Beyond Academia: Into the Literary World

John P. Portelli, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Social Justice Education and who came to OISE in 1999, since his retirement has continued to supervise students and every year teach a course on Narratives of Migration and Exile. But in the last three years of his retirement he has focused primarily on his literary productions which include eight collections of poetry, two collections of short stories and a novel. He is currently working on two new collections of poetry, and revising a collection of short stories on the theme of sexuality as well as a novel based on his experiences working in and with universities in North America, Europe and the Middle East.

Since his retirment he published several poetry collections both in Maltese, English and translations in other languages. His collections in Maltese include: Dar-Riħ Malizjuż (This Malaicious Wind) and Bejn il-Binarji (Between Binaries). He also recently published a bilingual collection of poetry Vojta l-Bajja/Barren is the Bay, and an English collection, Here Was, published by Word and Deed Publishers in Canada and Horizons in Malta. The last two publishers two years ago published an English translation of Portelli’s novel, Everyone but Fajza, a novel based in Toronto dealing with real issues that migrants encounter. The novel was short-listed for an award and reviewed positively in several literary magazines.

Moreover, his collection Here Was, was translated into Romanian and Arabic. The Romanian collection was published in July 2023 by Rocart Publishers in Romania. The Arabic collection was published in November 2023 by Fardous Publishing House in Tunisia. On 1 February 2024, Albatros, a major Italian publisher affiliated with Feltrinelli, published a collection of Portelli’s poems translated into Italian by Manuel J. Ellul, a doctroal student at OISE, with the title Questo Mare (This Sea).

Later this year Portelli is expecting two more publications in translation. A collection of poetry translated into Farsi with the title Exiled Words, and a translation of his flash fiction collection, Everyday Encounters, in Greek to be published by Oropedo in Athens.

With the assistance of Dr. Soudeh Oladi, Dr. Henrjeta Mece, and Dr. Maral Karimi (the latter two recent doctoral graduates from OISE) he is working on editing a collection of short stories dealing with migration and exile and written by students who took his course on migration and exile in the last eight years.

Portelli strongly believes that literary work has more potential than academic work when it comes to the aim of bringing about robust and genuine social justice in practice. He has presented on this theme at conferences in Poland, Turkey, Morocco and Malta.

Six of Portelli’s literary publications have been short-listed for literary awards