Juan Garrido Salgado (Part 1)

Speaker 1
This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.

Speaker 2
On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations on the work and experiences of emerging writers. I'm Kate Cooper and our guest today is the poet and translator Juan Garrido Salgado. Juan translates both his own poetry and the works of other poets, some from Spanish into English and others from English into Spanish. Juan has several published collections of his poetry and during our conversation he'll be reading from some of his published works. The 30th of September is the United Nations International Translation Day so on the eve of that event we recorded this conversation about writing and translating poetry.

Welcome to the program Juan. Would you tell us first of all about where you were born and why in your early 30s you came to live in Australia?

Speaker 3
Thank you, Kate, for inviting me to your wonderful program. Yes, I was born in Santiago, in Chile. It's a very big city, very polluted now, but we got an amazing story. I come from a big family, a working class family as well, and we were involved in the very age, time, and politics, especially during the Pinochet regime.

Speaker 2
And so because of your political involvement, can I ask what happened to you during that time? This is during the dictatorship and just recently on the 11th of September marked the 50th anniversary since the military coup in 1973 that ushered in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. So what happened to you in that time because of your political involvement?

Speaker 3
Yeah, I was very young on the 11th of September 1973. I was still in the school. I think was just finished the primary school and going into the high school in Santiago. And that day was a moment change everything, not only in my life, but also in many people's life in the country. As a young teenager, I was just expecting, you know, what happened on that day. And the following years, as a young people, we decide to become involved or to be passive. And with one of our friends, we say, well, we have to do something. So that's why I start getting involved in politics and theater and also in poetry.

Speaker 2
And you were involved in street theatre as a young person. You were very much part of a theatre community in Chile.

Speaker 3
Yeah, but that theatre was one of my first expression of rebellion in art in our Chanty town. We were very fortunate to have a good friends who was finished the Garriot Theater in one of the University of Chile, Chile University in Santiago, and he was part of the población as well. So he invited a group of teenagers to make a theatre group, a street theater group. So we start from nothing. We didn't know any sort of thing. So he guided us to become actors without any education in theater. And we ended up with a very strong población group and we start together presenting about four or five play and we ended up our years of street theater with a poem of Pablo Neruda, all to the simple man.

Speaker 2
Pablo Neruda is probably the best known of Chile's poets. And in 1972, you say he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, so he's widely translated into English. Pablo Neruda was an important influence on you growing up, first of all, at a time when people were being arrested for expressing their views peacefully.

Speaker 3
Yeah, well, first of all, after 11 of September 1973, his book was prohibited. You know, it was burnt some of the books as well, Victor Jara's music was prohibited. So everything related to Neruda or Victor Jara or other poets in Chile was completely prohibited for our generation. So we have to start reading that Pablo Neruda underground with a very scary situation because even in the school we couldn't find any book or poetry of Neruda. So that was very for us as a young generation, we become isolated of culture.

But because we find some friends like our director, the theatre director, he introduced us all this sort of thing in a way of just conversation in the beginning. And then in the school I got a very strong relationship with one of my teachers, his name is Juan Ijane. He was a teacher of Castellano, the subject of Castellano. And he started teaching or chair with me some poetry of Pablo Neruda at that time. I talked about 1974, 1975.

06:07

Speaker 2
For our listeners, Castellano or Castilian is how people in South America refer to the Spanish language. So studies of Castellano would be like studies of English here, for example, studies of language and literature. You mentioned before Juan the word population, which is your word for, you said, shanty town as well. So your district and at that time, many people were living in poverty and so people would organize themselves into soup kitchens, the Oyesas Comunales, for example. But really the focus of your work was on bringing community together.

Speaker 3
Yeah, because the dictatorship destroyed all our relationships. Even family was separated because of the political point of view and also because the star people detained and imprisoned, some disappeared. So it was a distraction of not only the community and the society, but also the family. And that's when we realise what's going on in our country. And the poverty becomes so high, it affects everyone, everything of the family, except of course the rich.

But before that Salvador Allende, in three years of his government, he gave a lot of opportunity for the workers, for the poor family, for the indigenous community. For instance, he created a university in Santiago for just the children of the workers. So for us, I remember he still gives us a half of liter of milk every single week. So we can have milk in our breakfast every day. I remember that because I was one of the kids who received the milk.

Speaker 2
So for you, it was personal. It was about people from your community having opportunities that previously poverty didn't enable them to have.

