Lizzie Eldridge's Blog: Lorca by Candlelight, page 3

Scottish PEN Vigil for Daphne Caruana Galizia: Statement from the President of the European Parliament

On the 16th October 2022, Scottish PEN held a Vigil in front of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh to mark the 5-year anniversary of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Scottish PEN joined its voice with those across the world demanding justice for Daphne’s brutal killing.

The speakers at this event were Ricky Monahan Brown (President of Scottish PEN), Nick McGowan-Lowe (NUJ Scotland), Nik Williams (Index on Censorship), Joyce McMillan (NUJ Scotland) and Richard Leonard (MSP). Messages of support came from James Dornan (MSP), Pauline McNeill (MSP) and Ross Greer (MSP).

I had the honour of reading out a personal message sent to Scottish PEN by Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament, who has been at the forefront of the fight for justice since Daphne’s horrific murder on 16th October 2017. Roberta’s words are a powerful display of solidarity to all of us demanding that those involved in Daphne’s killing must be caught and held to account: ‘Daphne deserves justice.’

Message from Roberta Metsola, EP President:

“Thank you for organising this event today. That people are gathering in Scotland to honour the memory of a Maltese journalist is testament to her global reach, to how many lives she touched and sends a powerful message of support and solidarity to all those still fighting for justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia, five years after she was executed in broad daylight on a quiet road outside her home.

Thank you for standing up. Thank you for remembering her work and the legacy of a fiercely courageous journalist who spoke truth to power. Daphne was a tough, funny, clever writer. Her pen was sharper than most, with her ability to burst the most over-inflated egos with one carefully written sentence infuriating the bully boys. They simply could not handle that she was not afraid of them.

As an investigative journalist, she changed Malta forever. But today I also remember Daphne the mother, the daughter, the sister, the wife – the woman who stood up to the mafia and refused to back down. 

Journalists are the lifeblood of our democracy. They should never have to fear for their lives or be forced to waste time and money on frivolous lawsuits. This is why the European Parliament has been calling for an anti-SLAPP directive – a Daphne law to support journalists and we will get there.

Please remember her, please remember what she lived and was killed for and please keep standing with those demanding justice. Daphne deserves justice.”

Beginnings: January Writing Prompt Responses

swim press

This month’s writing prompt was Beginnings. Here we showcase our favourite responses.

Beginnings prompt: From the seed of an idea to the flourish of its petals; everything has a beginning. What may appear insignificant in one moment may be the roots of something spectacular down the line. The captureof a glance, the brave first step. Just opening the door to another year, another sunrise,and thinking something astronomical is going to happen, even if you don’t know it yet.

Daybreak

Beneath the bluest sky, Dawn closed her eyes. Resentment & jealousy flooded in despite the heat. These heavy limbs. She hated herself for hating others. In her stifled mind, she willed the clouds to gather, wished the bitter storm would break.

Her hands grazed against the dry grass. Her palms lay open. Dawn breathed out and Dawn breathed in. Her stomach rose, her ribcage expanded. Her mind raced, picturing their happy…

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Scottish PEN Vigil for Daphne Caruana Galizia

On the 16th October 2022, Scottish PEN held a vigil in front of the Scottish Parliament for Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese investigative journalist assassinated 5 years ago that day. In her final blogpost – written just minutes before she was blown up in a car bomb close to her home – Daphne wrote:

‘There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.’

The crooks Daphne exposed killed her for exposing their crimes. 61 months after her brutal murder, these criminals continue to enjoy impunity and the fight to get justice for Daphne and for her stories continues.

Two representatives of the National Union of Journalists Scotland spoke at the Scottish PEN Vigil and Nick McGowan-Lowe emphasised the global importance of Daphne’s death and the urgent need for justice for her killing: ‘Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder sent shockwaves around the world. Justice must be done.‘ His colleague, Joyce McMillan, highlighted issues of media freedom and democracy:

For those of us who care about democracy, for those of us who

care about accountability, for those of us who care about the rights

and dignity of every citizen, nothing matters more than that we should

have a free media capable of holding power to account and capable of

telling the stories of those who suffer injustice and who need the support

of a whole society in order to win that justice back and move forward.

