Once I Forget

Once I Forget a collection of poems by John P. Portelli originally written in Maltese and translated by Aaron Aquilina and John Martin. These sections include the title page a preface by Professor Norbert Bugeja and portions of the poems themselves which explore themes of memory exile loss and the poet's childhood village Ħad-Dingli. The preface highlights Portelli's struggle with forgetfulness and his focus on the vanishing past connecting his work to literary figures like Yeats and Walcott. Furthermore the source provides biographical notes on the author translators and cover artist Carmel Micallef along with endorsements that praise the poetry's transcendence of the lyric and its powerful exploration of nostalgia and the impossibility of return.