To New Spaces

Leanne Ellul… nothing more needs to be said.

Leanne is a beautiful soul, and though she is hesitant about the use of the word ‘soul’ (as you will see), I think it alone will suffice, as it speaks about the quality of her Being. She is truly special, as was our conversation. 

I have to admit that I was introduced to Leanne’s work through her latest work L-Inventarju tal-Kamra l-Kaħla, which we will delve into in but a moment. There’s something I love about starting from a blank slate, not knowing the person and their background, and just being able to see their art for what it is, without tainting it with any expectation or judgement. The poems struck and stuck, they are a breath of fresh air. They’re real in a way that cannot be expressed, only experienced. 

The poems of L-Inventarju tal-Kamra l-Kaħla talk to me of family, of pain, of love and loss, but perhaps most of all, they are alive with the bonds that we share with others, with nature and the spaces in-between. Upon the first reading the poems already felt deeply personal and upon multiple readings they become even more so. Yet, there is also a lightness to these personal moments, a playfulness bordering on teasing with words (the way Leanne plays and manipulates words has to put a smile on your face! It’s surely my favourite part), and then there’s also a sensuality to the pieces, as the poems become conversations between poet and reader. Something is certainly created in these in-between spaces… 

Here we talk about life, love of literature and words, vulnerability, the beauty of order and structure but also of those moments which we cannot control - elements that come out in the pages of L-Inventarju tal-Kamra l-Kaħla. 

Letters fascinate me, their form, I think that’s where my love of calligraphy stems from too. I am also intrigued by letters … as in sending letters to someone. I think we’ve lost the art of letter writing. Sometimes if I tell people “what a beautiful exchange we’ve had, what if it had occurred through letters?!”. The person might think ‘we have email…’, but you know there’s something different, there’s the wait and suspense … When I was in Bali for a literature festival we had this activity called ‘Women of Letters’ and they asked us to write a letter to: my never again. It was very intriguing and so this fascination with letters and the alphabet grows! 

Is this why you formatted ‘L-Inventarju tal-Kamra l-Kaħla’ in alphabetical order?      

Well hmmm the notion of an inventory stemmed from the love of the alphabet, of letters, without a doubt. There is also the idea of order too, which the alphabet lends. The idea of an inventory did grow out of another name. But then I kept on thinking about this as a collection of memories, objects, things that matter, and these are all things that form this inventory.  

You’ve also brought your kindle with you I see… 

Yes, now I know that some people will look upon this sceptically, and I know that you cannot change the physical book for anything - neither can I. But when you don’t have space, you have to find alternative methods to continue to collect books; and I also find it handy when reading at night, not to have too much light on. 

So you find it difficult to sleep? 

Yes, there are many nights in which I cannot sleep, and I’m not the type to get up and write. I don’t sleep, I think it’s because I think a lot, and I think a lot because I don’t sleep! It works both ways… 

Yes it becomes a cycle. 

Yes. You know when I was young I used to try to catch myself sleep … that moment is for me immensely intriguing. 

There’s that moment when you feel as though you’re falling, isn’t there, and because of that moment you know you’ll sleep…

Aha, or when you fall asleep seeing a film, which doesn't really work because it means you’re losing sleep, but yeah … I’m a big overthinker and sleeping isn’t easy. 

You know just yesterday I was reading about books for insomniacs and it’s as you’re saying - there are two types of not-sleeping and there’s also the issue of balance to get enough sleep. You can’t simply keep on reading just because you’re not sleeping, sometimes you need a book to sleep. 

That’s it, and it happens to me too. In the last couple of years I’ve come to realise that when sleep comes then I have to just sleep. There are some moments when you cannot sleep, but when sleep comes then I let myself drift off when possible. This kindle is a refuge, the fact that it’s always next to me.

And it’s an unlimited store in a way. It’s nice because of that. When we don’t have enough space in the house, or if we don’t have the luxury of a proper library. 

I have different libraries so to speak, but it’s still very different to living in a house, as when I was younger. You start to realise how little you need as well. You can live with very little, when it comes to clothes and other possessions.

But not books! 

