Gibraltar - More Poetry from Gabriel Moreno

 

March blew in pretty wild and wet, but I have been on a roll with reading works by Gibraltarian writers and kept up the momentum with Gibraltar, a new collection of poems by Gabriel Moreno. I picked up my copy in person at his launch gig in El Kasbah in Gibraltar at the end of February, a vastly enjoyable night where we were treated to his poetry and music, and a special appearance was made by Morag  Butler, all the way from the folklore scene in Kent. An absolute treat.

Morag Butler at El Kasbah, February 2026

I read Gibraltar quickly, in one afternoon. Then I took it on my travels to UK and read it in a more leisurely way, indulging in the lines of poetry, reading the poems out loud in the three languages used and probing at the layers of meaning. These poems resonate. Perhaps it's because I'm a llanita, no se, but I think it's because good poetry is resonant anyway. 

Of course, before I read the poems, I'd heard many of them, read out loud both by Gabriel Moreno and by his translator and publisher, founder of Goat Star Publishing, Rafael Peñas Cruz. This is how poetry is at its most vibrant: read aloud in the voice of the author, with the accents, and intonations and emphases all in the right places, where they are meant to be. It is the llanito accent, the traces of andalusian, that I think bring these poems fully alive, that give them an authenticity that lingers with you long after the moment has moved on. The English language poems are strong, with powerful, lasting images, and the same can be said of the Spanish. In fact, I think I need to also point out that the translations into Spanish are worthy poems in themselves and nothing is lost in translation here. I particularly liked the tenth poem in the first section of the book, the reflections of Gibraltar:

"I favoured ones where you waltzed,

where the smell of bay leaves mixed

with English ale and Moroccan spices

wreathed the crest of our thinking."

"Preferí aquellos donde bailabas un vals,

donde el aroma a laurel se mezclaba

con cerveza inglesa y especies maroquíes

coronando las crestas de nuestro pensamiento."

My favourite were the Llanito sonnets. What began as a response to a challenge that llanito cannot be moulded into a formal poetic structure born of another language, has resulted in sonnets that have torn up the rule book of colonial control. English is the language that was foisted on our ancestors and which we had no real choice but to learn to speak, but we have developed from this and from the many tongues that our people have spoken in our past and grown our own language, on our own soil. They joy of these sonnets is not only in the games that the poet has played with language, but with the shaping of a Gibraltarian meaning, using Gibraltarian language from an English formal poetic structure. There is a beautiful rebellion in this that brought me utter joy.

And then, of course, there was the language of the sonnets, the contemplation of uniquely Gibraltarian themes and landscapes, like the smuggling of Marlboro Man, the walking through the border in La Frontera, the relationships of a youth spent in the Gibraltarian beaches and bars as in The Inheritance, and Fling del Verano. 

I imagine a particular challenge must have been how to write a language that has no standard written form. I stumbled over the word "vrada" until I said it out loud several times and the penny dropped. If this is the case, then Moreno's talent burgeons further, demonstrating a mastery of form and language that I think is probably born of his ear for music and how words sound together. The Llanito Sonnets in this selection work well and fall so easily from the lips that the talent and effort they took to write could easily be underestimated. I would ask the reader not to fall into that trap: what is easiest to read is often the hardest to write.

The book moves on to a selection of new poetry, pondering broader themes, such as relationships, humanity itself, and of course, poetry. Moreno is expressing his thinking processes, some of them complex, in his poems and this offers up to readers the chance to plunge into our own thinking. This is what poetry does best, I think, have us explore our own thinking. Or, as he says in Epistola ad Pistones:

 

"It's all butterflies

innit? Every song

is a chance 

for the dreamer 

in the cave

to imagine

a more benevolent

field."

This is not the place for an in-depth analysis of this collection of poems, nor am I one skilled enough to do justice to them anyway, but I do sense the literary import of this work and the valuable contribution it makes to Gibraltarian literature, or, as Rafael Peñas Cruz puts it in his prologue:

"But a culture is nothing without poets, for it is only they who ultimately give shape to that immaterial set of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and ways of life peculiar to a certain group of people in a certain space at a certain point in time."

If you haven't got a copy, click the link below and order one now. En serio, este libro hay que leerlo.

