Photo Caption: Frank Zammit 

The author will be interviewed by Prof. Adrian Grima, who teaches Maltese literature in the Department of Maltese at the University. While in Malta, Zammit will publish a new book of poems, 'Mill-Bir ta Qalbi (2023)', with a study by Dr Patrick Sammut, which will be added to a number of beautiful books he has published in Malta and Australia.

This public activity is being organised by the Department of Maltese within the Faculty of Arts and anyone can attend. The Library of the Faculty of Arts is located in the building known as Old Humanities which is located behind the Temi Zammit Theatre. The closest entrance is the main one which is on the side of the Mater Dei Hospital.

According to Oliver Friggieri ( Trifolju ta Lwien , 2014), as a poet, Frank Zammit "is first and foremost an emigrant, someone who feels the issue of roots as a reality always 'in fieri', an argument always open, incomplete. The memorial poem is an important element in all of Frank Zammit's writing. From his memory, a storehouse of two distant and very different lands, he is nurtured as a poet in the 'psychological' space between them, he chooses characteristic aspects that show above all to what extent his poetry rests on the past, a permanent condition in contrast but also in agreement with the present. The main effect of memorial poems is that they turn into static, lasting objects, captured forever in the closure of time that passes and destroys."

Frank Zammit was born in Victoria Town, Gozo on 27 January 1944 and grew up in I-Marsa. At the age of twenty he emigrated to Australia where he married and had three children. IN 1981 he returned to Malta with his family to give his children the opportunity to also enjoy the rest of the family and to better understand Maltese culture, until in 1984 he returned to Sydney with his family. He studied at the Archbishop's Seminary of Floriana, the Liceo of Hamrun, and Southampton, England.

In Australia he did tertiary courses in accountancy, commercial law, IT, broadcasting, and journalism at various Australian colleges and at the Special Broadcasting Services (SBS) Sydney. Australia was one of the pioneers of learning Maltese. He worked as a computer programmer and systems analyst, accountant, investment manager, and translator and interpreter part-time with the government and with the private sector in several fields. For many years he was part of the broadcasting team at SBS Radio Sydney.

In the literary sphere, Zammit was and is still active in literary associations in Malta and Australia. His poems have appeared in a number of books: Between Two Islands (1995), II-Ballata tal Maltin ta New Caledonia (1988), The Mass in Maltese (1990), The Holy Road (1990) ), Valentin V. Barbara 70 Years (co-author, 1990), The Self and Beyond It, translation of ll-Jien u Lil Hinn Minnu by Dun Karm (1997), Qwiel minn Fomm l'Mġarrab, poems on his life style ( 2010), and Walks in Your Paths (2013). Zammit is also a co-author in a number of anthologies published in Australia and Malta, including Trifoliju ta Lwien (2014). He believes that the main element of Maltese identity is the Maltese language.

Patrick Sammut says that in the new poems in the book Mill-Bir ta Qalbi (2023), Zammit describes "an existential journey, a diary of a Maltese poet-citizen-father-grandfather who left behind his homeland to live on an island on a distant continent."

One of the Romantic characteristics in these poems is the attraction to the environment with which the reflection on the consequences of development is added. Sammut writes on how Zammit's poetry also reflects his experiences as an active man in and through the community. he encounters serious cases of injustice, ostracism and abuse by "children, women and old people who cannot or do not know how to help themselves."

Frank Zammit is still working in various cultural and social fields among the Maltese in New South Wales.