Ehhh, the Marie Kondo method! Haha what did she say, you keep just 30 books I believe! So no, not books, but then you still prioritize. And I’ve left a lot of books at my mum’s house; but I know they’re there. And even with these poems there was a sense of prioritization - the ones you leave out, the ones you choose, how do you choose, where to place them... These are all very important aspects to me, even the notion of space itself. 

And how did you choose these poems? Some sections contain 1 poem whilst others contain more; in others you enumerate different parts to the same poem. Was this consciously done?       

In truth, first of all not all of the poems had a title. This collection was in part a solution for that. Not that I mind them being un-titled, although it does become increasingly difficult to refer to them the more you have, and I also wished to have something to link the poems together. There’s almost a narrative which links them, and the title is part of that narrative itself. I remember trying to choose the image that the poem conjures or the most interesting word, or the most fertile word. Many of the titles are verbs, so some of the words in themselves are simple, but to me those words are fertile in different ways. So it’s in this way that I bundled them together. I mean it isn’t easy and there isn’t just 1 way of doing it, so there are always more possibilities. 

But these were the elements that made most sense to you - and in the moment. 

Aha. Exactly and you know they’re still close to me, because when a certain time lapses on a book you think ‘I could have done this and this…’ but I try to avoid going there. 

You mentioned having a running theme, and whilst I was reading the elements that came up most frequently were: the blues, the greens, lilac and most definitely the sea. Would you like to say something about them and why they’re important to you? The sea, I think is very special to us - even without knowing it - how liberating it is and how complex it is. Very similar to how you play with words, how you repeat them and change them slightly each time - I love it! Because it gets you thinking how malleable but also how vast a single word can be. I felt a lot of pain too, but in a light sense, not a pain that engulfs you and pushes you down, the type of pain you simply want to write about and let go. 

I think you’ve given me a lot to think about as to how they’re read and you’ve read them well. They are very personal and as we talked about before, words are very important to me. I love puns and I relish anything related to words. In fact, I’m itching to start The History of Swear Words! But I think poetry is the best form, in many ways, to allow me to do what I want with words - manipulate and contort them as I want. In a way the words are mine, I am not the words’. 

When it comes to the sea, it’s very important to me. There are things that I’m fascinated by that I’d really like to write about at length - coffee, night, sea. In these poems I talk a lot about the sea. It’s very much a love-hate relationship, well maybe not hate, it’s not hate; but there was a time when I did not swim, for example. 

Do you mean because of its expanse? The kind of scary part of being at sea. 

Aha, and there’s also the relationship to my body, and I didn’t want to let myself go in it, in that sense. But there is also this element of fear at times, even though I swim well, at times I am overcome with that feeling too. It is more than this though, the sea has so many possibilities and so many moods … before you mentioned that it is liberating, but it is also closing us in, as an island. It has so many opposing and conflicting forces that even these contrasting forces themselves work really well inside a poem. So I am in this sense stealing from the sea, as though it were the pollen that allows my poems to be fertile [to becoming]. 

Because you can use it in so many ways. 

Exactly, and even this quality of currents flowing against each other creates something very special in writing. There are the blues, the transparency, so many elements working together that it intrigues me, as well as the fact that all our senses are caught up there too. 

The pain, yes, it is always on my mind. Most of the time I’m joking and trying to make people laugh, and when I write for children I write funny stories … but not in my poems. On the other hand, these poems are in no way a form of therapy. Rather the act of writing causes more pain at times, as I try to give words to things that cannot be named, these are also memories of the past and sometimes memory deceives you. These are my writings and the instances have also made me who I am, so sometimes it’s hard to say where I stand on the line of voice between poet and persona - this happens a lot in the classroom, where you want to say it’s the persona but really sometimes even I’m not so sure if it’s me who’s talking or not. 

I understand, they are those spaces in which poet and persona merge and those which exist alone and of themselves, but it becomes hard to tell apart. 

Sometimes I think we also protect ourselves too much. There’s nothing else to say here except that these poems are me, either because I experienced it, or heard it, or anything … but it’s still me, no? 