Gibraltar by Gabriel Moreno

Gabriel Moreno, troubadour, at El Kasbah, February 2026

Gibraltar, Keats and Hampstead Heath

 

Keats House on World Book Day 2026

It's something unexpected to find a piece of Gibraltar in Hampstead Heath, that little, somewhat exclusive, quintessentially English piece of London. It was also unexpected for it to be so warm and sunny on that March afternoon that I was down to t-shirt and jeans and wishing I'd worn sandals instead of trainers and that I'd left my jacket at home.

On 23rd March this year, World Book Day, I managed to get hold of a couple of tickets to attend a poetry salon at Keats' House. The famous Romantic poet, John Keats, had lived there from about 1818 to 1820. It was at this rather lovely house that Keats wrote Ode to a Nightingale, the subject of rather frustrating homework assignments when I was at school decades ago now, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, one of my favourite poems, possibly in my top ten depending on my mood.

Just being in Hampstead Heath, a far cry from the Medway Towns, where I lived for many years, let alone from Gibraltar, I felt a little out of place, or, as my daughter, who had come along with me, put it: 'it's a far cry from Varyl Begg, no?' Nice spot, though, Hampstead Heath, if you don't mind emptying your bank account for a cup of tea and a slice of cake.

Then we meandered into Keats' House, which was basking in glorious sunshine and framed in spring blossoms, walking, almost literally, into Gabriel Moreno, otro llanito, who was reading from his latest collection of poems at the Salon and treating us to some of his songs. 

It was a wonderful afternoon, filled with poetry, books, sunshine and wine (where there are good books, may there always be good wine), and music. Gabriel sang to us, treated us to a performance of the song I've Never Loved Before, the lyrics as yet unpublished and written by Leonard Cohen, put to music by Gabriel Moreno. A beautiful song, the lyrics, as expected of Cohen, profound and touching, and brought to life by Moreno's delicate musical touch.

(This is Ruth Irwin reading some of her poetry)

For me, though, it was the readings from Gabriel's book Gibraltar, that touched me most deeply. Presented by both Gabriel and the book's translator and publisher, Rafael Peñas Cruz, the readings filled this colonial English house with the sounds and rhythms of Gibraltar: el whisky con cola, and la Heineken, and el agua te traga si no te espabila of the llanito sonnet, Marlboro Man, to quote from just one. I lost a cousin to el estrecho many years ago: desaparecido el y su lancha. It was moving, here, at the heart of London, at the core of the colonial power that tried so hard to extinguish our language and reshape our Gibraltarian identity, for our language, experiences and existence to be acknowledged and applauded. Se me vino una lagrima al ojo, de verdad, and that doesn't happen often.

Gabriel Moreno and Rafael Peña Cruz reading from Gibraltar

To quote from Gabriel's poem, The Day I read at Keats' House, also in the collection, Gibraltar:

"You see, when I was growing up

 I was told poems were for posh folk.

        I recall reading Keats and thinking;

        What if I am never good enough?......

"I shall allow the dryad to answer;

        Hop on my wings, to mossy ways,

        our tongues will unravel England.

        Today is a perfect day to change." 

            

Gibraltar at its gritty best: Lowlife Tales from M G Sanchez.

 

Lowlife Tales by M G Sanchez

January is normally a good time to set goals, as much for writing as for any other part of life. This year, I was so beset with the flu at the start of the year that all that new resolutions stuff totally passed my by. We are well into January (it is now Burns Night as I write this) and I still haven't recovered my voice, much to the Family's delight. So, because it is usually easier to swim with the current than against it, I decided to throw goals out with the bathwater and just indulge in reading more.

It makes sense, I suppose, and I have advocated it to those young writers that I have mentored over the years, that if you want to continuously improve your writing, you have to read and read and read, and write and write and write. I tend to be quite an avid reader anyway, but last year I noticed that I was reading more slowly, I noticed a reluctance to read more than a few pages at a time and instead I would listen to music, daydream, watch TV and doomscroll. I have decided to change that this year, but to change it with a specific purpose in mind. Because it is not so much quantity of reading as quality that counts and this year I have decided that I am going to focus on reading as much Gibraltarian literature as I can, and get a real feel of how local writing is developing.

