and sensitive poems. Tessa hasn't published yet but I rather hope she will, even if, like the rest of us, she has to resort to online self publishing - and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. Self published literature is still literature. Self published poetry is still poetry and a feat to be proud of.
That same evening, a group of us held the Al Margen event at the Rock Hotel. A group of poets, energised and inspired by the 'outpouring' of poetry that is beginning to make its mark in Gibraltar, and wanting to encourage and facilitate the showcasing of poetry and storytelling from the edges of the mainstream, set up a 'cabaret' of poets. What a great night it was. The event was sold out (or it would have been if we'd sold tickets but we wanted poetry to be free, on tap as it were, to be enjoyed by those with means and those without). We had poems, llanito haikus, raps and songs and serious moments and so much laughter. There was wine and food and clapping and cheers. What a great night! What a night to keep those pens scribbling with ever more intensity and passion! Al Margen was what literary festivals are all about - bringing writers and audiences closer together, the human connection without which so-called literature is dry and soulless. Here is a small taster of what it was like, with the delightful moment when Kailash Noguera stepped up to the mic after many years away from reciting his poetry (we want many more moments like that, where hitherto unfêted yet talented poets are properly heard):
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| Kailash Noguera's performing his poetry at Al Margen |
Added to this mix there have been publications of poetry books, such as those by Joe Adamberry and Leyla Costa Gomez, and rap events at local venues - rap is in my view a form of poetry, the rhythms and rhyming skills of some rappers are banging (is that too much of a Gen Z expression for this old girl?!)
Just as I was going to publish this post, I found out that Sonia Golt, Jonathan Teuma and Patuka Press have all won cultural awards this year!
Durante's 'outpouring' of local poetry is not an exaggeration. Now the dam has been broken, the outpouring will hopefully become a flow and even a flood. Perhaps it will spawn new venues, new collaborations, more local support, from government or otherwise, more courage to publish and lay on independent fringe events, and perhaps even another literary journal or...is this too ambitious?...a publishing house of our own, a non-profit, community-based collective that works to publish locally. Long may this outpouring last.
A few images from Al Margen taken by DJD Photography:
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| Rebecca Calderon and her hilariously irreverent song about the principle auditor scandal |
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| Jonathan Teuma preparando el cochinillo at Al Margen |
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| Adrian Pisarello |
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| James the Heartist and his drum |
Oh yes, and yours truly sans hair brush:
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| Lost in my own words "To Speak Your Tongue" a poem for Al Margen |