Yes, that’s true. And there’s also something so nice in being able to be vulnerable in a society in which we are always trying to keep up appearances. And with kids this is probably easier to delve into. 

Yes, if it touches kids then in many ways you’ve won them over and you can teach them anything in reality. You know even the word ‘teach’ bothers me, because in many ways I’m learning from them, we’re learning from each other and together we share our experience of the poem. But the word that you mentioned, ‘vulnerability’ is a beautiful one, to me. 

I think that’s why I don’t sleep well! I think a lot about the human condition, what makes us who we are and also the small decisions that we get caught up in, those split-second decisions that have the power to change everything. That which was - that which could have been … I don’t know.

I’m just thinking about that poem you have here of your grandma wanting to call a taxi instead of an ambulance, so that the neighbours wouldn’t talk. 

Mmm and that really happened. She waited till morning, they phoned for a taxi and went to hospital like that. I happened to be in the emergency for another reason and I saw her walking in! That was a week of change.

My grandma is a great influence to me still, I feel her with me, not in a supernatural way, but I do catch myself thinking and asking ‘if she were here, what would we say or do? Would we fight about this?’. The possibilities are unlimited but in this collection I’ve written a lot about her. 

When you referred to her as ‘nan’ I wasn’t sure if you were talking about your grandma or grandpa, because ‘nan’ to me was my grandpa. But I guess this ambiguity or possibility is supposed to be there because each reader will put their own situation to mind. 

Yes exactly, it’s what we’ve been talking about when the reader puts their interpretation to a poem. But that’s interesting. I don’t know if this happens to you but I consider my grandparents’ house to be my grandma’s. 

I do too, because there’s an element of control and also the different roles they play. 

Exactly, my grandfather is one of the most particular and quiet guys I know. In my stories and poems the men are violent and angry and because I’ve met a lot of guys who are like that, in different roles, but my grandfather is the total opposite. The dynamic is fascinating. I mean we can say that we have a patriarchal system, and we still do, but sometimes we forget how very much central the woman is to the heart and core of the family. She’s the one who keeps things together and manages things both in the house and outside. I hope that the ideas on roles are changing slowly. 

And you can really appreciate this because you’re in a school. 

Yes. And it’s not to say that some people don’t have those fixed ideas about things - life, politics, anything - but I hope it’s improving and some people are thinking differently. We’re studying the poems of Simone Galea right now and even though she is a woman you still have students referring to her as ‘il-poeta’ [the poet] rather than ‘il-poetessa’ [the poetess]. They tend to use the masculine because they’re used to it, and that says a lot about the ways some people think too…

You talk about this in ‘Fuq Sema’. Where you would think ‘sema’, well I would think ‘sema’ (sky) is female but it’s actually male! Yet even that is beautiful to realise in itself. 

Exactly, I think in these poems you can see what I think about a lot. I consciously think about the notion of the female voice in the Maltese language, and so this comes out even unconsciously because it’s now part of how I speak, as well as me editing and editing but I know that I, at least, try to use the feminine more. There is a reason for this, and it’s because it is a way to renew the language, extend it, use it in different ways, and in a way that we can exploit all it’s possibilities. There are so many instances in which the feminine is totally neglected and forgotten, a language can be very masculine, for example we always use ‘qarrej’ [masculine reader] but we also have ‘qarrejja’ [feminine reader and also used for the plural form] which is beautiful. In this instance you can use it because they’re plural or because they’re feminine! I notice these details. It’s a way towards using language in the most effective way. 

When it comes to editing, where does the balance lie between leaving a poem raw and saying ‘I don’t want to touch it anymore’ and then also knowing when to keep on editing because you can see what it’s becoming? 

Aha, good one. I think we’ve already established that I think a lot! So this seeps into my writing; when I write a poem down I would have been thinking about it and arranging it in my head first, so it would have already gone through a phase of editing. Then I leave it. When I come back to it, I read it out loud - which makes a huge difference - and I start to look at the extra words. That, to me, is what a poem is after all - distilled, something combed through … so I keep everything concise enough to retain the idea and point of the poem. Sometimes the editing is very clinical, and I see if I’m repeating a word too often, and at other times it is more to do with rhythm and musicality. 

