Abstract Oralism

About the Book

Throughout Variations on Silence, Nadia Mifsud draws us into intimate scenes and gestures,
as if overhearing lovers mid-conversation. The central figure – almost mythic in scale – is
silence itself, which Mifsud imbues with weight, texture, physical presence. Silence shelters,
stirs, shakes, unwinds, “tastes / of red soil and conifer.” Miriam Calleja’s translation conveys
the ache and longing of that silence with a sensual clarity rare in English. A fabulous book.
   – John Wall Barger, The Elephant of Silence

As Dante said, love is what moves the sun and the other stars – but it is also what flows
through all things, binding them together. This is what breathes in the silences – namely, in
the poems – of Nadia Mifsud : a listening rooted in love, which through love transforms and
reintegrates lovers into the cosmos, restoring the world to something deeply connected to
our humanity. Calleja’s admirable translation – herself a poet – captures this dynamic with
striking clarity and preserves it as the central energy of the work. The encounter between
these two poets ultimately offers us a book of poetry, not merely a book of poems – I repeat:
a cohesive and coherent work, held together by a vision both profound and vast. Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, Rilke’s Duino Elegies… The poetry found in this book is capable of
traversing time and resisting it, of crossing space to bind us – irrevocably – to this cosmos,
and in that bond, to reveal the secret of life.

   – Pietro Federico, Most of the Stars

Every verb in Nadia Mifsud's work shimmers, echoes, and rappels down the cliffside of a
stanza. Valences expand through repetition; "waves like jaws" locate the oceanic motion. One physically hears and feels the island of Malta in the tension between the isolation,
refrain, and the sea returning to shore, empty-handed. Miriam Calleja's attentive translation brings these affects and "sea-scented places" into English without forsaking the resonances and echoes of "cockleshells" past. Variations on Silence touches the hem where displacement circles the idea of place and results in lyric. The mode is modern; the echoes are ancient; the book is irresistible.

– Alina Stefanescu, My Heresies