There is no shortage these days of books produced by local writers, which is joyful, starting with the Patuka Press' December 2025 launch of its latest edition, Childhood. This was an utter joy to read, and I have reviewed it in my Substack channel, link below:

Jackie's Substack: Childhoods Revisted

So I have kicked off my January reading with M G Sanchez' Lowlife Tales, the Llanito dialogue edition. I'm a sucker for a short story collection and have Hernandez' books, Mis Patios Perdidos and 4-volume Historias de Gibraltar on my shelves, alongside Rebecca Calderon's Ten Thousand Words. I did have Sanchez' Rock Black: Ten Gibraltarian Stories, but as I type these words I am suffering the supreme irritation of not finding it on the bookshelf with my other Gibraltarian books which means I have probably lent it out, never got it back and I can't even remember who I've lent it to. How infuriating! That particular collection of short stories was my first introduction to any Gibraltarian writer and Sanchez' dark humour and his talent for drawing realistic yet unique characters that are so recognisable as LLanitos instantly appealed, especially as when this was released in 2008, there was nothing like this available, nothing that was as basic as one of us writing about...us.

Lowlife Tales on Amazon

Lowlife Tales are a welcome addition to Sanchez' catalogue of work that tells uniquely Gibraltarian stories. Yet, as I write those words, I am acutely aware that this collection is much more than that. I am not a literary critic, or an academic, but even I can tell that this collection achieves something far more important than simply to draw interesting characters, or give them realistic stories in a familiar setting using familiar words as their speech. Sanchez' characters are complex and their experiences are universal. He doesn't hold back in laying out their physical flaws and failings, their weaknesses, which we all have; even the most bombastic of smugglers have hidden weaknesses lurking somewhere in their psyche, such as Toni Metetrola's fear of the open sea. I think, however, that Sanchez has a real knack of exploring and exposing men's mentality and mental health; he puts the reader easily into his characters' heads, and creates a ready engagement with the anxieties, fears, paranoias and other experiences that beset his characters. The journey in a character's mindset as it changes over the course of the story is smoothly laid out, carried as you are through a narrative style that is unobtrusive, that lays the story out almost as if you were listening to a group of men gossiping en el martillo. That the writer manages to write himself out of a text and allows the characters to tell their stories with minimum intrusion speaks of a tremendous skill. One of the many reasons why Gibraltarian writers need to read texts like this to be able to enhance their own writing skills. Should this text be studied at the local comprehensive schools? I'll let you ponder that.

Besides character and story building, Sanchez' stories depict a Gibraltar that if it were left to those other than local artists to depict, would be lost in the far recesses of history never to be thought about again. It is especially true of a small and enclosed society such as Gibraltar's to try to hide the flaws, to cover up the darker, seamier, side of life, and yet, Gibraltar's continuously evolving story is no more than a pastiche of light and dark tales, and our 'low-life' tales are as much a part of our history and our culture as stories to do with economic success or military strategic importance.This is because it is the 'low-life' from where we all come, which touches us all, which has shaped us and will continue to shape us, because we are nothing more than a balancing act between dark and light. Take for instance the fact that Sanchez does not shy away from the nastier aspects of the Gibraltarian character, such as the horrific misogynistic attitudes that women endure:

"Jeremy watched her with a furrowed brow, pained by the thought that she could be hearing their lewd sexual banter. It was a feeling that he knew only too well, this mixture of guilt, shame, disgust, discomfort and stinging inadequacy that always took hold of him when his mates started talking about girls and women in this outrageously crude manner..." (page 280).

He also adds an interesting commentary on el chupaculismo with this excellent section on page 222 which consideres a fictitious Poet Laureate, Callum Jimenez and what he writes about:

"Similarly, when he wrote about the Gibraltarian national character he would never focus on the nepotism, the pancismo, the institutional corruption, the smuggling which was supposed to have ended in the mid-90s but continues unchecked on the sidelines, or even the sybaritic hankering for material goods..." to which Callum's Spanish boyfriend says: "Why don't you write about some of the not-so-nice-ehstuff as well?" Except the Poet Laureate doesn't think he can. Thank goodness none of us are poet laureates, and we can, and that Sanchez is so good at holding up a mirror to Gibraltarian society so we can see ourselves as we really are.