When it’s ready … I feel it … I wish I could say more than ‘I feel it’ but… 

No, no I understand. 

But then it’s not to say that if I read it later then there wouldn’t be something I would change, but I think there’s also a point at which you have to cut off. Ultimately the poem is also the product of that moment. So yes, I think you simply feel it. 

Yes, and the feeling is all that it is - because it is your essence. What’s coming to mind is that perhaps with writing we are always a bit safer than with painting, for example, because we can go back, we can erase with more ease, because we know where we’ve come from.

Aha, aha that’s true, that is an advantage. And in reality I think that the hardest part perhaps with a romance or novel, more than with poetry, is the first draft. I always say this, but even if you end up scrapping everything at least you would have put it down, you have the foundations, and then you can arrange and edit and rewrite. Until you establish where you’re going and the whole arc, that is probably the hardest point. 

There are some poems that I split, so I can ask ‘where is the point that I stopped editing and why did I choose to split at those stanzas?’ I’m not sure, I think the rhythm of the language is also a guide, that which carries you with it. Maybe this is also why I prefer to write in Maltese, it is my language and as much as I love other languages it is the one that talks to me most. 

And knowing Maltese as you know it is very different. I can enjoy the richness of the language, it is a richness of feeling and vocabulary that it only makes sense to then flourish and use it - as I do English. The beauty is in realising that I could never use Maltese as you do, because you use everything, you experience it and it experiences you too. 

Mmm that’s a nice way of putting it. Language to me is sounds; it is possibilities. In fact I’ve always been fascinated with linguistics and I want to combine the two, and I’ve done this in other works where I combine literature and linguistics. Because that is the beauty of it … and I’ve learned from so many different people when it comes to Maltese itself, even the different way of saying a word, and from different dialects too. I’m also grateful because my grandfather was from Bormla, my grandmother from Ħaż-Żabbar, my father from Ħal Luqa and so I have all these wells, so to speak, from which to drink. This has influenced the way I use words, steal them, and handle them. But it’s also not because it’s Maltese, you know. It is the closest language to me, but it could have also been French or English if the circumstances were different. 

But it’s something which is ‘home’. 

Absolutely. I can’t imagine writing intimate things in another language, in this sense it has to be Maltese for me to express myself fully. 

I really like how you brought up the commonality of words. Now I don’t know if I interpreted it well in ‘Fuq xiħ’ most especially.  

Ah yes, well here I am primarily talking about the condition of being elderly, and growing old is a subject that really fascinates me. How we grow old, why do we grow old, what happens when we grow old. I don’t want to grow old, but at the same time it is a blessing to be. Here I am also talking about the wind, as it has existed since time immemorial - the wind like the sea, with its own moods and emotions. And so you have the wind’s presence, but also the knowledge of how much the wind carries with and in it, its flow with time. So I’m also comparing old age with the wind and the wind with old age. 

Because they are both things that exist out of time? 

Aha, because they are things that have “always” existed, happened, but then yes, I am also making observations on the language itself. So to a certain extent the wind and old age is an excuse for me to make a comment on language itself. 

But do you start with the idea of the poem or with the comment? 

Maybe a bit of both. Here we have the implication of the word ‘ruħ’ [soul] as well … you mentioned the commonality of words, and I think this word is now being overused and used cheaply in poetry. Sometimes I feel that certain poets writing in Maltese throw in the word ‘ruħ’ to seem profound. So whenever I see this word I’m very cautious. 

Perhaps even ‘love’ is overused and abused at times? 

Ah ‘mħabba’ yes. So I creep with a certain wariness, and in this case I’m using it but as a very explicit and poetic comment on this reality. At times, Marjanu Vella uses the word ‘riħ’ [wind] and ‘ruħ’ [soul] interchangeably because of their similar way of writing and sound, their transparency, their implications. So it is interesting how they can be so similar in this sense but also so different too. I wanted to play with this idea. 

When you use italics at certain points, is this another voice? At the start this made sense to me, I imagined it was your grandmother talking to you or through you, but then I thought it’s a bit of you and someone else… 

Yes, so in this case there’s the general comment, but the part in italics is me talking to the reader directly, almost ordering them. So the italics serve as pure intensification of what I’m already saying. It could be that I am already talking in the second person, or I’ll be speaking in the third person and switch to the second. 