Nik Williams, from Index of Censorship, describes Daphne’s murder as a shameful wake-up call for Europe:

‘It shouldn’t have taken a murder. Surely it didn’t need a car bomb in a quiet Maltese town. Daphne Caruana Galizia did not need to die for Europe and the rest of the world to take notice of media freedom’s precarious foundations. But to our shame, it did.’

Ricky Monahan Brown, President of Scottish PEN, spoke of Daphne’s legacy and the enduring power of her voice today:

‘I suppose what I’m saying is that Daphne’s murder was a tragedy for her family, for Malta and for anyone who cares about truth around the world. And there is no adequate consolation for that. But one might say that, in a way, Daphne has become even more powerful in death even than she was in life. And she continues to speak to us today – yes, in memory, but also in her writing.‘

As a representative of Scottish PEN, I had the privilege of reading out a personal message from Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament. Her final words were these:

‘Please remember her, please remember what she lived and was killed for and please keep standing with those demanding justice. Daphne deserves justice.’

On the 61 month anniversary of Daphne’s brutal assassination, we will never forget her. Her voice lives on as do our demands for justice.

The Power of the Pen: The Creative Legacy of Daphne Caruana Galizia

Photo credit: Pippa Zammit Cutajar

In October this year, a 2-week festival was held at St John’s Waterloo, London, to mark the 5-year anniversary of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Daphne was Malta’s foremost investigative journalist, exposing corruption on a massive scale and involving people at the highest levels of political power in Malta. She was killed in a car bomb just outside her home on 16th October 2017.

In 2021, an independent public inquiry into Daphne’s murder held the Maltese State responsible for her killing and named the disgraced ex-prime minister, Joseph Muscat, as responsible for creating the culture of impunity which enabled her assassination. To date, none of the politicians, past and present, potentially implicated in Daphne’s murder have been held to account.

The Daphne Festival was an event organised by the artistic director, Euchar Gravina, and was designed to celebrate the life, work and creative legacy of Daphne Caruana Galizia. It included a variety of events as well as an art exhibition with work by Maltese artists living in London.

On 9th October, an evening took place involving and curated by members of PEN international, PEN Malta, Irish PEN, Wales PEN Cymru, English PEN and I was representing Scottish PEN. The event included poetry, video performances, readings from Daphne’s blog, and I read a story published in Scottish PEN’s anthology, Declarations on Freedom for Writers and Readers (Scotland Street Press 2020). This story was a fictionalised account of a protest action I was involved in with the women-led pressure group, Occupy Justice.

The event is available on YouTube on the following link:

Tomorrow marks the 61 month anniversary of Daphne’s brutal assassination and we continue to demand full justice both for Daphne and for her stories.

#JusticeForDaphne

#DaphneCaruanaGalizia

Paragraph Planet

The tiniest story I’ve ever written is 75 words long. Usually, I write too many words

If you haven’t seen this cute journal yet, check it out on Twitter https://twitter.com/paragraphplanet and have a go at writing a wee micro-story of your own. This is mine, published back in August.

Featured in Flash Fiction North

Proud to be featured as a writer in Flash Fiction North who recently published my wee story ‘Untouched‘ and then kindly invited me to be part of their Featured Writers section. It was fab to get the opportunity to share my work with others and a real honour to be included in this gorgeous literary journal.

If you’re a writer and thinking of flashing your fiction, then definitely submit work to Flash Fiction North. It’s a beautiful journal and they’re equally beautiful people to work with.

Here’s the link to my feature and hope to see you feature there soon –

https://www.flashfictionnorth.com/seasonal-songs

Untouched

I only started writing flash fiction this year and that’s thanks to the crazy, beautiful and inspirational people at Writers HQ. If you haven’t heard of them – how is this possible? – then check out their website and get signed up for some of their phenomenal workshops – https://writershq.co.uk/ There’s loads of freebies and if you do want to become a member (I sooooo recommend this), it’s not expensive and what you get back is worth every single penny.

