In this stunning hybrid text, Abigail Ardelle Zammit shows us that a revolutionary message often merits new forms of discourse. By employing elements of literary collage, hybrid prose, poetry, cartography, visual art, and erasure, Zammit is able to show us her subject matter from multiple conceptual vantage points, enriching the work’s necessary ecopoetic message. Indeed, Zammit’s incredible command of hybrid and experimental forms allows her to fully do justice to the complexity of her subject matter. More specifically, Zammit shows us that social and environmental justice begin with freedom in language.
Abigail Ardelle Zammit is a Maltese writer and educator whose poetry and reviews have appeared in international journals and anthologies including Black Iris, Matter, Tupelo Quarterly, Boulevard, Gutter, Modern Poetry in Translation, Mslexia, Poetry International, The SHOp, Iota, Aesthetica, Ink, Sweat and Tears, High Window, O:JA&L, The Ekphrastic Review, Smokestack Lightning (Smokestack, 2021) and The Montreal Poetry Prize Anthology 2022 (Véhicule Press, 2023). Abigail’s poetry collections are Voices from the Land of Trees (UK: Smokestack, 2007), and Portrait of a Woman with Sea Urchin (London: SPM, 2015). She has co-authored two bilingual pamphlets (Half Spine, Half Wild Flower – Nofsi Spina, Nofsi Fjur Selvaġġ) and written A Seamus Heaney guidebook for high-school students. Leaves Borrowed from Human Flesh is forthcoming with Etruscan Press, Wilkes University.