What is your happy space? 

I love reading, taking care of my dog and my plants, cooking … genuinely this is all I need. Writing is not always pain free but ultimately I enjoy it too and I don’t wish to lose that. Otherwise there might be no point in writing at all. This is what makes me happy. 

As frustrating as this pandemic was, and also is, it also offered a new space - so there were positive things that came out too. I explored different memories which was nice, and you know, I hope to have more to write about once certain memories are out - that is also a fear. 

Like something which expires. The fear of there being silence. 

Which is alright too because silence can be fertile as well. But at times I am worried that I will have nothing to say; even though I am highly opinionated about a lot of things, but ... there is always the fear that you stop being relevant.

But by that time you’ll have so many other memories, that they’ll just be sharing space. 

Exactly, and you know now I want to write something different to these poems, even though I am fond of them and they are me, I want to be able to say the same things (why not?) in a different way - that makes all the difference, right? It is a challenge in itself.

For sure, so what are you working on at the moment? 

I’ve been working on the second novel for adolescents. I always pick it up, work on it, then leave it - and that’s why I said that sometimes the first draft is the hardest. But it’s also because new ideas crop up, I get caught up in other projects, but it is “always” on my mind. 

I’ve also been writing memories which I don’t wish to escape me. I’m not sure what will materialize from them at this point. But I do want to find new ways of presenting poetry, so I’ll also be working on that too. 

I’ve brought this new publication along, tgħanniq Ieħor. Inizjamed, which is an entity that I volunteer with, is one of the publishers of the book. There are a few new poems of mine, and they focus on the colour white, which I am intrigued by. They’re in a way a continuation of the collection.  

Do the colours mean something specific to you? 

I think I’m obsessed with white; I like yellow as well for some reason, probably because it is so vibrant; and I naturally love blue. I have noticed that even my wardrobe is at times limited by these colours, but then again this is also the potential of colours. Even with white, you have all the colours there. 

The idea of potential is quite fascinating to me, if you take blue there are so many different blues. With yellow, lilac and white it’s the same, so that you have so many colours in one. This is what I see happen with words too. With the colour lilac I am also playing with my grandmother’s name - Lela, in short for Emanuela. The space in-between (words and shades) is where interpretation lies.  

And the colours you are taken by are very much the colours associated with our chakras. 

Yes, unconsciously so. 

Mmm and maybe there’s something in that, because after all these poems are about your voice and you are very in-tune with who you are as a person.  

I’m glad you’re saying this, because I think the biggest compliment you can give an author is that you are hearing their voice. 

And it is, because your voice is the one that I read, or now I can appreciate further that it was your voice that I heard whilst reading. 

Thank you! I do hope so, because as we touched upon early regarding the persona and not-persona. Most times it’s just me writing, that’s it really.  

I know you wanted to share something about a few poems in particular… 

Yes, I’ve chosen Fuq ġisem [On a body], because it’s concise and you can easily grasp its essence. It also reflects upon something which I was writing about recently. The body fascinates me in many ways. My first novel was about anorexia and the condition of the body, the relationship between us and our bodies, but also the importance of writing our body in reality. 

What do you mean by that exactly, if you don’t mind explaining further? 

Of course, so on the one hand we can write-off our bodies in a very vulgar and cheap way, in the way of shock-tactics in writing and writing explicitly about parts of the body - but which ultimately are superficial. Then on the other hand we can be very poetical about it, and we can recount what and who we are with our own skin; from the smallest scar to our eyes (which say so much about a person). You also have the woman’s body and its shape, which some look upon as a form of desire but in reality there are so many other layers - the woman who recounts her story, her own desires, who is associated for years with childbirth but who is so much more than just that, a force of nature… So this notion of the body, even pain - we mentioned old age - all these aspects have a connection in the end. 

So these are the stories that we feel from a body. 

Yes, from the simplest forms of how we walk and hold ourselves, to other endless possibilities... 

