As part of our collaboration with the Festival Barcelona Poesia, we celebrate the unique voice of Maltese poet Elizabeth Grech. Through her poems, we invite readers to immerse themselves in an intimate, vibrant, and ever evolving Mediterranean.

Born in Malta, Elizabeth Grech is a poet, writer and translator. Her work intertwines sea, land and cultures, guiding the reader to a space where love, memory, and resistance are constantly rewritten. This poetic journey takes us through a symbolic and embodied Mediterranean, where myth merges with experience. From the evocation of the feminine and the sacred, through desire, loss, friendship, and exile, to resilience, sensory memory, and ultimate liberation, Elizabeth Grech invites us to inhabit a total Mediterranean: affective and political, intimate and collective, corporeal and mythical. A sea that embraces, that hurts, and that transforms.

The poems have been translated into English by Irene Mangion and Albert Gatt.

Women Gods 

We begin with an invocation to the ancient Mediterranean goddesses, figures of power and wisdom who still inhabit the landscapes and imaginaries of the region. An ancestral, feminine, and creative force opens the way.

I dissolve in the blackness in your eyes
and from my eyes roses bloom.
You know I know
you’re merely making like
there’s not the slightest
stir.
You are beguiled I see
but daunted,
you turn your face away because
you know exactly who I am,
you know I am descended
from the rib of woman gods,
the rock that begat the sleeping woman.
And yet I know you know
the day will come
when you will swim
in the ocean hidden in my breast.

.

Mirror

Identity transforms in the face of reflection. Like the Mediterranean, a land of change, this poem speaks to us of metamorphosis and remains, of how we become others without ceasing to be ourselves.

I gazed
into the mirror
and
instead
of
myself
saw
you,
smiling at me.
I turned
my head
and
glimpsed
a butterfly
resting
placidly
on
my shoulder.

A symbol of the occult, the pomegranate encapsulates beauty and mystery. Each layer reveals ancient knowledge, like the secrets that pulsate at the heart of the Mediterranean.

You hesitated to crack it open,
carefully roll away its peel,
and taste every dusky pink gem
encased in the layers
of its yellowish skin.
I sympathise:
not everyone is willing
to stain their hands with the ink
you leave in the creases between fingers,
pomegranate.
In every fruit
there is a treasure
but not everyone has what it takes
to claim it.

Ramallah

Here, desire and geography collide. Ramallah embodies a politically-torn Mediterranean, where love endures amid walls, borders and exiles. A modern myth of separation and tenderness.

If she could
she would give you her whole heart,
alas she has already given a chunk of it away.
If she could
she would leave this leaden sky
and come and savour with you
the bitter almonds
of Palestine,
cross the checkpoints with you,
dip into your eyes,
and get lost within
until you found her
splashing in your heart.

Islands

After the fracture, the search for unity. The islands become a metaphor for bodies and territories yearning to reunite, in a sea that separates but also unites.

Take me along
let’s iron out the creases,
stitch the tears
in the Mediterranean.
If there’s any room for me,
let me dissolve
through the tender
hairline cracks of your flesh.
And let me string,
suspend
a necklace of bay laurel
between your isle
and mine.
Come,
rest your head
upon my shoulder,
let your thoughts set sail
over the scent
of cedar
from the plaits
you wove into my hair.

.

My Friend

Friendship, like the Mediterranean, is an emotional bond that endures beyond distance. This poem celebrates intimacy and shared meaning, even in absence.

When you speak to me
colours soften,
I spy feathers
cosying up to a breeze,
I watch as orange blossoms
reach out
proffering
their inebriating scent,
I observe the first raindrops
slide down
velvety roses,
and take in the glistening sun
on the summery surface of the sea,
life new and fresh
heralding
another spring.
I hear your voice
in a distant vision
and lose myself
in the lines hovering over your face
as you toy with the rings
that adorn your slender fingers.

Firefly

Reborn from the wound: like the myths of regeneration that run through the Mediterranean, this poem speaks to us of resilience, of that light that persists even in the densest darkness.

Let it be known
that the day the wrath of your words
came crushing down on me,
a grey cloud unfurled
on my soul
rupturing my thoughts,
bruising layer upon layer of skin,
shattering my backbone
one disc at a time.
But harbour no illusions:
like a firefly
my soul
will flicker
until my broken body
rises again
on a long stretch
of cotton-white cloud.

Bird

Desire doesn’t always hold back. The Mediterranean, a sea of migrations and memories, becomes a cradle of freedom here: it welcomes, it cradles, it lets fly.

You are a bird
of the barren cliffs
and my sea
with all its waves
cannot tame you
let alone hold you
tied here
to me
for my waters
can only watch in awe
as you hover above
in circles
of infinity.

Blue

The colour of water, of sky, of a maternal gaze. Blue becomes an emotional legacy, the gentle and constant presence that connects landscape and memory.

I like the colour blue,
Mama.
The blue of the sky, the sea,
The sad blue,
The blue
I tease out
of your jet-black eyes.

Sea

We end the journey where it all begins: at sea. Not as a mere backdrop, but as a living body that consoles and transforms. To immerse oneself in it is to surrender to an ancient origin, to be reborn with wings. The Mediterranean, like a myth, always offers the possibility of flight.

I dip my toes into you
and you
splash my thoughts with water,
rinse my tears away.
Lulled by you
I sprout
Wings
on my back.