One of the best things I’ve done this year is start submitting my wee stories. There’s lots of online journals and you’ll find a home for your work somewhere. This story, Untouched, found a home with Flash Fiction North and they also did a Featured Writers piece on me. Did it feel good? Ohhhhhhhhhhh, yesssssssssssss

Here’s the link and you can find the full story below:

https://www.flashfictionnorth.com/recentfiction?fbclid=IwAR3lZl5tED_2_cRgr2_Dw6ZHM4suMssvk5BvBETySF9uBorihqwHIf-SXko

I preferred to use my fingers. The ones that dug into the dark earth. The ones that formed strange shapes out of clay. That sometimes held your hand.

My fingers leafed their way through a book that never breathed a word about rules. Etiquette sounded sharp, staccato, brittle, like the prongs of a fork pecking away at a plate in the hunt for leftover food.

Scavenging for me was covering my whole body up to the waist in every substance I could find. Immersing myself full and free and in the moment. Dirt is easy to wash off while godliness sounds as dull and drab as that rainy day you’ve been saving up for. And then you have to leave it in that cupboard in case it gets spoilt.

‘Don’t touch,’ the voices said. ‘It might break.’

I liked to unravel knots, pull at a ball of string until it wraps its way around a maze of mismatched cities with streets that weave any which way and houses crouching beside towers that lean over backwards and sway in the wind. Sometimes my ball of string uncoiled itself all the way into the sea.

My fingers reached out to poke and prod at the unknown. My fingers squeezed whatever they came across and weighed things in the balance. My fingernails scraped at the lid of every pot and tin until, when desperate, my teeth joined in. Occasionally, I nibbled the top of your left arm when I managed to open a particularly tricky jar designed to be sealed forever. I couldn’t contain my delight.

Mine were the fingers that fumbled their way through wardrobes in the hope of finding fauns. Mine were the fingers that felt their way into a velvet glove. Mine were the fingers that rippled across a piano keyboard in an ecstasy of dissonance.

I didn’t stand on ceremony. Nothing was designed to be handled with care.

‘God put us on this earth for a purpose,’ the voices said, and I wanted to know exactly what this reason was.

In the bottom drawer, past the pencils and the corkscrew and the Christmas tree angel, was a pile of letters, still in their envelopes. My index finger winced as it caught a sharp edge. My fingertips flicked through the pile, getting a feel for the volume, then pulled the whole lot out and dumped everything down on the floor.

The same address was written in the same handwriting across each fluttering item. You lived there when we first met and the woman’s kisses came tumbling into our letter box. Her fingers folded each letter, neatly, perfectly precise, as smooth as her manicured hands.

#FlashFiction #Fiction #ShortStories #FlashFictionNorth #WritersHQ #writing #literature #amwriting

Checkout

It’s a while since I’ve posted anything on my blog but it’s been a busy year and I also got locked out of my own WordPress

One of the things I’ve been busy with is what I love most. Writing. I’ve had quite a few short stories published this year and Checkout is one of them. It was published in the very lovely journal, Story Nook, and here’s the link followed by the story itself:

https://storynook.online/2022/08/26/checkout/

I never meant to bump into you in the supermarket with my mask on. Your eyes were a dead giveaway. I once imagined abandoning you in the frozen food section before resentment had time to thaw.

Our first kiss. On that hillside. On a cold winter’s day.

Excited messages, back and forth, like we couldn’t keep our fingers off each other. Smiley faces, love hearts, delightedly laughing out loud.

Lazing around in the mornings at the weekends. Tracing the outline of your body so precisely then clutching you close.

Frantically grabbing my clothes in that crazy mad dash to run out of your door, catch that bus, apologise to my boss with a smile.

When we settled together, in the same space, we still glanced towards each other. I watched you taking your time as you scrutinised the pasta so it turned out exactly as you wanted. I caught your gaze as I was focusing so precisely on that sketch which I’d nearly finished. It was that drawing I did of you.

The seasons fluttered by and once you came home with a wheelbarrow full of books you’d picked up from a second-hand store on the periphery of town. You were dripping wet as you tipped out your goodies on to the new rug we’d bought. We had to leave War and Peace to dry out as it got almost destroyed in the rainstorm. We replaced the rug and I made you pay.

When you were deep in concentration, you used to tap the back of your hand on the table incessantly. There was a melody to your oblivion. It was you. It was very you. Then the headaches started and I had to increase my painkillers to two.