Sanchez tells those stories of Gibraltar that are gasping to be told and in that way immortalises those characters and those incidents that are an integral part of who we as a society have come to be. I too, lost a relative to the sea during those smuggling years. I watched the suffering of his parents and saw the fear and guilt in the eyes of his friends, those that survived. These are stories that simply have to be told. Sanchez' contribution to Gibraltar is not just another few thousand words on paper on a shelf, and it is not just an exemplifier of written llanito. It is a toast to those parts of our history and our culture that could so easily have disappeared, much like Hernandez has done for our lost patio culture of the twentieth century. Because of Sanchez, we will know that bit more about ourselves, and so will the rest of the world.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

I chose to read the llanito dialogue edition for the precise reason that Sanchez wrote it: because you cannot retain any grip on realism unless the words that come out of the mouths of his characters are delivered in the exact way they would have been spoken. Had he been writing about some highly anglicised member of Gibraltar's wealthier elite, English would have been fine, but for the rest of us that belong to the streets and alleys of El Peñon, it had to be llanito for it to ring true. If you can only read English, then the English version will work well anyway, but if you have even a small grip of Spanish, the llanito dialogue edition is ideal and will give you a true flavour of the characters and the stories. Sanchez' contribution to the recovery of the llanito language, which is such an intrinsic part of our identity and therefore should be also of our literature, is immeasurable. 

The only thing is, there is a different story in the English edition that is not included in the llanito dialogue edition that sounds pretty intriguing and needs must I read that too! I can explain why: this particular story is about a Gibraltarian who returns to the Rock after forty years away and his response to the changes. I was away from Gibraltar for nearly thirty years and I am interested to compare that experience to mine. 

As it is, Sanchez' stories slake my thirst for understanding what happened in Gibraltar, for picturing what life was like, what people experienced during my own 'missing years'. So while their contribution to Gibraltarian literanture is invaluable, and while they are literary gems in their own right, Sanchez' stories help me to add the missing threads to the fabric of my life. Gotta say it: thank you, Mark.

Now for planning out my next read...

Image courtesy of Pixaby

My Language and I

I was leafing through The Haw Lantern by Seamus Heaney again this morning over breakfast. Yes, I read poetry over breakfast sometimes and it beats checking my phone and getting caught up with emails and the utter rubbish spewed out on social media. 

Anyway, back to Heaney, I read A Peacock's Feather which Heaney wrote for his niece, Daisy Garnett, in 1972. In it he talks about her christening in Gloucestershire and ponders his background and hers being so different; hers orderly, almost courtly, and his, in another country, rougher, and he talks of how he has modified himself to fit into her world:

I come from scraggy farm and moss,

Old patchwork that the pitch and toss

Of history have left dishevelled.

But here, for your sake, I have levelled

My cart-track voice to garden tones,

Cobbled the bog with Cotswold stones.

(from The Haw Lantern by Seamus Heaney, Faber and Faber (London) 1987)

It is rare I read Heaney without something resonating and this passage has been hanging around in my head all day. In Gibraltar, we have just celebrated another National Day and the city and its people have been festooned in red and white - clothes, bunting, flag, banners, shop window displays, you name it, there's a red and white version of it - but this poem got me thinking: where do we come from, when we say we are from Gibraltar?

As a people, Gibraltarians talk proudly, and rightly so, of the Rock, of its centuries' old fame for impregnability in the face of conflict, of holding fast, physically and metaphorically, to its values. We are proud of much of our history although this is more often than not the white-washed version passed down to us by our British imperial masters, written in their language, using their terms, their memories. It has only been in relatively recent years, that a Gibraltarian culture and identity has begun to emerge. Even then, it is still seen by many people outside of Gibraltar as "Britain in the sun" because we cling onto our Britishness as if that was the only thing worth holding on to, or we are looked at as Spanish but trying to be British, or as nothing of any importance at all, some kind of mongrel race that is neither here nor there, or this or that.

So, having pondered that passage by Heaney and having spent a couple of days at the University of Basel immersed in matters of language and Gibraltarian literature with acadmics and writers from across Europe (link to information below), I took to thinking about what we do as Gibraltarians with our voices.

 Language and speech is how we communicate with others and how we speak, the sound of our words, the tone of voice, in fact, everything about speech is as revealing about us as individuals and as a culture as our flag and our British post boxes and our delight in churros in the morning and calamares fritos en el bar en Eastern Beach por la tarde. We know that regional accents tell us about where people are from in a country and if in England, then whether the person speaks with received pronunciation tells us a lot about their social class, or their aspirations to a higher class (this is a very British thing, class) or even their level of education.

