PRESENTATION

My name is Patrick Sammut. I'm from the island of Malta. Born in 1968. I am a high school teacher at De La Salle College, Malta. I've been teaching Maltese and Italian language and literature since 1992. Between 1994 and 1996 I was studying Italian literature and literary criticism at the Universita' degli Studi of Florence. I have a Masters Degree in Contemporary Italian Literature and a Post Graduate Certificate in Education in Italian (both from the University of Malta). I am married to Rosalie and father of Andrew and Kristina.

My main interests are reading, especially world literature, philosophy, history, cinema, art and the like. In my free time I often write short articles or studies in Maltese about local literary publications and writers, Maltese society, but also about world literature and culture in general. I also write verse in Maltese, English and Italian, but not on a regular basis.

I am also an active member of local literary associations, in particular Ghaqda Poeti Maltin (Maltese Poets Association) of which I am vice-President. As part of the GhPM Committee I write various contributions for the association's magazine VERSI (I am now Editor of this poetry magazine), including poems, crit articles and poetry book reviews. I am also editor of the GhPM quarterly newsletter and of the Literary Evenings Pamphlet, a project I initiated last November 2005. As a poetry association we organise poetry evenings for the general public and for members, publish the Versi mag which is the only poetry mag on the island and where you can find poems written in various languages such as Maltese, English, Italian, French, German and Esperanto. I also coordinate the literary page of a weekly local newspaper in Maltese, IL-GENS ILLUM.

Through this blog I'd like to share my articles, studies, poems, thoughts, but also my many notes on various literary texts used at High school in both the Maltese and Italian academic programmes. Hope visitors would find such a blog interesting and useful.