I had a mug. A souvenir from my one and only trip to New York. There was a slow-motion moment when your sleeve caught the handle and the silly memento smashed into a thousand smithereens. I fetched the dustpan and broom.

When you walked away for the final time, I stared at the drawing. Your naked body, crouched in charcoal. I tore at every piece of your flesh. I tore and tore and tore.

Surprised, and looking directly into your eyes, I clung tightly to my shopping trolley. I saw your naked body, etched in my mind with the years of shaping it in my hands. I saw your naked body, curled up, sleeping, between the cornflakes, the pomegranates and the soft-melting brie.

‘Fancy meeting you here,’ I smiled.

The Hill We Climb

This article was first published on Manuel Delia’s blog, Truth Be Told (24th January 2021)

What a hill this is.

Four years of witnessing the madness of Donald Trump behaving like a tyrannical emperor who mistook the presidential oath for an evil wand he could wield at his command. We watched insane attempts to build a wall; we watched children separated from their parents; the materialisation of the belief that climate change is a myth; the bans on flights from and to certain Muslim countries; the police and army dancing to Trump’s tune and killing, imprisoning and attacking black people en masse. We saw a man bestowed with all the power in the USA advising people to inject bleach to protect themselves from Covid and we watched this same dangerous human being ceremonially remove his mask like a deadly Marvel comic character just released from the darkest bowels of the earth.

400,000 dead, Mr President. 400,000 dead and counting.

We watched Trump rave and rant on Twitter about how the elections were fraudulent, that his real true victory had been stripped away from him, and how he was going to use all the legal forces of the land to ensure his rightful return to demonic power. We watched, horrified, as rioting marauders led their assault on the Capitol with horns on their helmets and confederate flags, putting their feet up on the desks of top state officials who, surely, should be afforded maximum security to carry out their work. We watched one black police officer trying to beat back a mob of screaming banshees howling for blood. And blood was taken as 5 people lost their lives that terrifying day.

We wondered how it was possible that a tribe of white supremacists who organised themselves on social media websites available to us all could have slid under the detection of the forces of law and order and, with ease, broken through the windows of one of the most important buildings in Washington on what, so far this year, had been the most important day. We wondered how the man who incited them to violence was still able to roam around the land of the free in all his unbridled insanity.

Despite two impeachments, Trump remained president and he used his final days of despotism to deport people, to execute people and to pardon criminals of the highest order. On the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration, Trump cackled as he gave a pardon to Steve Bannon, architect of his controversial 2016 election and the man behind Cambridge Analytica. Those of us familiar with Malta froze, because Cambridge Analytica were crawling around that country prior to the Labour Party’s resounding victory in 2013. Their tentacles stretch out in the form of Henley and Partners, and the creepy Christian Kaelin who got the go-ahead from Joseph Muscat and Keith Schembri to launch a massive lawsuit against Daphne Caruana Galizia, the journalist who exposed the cash-for-passports scam and whose assassination has positioned Muscat and Schembri as suspects. Like Trump, right now, Muscat and Schembri are walking free.

The hill we climb.

Daphne climbed this hill for the whole of her adult life. She worked tirelessly to bring truth to light. She never took her eyes off the ball and when the Labour Party came to power – the party that had spent years and Christ knows how much money ensuring her dehumanisation was complete – Daphne was singled out for attack and left to defend herself and her work alone. Daphne was, quite literally, the last one standing. Placing her face on billboards in the run-up to the 2013 election was a deliberate strategy. She was now explicitly the target of the Labour Party’s hatecampaign. She was the Witch of Bidnija and, just as Trump whipped up the haters who pillaged the Capitol, Daphne was simply waiting to be burnt at the stake.

‘She deserved it,’ came the blood-curdling cry from those who gobbled up propaganda pulp as if it were nourishment. ‘She deserved it,’ came that inhuman shriek from hell.

Watching a young black woman, Amanda Gorman, breathe out her powerful words of strength, hope and wisdom last Wednesday was truly like watching the emergence of a new dawn. And it was a dawn of realism, not idealism, that she breathed into being, a world in which imperfection is acknowledged but the aims remain true:

‘we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose.’ 