Gibraltarians and their Language

Gibraltar International Conference 3 in Basel

Do we make changes when we speak when we encounter people from other cultures, I wonder? In Gibraltar, do we 'cobble the bog' of our speech? I think the answer is 'yes, we do.' I have listened to Gibraltarians in Spain trying to pronounce the ends of the words (we don't do that in Gib that much and nor do Andalucians). It sounds awkward. I find myself trying to do it, especially hardening the 'r' and putting the 'th' (I do not have a clue about phonetics, so any linguists reading this, please forgive me) in the right place in a word. I end up battling with my own tongue and giving up. Or not speaking at all, which is a poor option - every attempt at speaking someone's language is a sign of respect for them. Much better to speak in Llanito and explain the odd, errant word that is unique to Llanito (I spell it with a 'll" and am not going to argue about it!) than get into a muddle trying to be something that I'm not.

Same with the speaking of English. I have an English accent having lost my llanito accent as a child growing up in England. It was jolly handy because the racist bullies were mercilessly picking on me because I had a sing-song intonation to my voice and added 'bueno' at the start of most sentences and ended them with 'no'. I double-cobbled my own bog with south-east England tarmac.

Then there's also the matter of tone and pitch. I find Gibraltarians are loud. Seriously, if excited, we are endearingly but 'hurt-the-ears' loud. I missed that effervescence of speech when I lived in England but I made sure that I toned down my propensity to arm waving and volume increase when overly enthusiastic about a conversation; in a girls' grammar school of the seventies, all that continental passion simply 'would not do'. 

I wonder if I should have just been myself. I'm neither English in England, and, after over thirty years away, I am not particularly Gibraltarian in Gibraltar, and it is through language and the way I speak that my identity, or lack of it, generates assumptions in others. This is why I found the linguistic biographies collected in Gibraltarians and their Language published by the University of Vigo last year so enthralling and instructive. Language and how we use it in Gibraltar is fascinating, in particular the cultural and sociological connotations that are exposed when we speak it, and it is hugely reveealing about us as a people and about how we are evolving as a culture. 

These days, the attempt at rescuing our language from oblivion is gathering pace. There is a good deal of information online and the push for accepting greater use of llanito, of using it to write and produce literature is gathering pace. Just check out the work of poets Gabriel Moreno, Giordano Durante and Jonathan Teuma just for starters, and others, such as Rebecca Calderon with her landmark introduction of 'Bloomsday' in Gibraltar, are showing the world that small as we are, we do have a place in the world of literature. 

I do not come from a 'scraggy farm and moss', I come from a 'craggy land of rock, battlefield that the pitch and toss of stormy sea has left dishevelled, but here, for your sake, I have levelled my fish-wife voice to subtler tones, smothered the self, betrayed my bones'.

Not having a clear identity, not having a sense of complete belonging is odd. But perhaps it is ideal for creativity, for writing, for poetry.

Durante's essay on written Llanito

Calderon on Bloomsday

Gabriel Moreno

Jonathan Teuma

Gibraltar's short stories 2025

I've been slowly (very slowly) reading the winning entries in this year's Gibraltar Spring Festival short story competition. No excuses, I am busy, but I also like to take my time with these matters, savour the stories slowly, a good while after the publicity machine has lauded the writers, the judges, the event, the government and everyone else that played a part in it. Taking my time and above all, ignoring commentary and social media, means that I can make my own mind up about the stories I read.

As in other years, this year's batch of entries was numerous and that is a positive; it shows that there is an eagerness in the local community to write, to read and to take part in this initiative. After over a decade either taking part myself or generally just enjoying the fruits of others' story telling, I still think that it is a good thing that there is a local competition that arouses in the community the will to write down their stories, whatever those might be. It is still the case that there are few stories in the world that are Gibraltarian stories, by Gibraltarian authors. By this, I don't mean stories about, or set in Gibraltar, but those works of fiction or poetry that open a window to a place, a time, a zeitgeist. 

What is encouraging, however, is that this small number of works is growing year on year. Not just because of the short story competition - a short story competition is a small element in helping focus attention on literature as part of a community's culture - but because every year there seems to be another flurry of publishing by local authors and therefore a greater number of works available to build up that picture of a place. Whether a thriller by a Gibraltarian author is set locally or set in a far off country, in another time, or place or galaxy or dimension, that novel will still say something about the writer and their provenance, about the place where it was written, or the place that influenced the write. That is one of the joys of indulging in reading; the discovery of the other: the other place, the other perspective, the other world of imagination. 

Back to this year's batch of winning entries, which I very much enjoyed reading. The link to the Gibraltar Cultural Services website page is below and I would encourage everyone to drop by and read at least some of them. Firstly, they are worth those five or ten minutes each, perfect coffee break reads. Secondly, it is wonderful for writers to know that their work is being read. Sometimes it doesn't even matter if the reader doesn't like it - just the knowledge that someone has taken the time to read your work and respond to it is good enough. No-one is going to like everything anyway.