How these little things say something about us. 

Exactly, many times I’m realising how our minds coordinate with our bodies and you can actually see what people are going through in their minds.     

I find this so beautiful and also fascinating - how much our bodies are actually telling us, and most people don’t notice, or don’t take the time to notice and deal with the real pain. I think we need to be more in-tune with our bodies, because when we are there’s so much more possibility and potential.

Very true. I had an incident lately, connected to what you’re talking about. I looked at my father’s hands and they were clean, my father is a carpenter, and they were so clean that I thought something was wrong - I hadn’t seen them so clean in 15 years, because back then we went on holiday and he didn’t work for a week! All the marks were gone and of course it was so special, but for me it was. These things are beautiful to notice. Sometimes, I don’t know if this happens to you, but I get the urge to go for a walk at really weird times…

It’s like nature is calling you out. Perhaps especially since we tend to be locked inside for most of the time. 

And it’s not that I don’t like to be almost cocooned in my space when I’m writing. So it does make a huge difference to get out. 

And we also need to breathe properly, we need air. 

In fact the other poem I chose is Fuq post [On a place], and it talks about the strange relationship with the sea we discussed earlier. The sea is there, it is teasing me and calling me to it, but there’s this fear and discomfort I’m feeling to go into the sea. And I used the image of mermaids [sireni in Maltese] to play on the sound of the ambulance sirens, from my grandmother’s poem. And a mermaid is also associated with teasing. This too is a poem about pain, the body, and I mention the pain which we enjoy as you mentioned the pain as not being a depressing kind in the beginning. This might be strange but it is also real if we think about it. The pain from after a run for example - it’s a pleasure of some sort. 

And at least you know you’re feeling. 

Exactly. And this is why the sea is important to me; because of its layers, its moods, its different sensibilities and as that which brings everything together. 

And it makes us - as islanders - what we are. 

Absolutely. This idea of the Mediterranean intrigues me. Adrian Grima is an expert in the field and used to lecture us about the Mediterranean and literature, and ‘Inizjamed’ organises the Mediterranean Festival of Literature because, to put it simply, this is the space that binds us; ultimately there are many stories to this sea which surrounds us, which are waiting to be told.  

We brought up notions of what’s real and what’s not real; what’s fiction and what lies in-between. Do you want to amplify on these themes? 

Aha, mela to bring everything we’ve said together in a way. Space is very important to me, as much as the word is important I think space is more so. This is why even within the pages of this inventory there is space. It is a possibility in itself - that which is not said becomes more important or as important as that which is said. So the things that I decided not to talk about, aren’t unimportant but …

In a way they’re there by not being there - presence in absence. 

In a way, yes. This is also the beauty of a poem; the spaces the reader fills, the way it connects to the reader, which could be very different to the connection I have with it or that I tried to establish from it - but again this is the point. 

I hope that the spaces I left in these pages are fertile ground enough for the readers.       

Would you like to give some advice to those who want to be authors and poets? 

They ought to read and to write a lot. I once had a student who was worried that if she read then she would end up copying the authors instead of writing her own, and I told her “that’s why you need to read a lot, to forget who and what you’ve written and you come up with something that is yours”. So reading and writing are both important and they mustn't be afraid to write and they mustn’t be afraid of not writing either. You have to give yourself the chance, don’t force it too much, because sometimes it’s just not the right moment. Also to open up to all the possibilities and genres - there are so many genres that have not been explored locally and it would be nice to fill these gaps, such as memoirs, essays, graphic novels, even interviews - which bring out the vulnerability in the artist.  

I think this interview has brought me closer to my words, closer to the quality and value I give them. It has also revealed the trials of the writer, the poet and what it means to have and appreciate the creative mind. In many ways it’s a lot about spaces, the spaces we create in-between … so enjoy the spaces and the possibilities! 

Leanne is an absolute joy, a literary consciousness - someone who exudes the fact that literature really does bring us all together.

Thank you Leanne 

Details 

Leanne Ellul poet, author - children, adolescents, adults; check more info from: 

merlinpublishers.com/author-book/leanne-ellul 

inizjamed.org/ 

maltalit.com/