I thought of Malta and the struggle we’re engaged in. Accused of being ‘holier-than-thou’, ‘elitist’ and – that favourite label bandied about by populists – ‘traitors’, the growing civil society movements, the pressure groups, the NGOs and, of course, Daphne’s family themselves, have been and are striving to overturn the forces of evil (for that’s what they are) and bring into being new ways of existing which, by ensuring justice for Daphne, ensures justice for us all.

The stories Daphne was writing about are not abstract or theoretical. The corruption she exposed impacts on the lives of all those living in Malta and beyond. Vitals and Steward deprive Maltese citizens of healthcare, intensified by a global pandemic in which all corrupt governments – Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro and Abela-Muscat – are shown up for their absolute inability to protect their citizens whose care they’d sold off long ago. Electrogas (cited as the motivation for Daphne’s murder) takes money out the pockets of those paying for gas and electricity (the majority of the Maltese population bar corrupt politicians and public officials). The American University of Malta deprives Maltese citizens of its land as does the construction industry, defended by Abela because nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds them even when that same hand crushes down with all its force and kills its own people beneath the rubble. Passport selling and mafia modus operandi imperil the security of those in Malta and in Europe and right the way across the globe.

And as for taking Bvlgari watches, Petrus wine, holidays in Las Vegas and to football matches, sharing confidential WhatsApp chats and sharing confidential information about a murder inquiry in which the state is the prime suspect and members of that state say they don’t remember or it wasn’t me or I don’t know or I wasn’t there…Well, the blood-stained carpet’s hardly big enough to sweep it all beneath. It would be a hard task even for Owen Bonnici’s Cleansing Services Department and more so now that Bonnici’s been found guilty of violating human rights.

All those candles stolen from the protest-memorial. All those candles shining out their light.

The hill we climb is one we keep on climbing. The hill we climb takes us one step nearer to the light.

Our candles are an ongoing symbol of the demand for truth and justice. As Peter Gabriel sang in his heart-rending tribute to the murdered black activist, Steve Biko:

‘You can blow out a candle
But you can’t blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher’

In Malta, and right across the world, the candles keep on burning. The inauguration of Joe Biden does not, as Amanda Gorman astutely observed, bring perfection, but the removal of Trump from the presidential office is, without doubt, a powerful sea change with all the challenges ahead for a different kind of future, one in which:

‘We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all.’

In the petty, partisan propaganda paradise of Malta, the hope for harmony may seem a pipe dream but Martin Luther King had his dream, too. He was assassinated fighting for it but the wind blew his dreams higher. Truth never dies and the demand to speak that truth does not die either.

If a young ‘skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother’ can stand and speak out truth to the whole world, then what can 500,000 people on a tiny island fail to do in the face of known atrocities and grievous crimes against humanity? Come on, guys. Wake up. You know what you must do.

History is there for the making and it’s up to us to do this, because:

‘while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith we trust for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.’

Trump may not have disappeared for ever but hey, folks, he’s left the White House. Regimes crumble and dictators die. The light of truth can never be extinguished:

‘For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.’

Declarations on Freedom

With the news that Joe Biden has won the US election and Trump has been consigned to the trashcan of history, this anthology celebrating the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath is exceptionally timely. It is a celebration of freedom of expression – an assertion of our fundamental right to speak and to write, to read and to listen, to call power to account in the face of injustice.

People have died getting the word out and my own contribution to this book is dedicated to the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was assassinated in Malta on the 16th October 2017. She was murdered in a massive car bomb close to her home. Since her brutal assassination, civil society activists, media freedom NGOs (including ScottishPEN who conceived and realised this book project), the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and, most significantly, Daphne’s own family have campaigned tirelessly to expose those responsible and to ensure justice for her killing.

Democracy is not a settled state. It’s something we have to work for, fight for, but we should not have to die for. Yet people do. We owe it to them to ensure their deaths are not in vain. In fighting for their right to live, we’re fighting for our own.

‘Though we may never get a chance to see
the change we inspire, still we must write,
challenging limitations to freedoms and rights.’ [Lawrence Schimel]