2025 Gibraltar Spring Festival Short Story Competition Winners.pdf      

I love that these days there is a Llanito category. It is a difficult language to write. Given that it is mainly oral, there is a tendency to need to 'hear' it and so the written version must somehow 'sound' true. That is a tough call and I am not entirely sure that this year's winners quite mastered this aspect of it. But they gave it a good go and in many ways, that is good enough for me, because it means that there is more Llanito out there written and published and therefore skills in writing it will only improve. No apologies for being critical - criticism is much needed in the literary sphere - and no apologies for not writing in Llanito myself. I speak it but writing it is just not my bag. At least, not for now.

I also loved the variety of themes and settings. Sometimes writing to a theme is a great discipline and perhaps the competition organisers might give that some thought for a future competition, or create a themed competition for a special event. It helps focus writers and it makes them hone their writing far more carefully than an open theme. What I do like about an open theme is the variety of stories that it produces. This means that this year's batch included work on mental health, on memory and migration, on desire and danger, on family and loss among other themes, some are set in Gibraltar, in the present, in the past, in Tangiers, in La Linea, in the upper town, at the border...you get my point.

My favourite...so hard to choose. The overall winner, I think, was a great story: The Rock in my Tea Cup by Daniel Francis Brancato. It caught me up in the first sentence and held me to the end. Loved it. I also really enjoyed Stephen Perera's Shining a Light on the 70s...I loved the humour and the language and it took me right back to familiar days of the 70s (el gordito siempre acababa de portero...bueno, y la gordita igual!). But all the stories are worth a read and they open a window on Gibraltar and its writers in 2025. 

A brief word about the entries by the school children. This is a category that I particularly enjoy because it gives us a glimpse into the future. I haven't done any research but I do wonder if any of the finalists of previous competitions have gone on to be writers. I think Louis Emmitt-Stern stands out; I remember him winning at least one poetry competition and he may well have won more - Louis, if you read this, let us know in the comments! I hope this year's entrants keep writing; there is talent lurking there.

If you haven't already read this year's short stories, please do. It is not enough just to read Instagram and Facebook and what these say about who won with what story. It is important to support local writing and the best way this is done is by reading local writers.

Llanito: en mi language

 

I have taken a hiatus from this blog for nigh on three years, maybe slightly longer. Life sometimes gets in the way - work, the dullness of routine that serves to numb creativity, the grind of getting each day done that stifles so many of those who might want, wish, would and should write their stories and tell their tales. Myself included, clearly.

But I've not been away entirely.

Since my last blog post, I have published a non-fiction book, co-written with my eldest daughter, Ciara Wild. Myth Monster Murder explored the story of Jack the Ripper, how the gruesome Whitechapel murders were, and are, mythologised by the media, how at least five women became the victims of his blood-happy knife, and of the gore-addicted press, victims themselves, perhaps, of rampant commercialism. Why did the murders take place and could they happen again, we ask ourselves in the book. I won't tell you the answer. The book is readily available on Kindle or on paperback through Amazon, Blackwells, Waterstones, Foyles....so treat yourselves!

Myth Monster Murderer by Jackie Anderson and Ciara Wild

That feat wore me out a little, so my writing became more of a dabbling, an early morning pre-breakfast gathering of thoughts and toying with the keys of my laptop, or the occasional scribbling in a notebook of disparate ideas, sentences and phrases that appear irrationally and unannounced into my mind and that occasionally drift together into a coherent whole.

But during that rather barren period, something has emerged in Gibraltar that is worthy of dusting down this blog and reawakening it. And that thing - or phenomenon is more approrpriate a word - is Patuka Press and its literary journal, the third issue being entitled: Llanito.

My copy of Llanito from Patuka Press

Here's where you can get your copy of LLanito

I spoke on GBC Breakfast about this back in July. It was a brief interview too early in the morning for me to be fully coherent so apologies to listeners, but in it I spoke not just about my writing and my book and the story I wrote that was published in 'Llanito', but also about the journal. 

I remember having conversations with fellow Gibraltarian Writers some years ago, shortly after a group of us worked on publishing an Anthology of Gibraltarian Poets (the first anthology of its kind), that centred around the vital importance of having a local outlet that would publish local writing - that is, writing that is not just produced locally, but by writers that have a strong connection with Gibraltar, who may be Gibraltarians living abroad, or people who had spent time in Gibraltar and had stories to tell. 

Writers might well love their craft, they might well be brilliantly skilled storytellers, wordsmiths, playwrights, poets, but if they cannot reach out to readers through some form of publishing, then their words are lost to the rest of us. And that is a literary tragedy, especially in Gibraltar, where there are so many tales to be told and its writers are bursting to tell them.

More than that; we want to tell them in our language, in Llanito, in the words that shape who and what we are as a people, and as an individual person.

In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of initiatives that have started to provide recognition for Gibraltar's writers, and outlets for their work. Among many other features, Gibraltar now has a Literature Week which this year is going to form part of the Gibraltar Literary Festival; there is a local book shop at last, which stocks works by local writers and about Gibraltar; there is increasing recognition, academically and among Gibraltarians, that our language is a clear and valid language that is part of our cultural identity. Social media and interest from GBC through various programmes such as Between the Lines, has helped tremendously. Young writers are daring to write and publish and not worry about whether what they have written is 'literature' or not; they do not care about meeting some vague and undefined standard of what is literature and don't question whether they can stand up to comparison with Dickens, Byron, Orwell or Rowling. Who wants to be like all the others anyway? We are who we are and say what we say and from what I'm reading of Gibraltarian writers, some can proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with other writers from other countries, or spine to spine on the shelves of any bookshop or library anywhere.

The joy of seeing this growth in local writing is immeasurable, more so when seeing that so much is now written in Llanito. Despite the decriers and nay-sayers, and I am not going to waste any energy wading into that argument, we are finally openly exploring what it means to be 'us', to speak in our own language, to write our own stories. What Patuka Press has achieved with Llanito is to put a stamp of approval, a public accreditation if you like, on writing in llanito. And that goes a long way to saving our dwindling language. As Charles Durante put it in his essay 'Llanito: Grammar, Etymology and Identity' in LLanito:

    "It would be a very sad day if Llanito were to disappear, as some have gleefully            predicted. It would be like losing a limb, a form of spiritual emasculation."

I can't help but agree. It would be a tragedy with far-reaching effects; the loss would be far more visceral than the loss of a gathering of words.

So the impact of Patuka Press and its collections of stories, poems and essays should not be understated. To local readers it provides an affirmation of who and what we are culturally; we laugh and nod our heads in recognition of ourselves and our community, we marvel at the novel and the new that is being created day to day by talented Gibraltarians, we gasp at the variety of imaginative skill on show between the pages. That this third issue explores and celebrates Llanito, hablando de mi people en mi language, is testament to the surfacing of our love for Gibraltarian culture, our willingness to explore talk about what makes us us, the sunshine and the rain, the beautiful and the ugly, the whole gamut of Gibraltarianness, warts and all. The journal is both an achievement in itself, and I hope, it is also the soil in which our literary growth as a people will take root and find succour.

The next steps for Gibraltarian literature? It is, despite the decriers and nay-sayers among us, a growing, living thing but it is still young, it still needs a helping hand from those that can and from the whole community. Here are some ideas:

• Another publishing house. Patuka Press and Calpe Press and self-publishing may be wonderful things but we need the competitiveness of alteranative publishers to hone our skills and thrust our writing output into the realms of quality and not just quantity.
• Setting a high bar. Again, quality. It isn't just about work being published because it's been written or even because it's good. It's got to be good enough.
• A writing residency, where the writer in residence (perhaps selected from numerous applications to the National Book Council) works for 1 - 2 years as a writer, running workshops, producing work, organising readings, running writing groups, attending seminars, book and literary events in other countries, mentoring writers and so on.

Our literature is being read and analysed across the world. It's got to reach globally high standards and all those editors and publishers working with Gibraltarian writing, whether a news channel or a freebie magazine, a publisher of books or a literary journal, or a competition judge have to start to apply a bar. It is not enough for a writer to submit work and be published, it has to be quality work.

And while all that is going on, get yourself a copy of Llanito. I picked one up from Amazon because I happened to be in UK when it came out, but Bookgem sells it. And then get the other two issues: Shit Jobs and Borders and Boundaries. You'll find one of my stories published in each of the three editions, and I'm not just proud that my submissions were selected for publication; I am privileged.

Shit Jobs by Patuka Press

Borders and Boundaries by Patuka Press