Speaker 3
Yeah, for a long, long time. Even my family or the worker family got the opportunity to have their own houses. And my grandparents, as workers, they got their own very, very beautiful houses, just during those three years of the democratically elected agenda of the government.

Speaker 2
So Juan, then your situation changed because of your involvement in the street theatre - because of your work for human rights, you yourself were detained.

Speaker 3
Yeah, I was the same after well after they finished all my activity of theater and poetry. I did a lot poetry as well during the Pinochet regime with a group or young poet. But after I became more and more in politics in the party who I belonged to in that time, they asked me to get more responsibility for the youth. And I did, I did, I put all behind what I've done before and I become very active politically. And in 1984, I was working underground in Rancawa, it's one of the cities on the south of Chile. A very working class minor town where all the big company of COPA was there.

So I was working there underground and organising the youth, one of the youth political party. And then one day I came in from Santiago for a meeting to organise a strike with the young people and the workers. And one day the police followed us and the Tainas. So that day they give us, we went to the police station and after the next day they sent it to us, to the secret police and that the secret police is a horrible, horrible sort of Nazi police in Chile.

10:26

Speaker 2
And your family didn't know where you were.

Speaker 3
For a five day or more than five day, they didn't know, they're looking, searching for information for where I was detained and no one give it any information. And then after when I pass to the prison time, they find it, finally they know where I was. But during the secret police session for five day, they detained us and tortured physically and mentally. That was, they tortured us.

Speaker 2
That's very difficult to remember. Thank you for sharing that with us and with our listeners. You then came to Australia after coming from prison. What's the story of how you came to Australia?

Speaker 3
Well, it was very difficult decision anyway because after I was relieved from prison after one year that I have to go to parole and sign every month in the police station because that's the way they checking on you if you are doing the right thing. And then it became more difficult because I get married and we got two children and my political situation and the paper of being in prison, no one give me any job to feed my kid. So I start selling all my books to get money for them to get something to eat. My wife as well, she work as well. So we have to pay rent and everything like every family do it. So become very, very difficult.

And then we decide with my wife to do something more radical and also the police checking on my situation every time and become very difficult. So we decided to apply for a humanitarian visa and the only embassy was open. And at that time I talking about 1990 or 1989 because it was a long process anyway. The only embassy was open for political refugee was Australia. And we went to interview with the ambassador and was very tense situation there because I think we have to recognise our struggle. We can't deny our struggle because our struggle was for to recuperate democracy and freedom in Chile and the dignity of the people.

So and that was a tense conversation because we can't say, Oh, we're doing anything. We were involved for our democracy. That's why I was in prison and tortured. And the end was well after a long process, the embassy or the ambassador of that time I can't remember the name, but he gave us the proof to come to Australia. And then I have to ask the military tribunal to give me the permission to go out.

Speaker 2
Ah, so you needed permission to leave Chile to come to Australia.

Speaker 3
And the only time they gave me only three months to come to Australia. After three months I have to come back or I will be in rebellion with the Czechoslovakia.

Speaker 2
On Vision Australia radio, you're listening to our conversation program Emerging Writers. Our guest today is the poet and translator Juan Garrido Salgado. Juan, when you came first to Australia, did you know any English or did you begin to learn the language then as an adult?

Speaker 3
No, I didn't know any English at all. Well, just only to say hello or window or door, you know, like we learn in the school, nothing, nothing. And my wife too, and my kid never went to the school at that time.

15:00

Speaker 2
I remember meeting your children actually when they were young and I was teaching Spanish at a primary school for that year and it was lovely to have them there. And by then, of course, they were fluent in English because children pick up the language so quickly.

Speaker 2
But what was it like to have to learn another language as an adult in those circumstances?

Speaker 3
Big struggle. I think it's one of my biggest... after the Pinochet and everything to set up in a completely different country. It's a struggle, a big struggle.

Speaker 2
You and your family were very close to one of South Australia's great treasures, Sister Janet Mead, who sadly passed away two years ago now. Many of our listeners will remember Sister Janet's rock version of the Lord's Prayer, which was a hit here in 1973 -74. Would you tell us the story of your work over the past three decades with Sister Janet and the Romero community? And what that has meant to you coming here in the circumstances that you've described for us?

Speaker 3
Yeah, well, that's talking about how difficult our struggle was, you know, to come to a different, completely different country and culture and language. So we were like very isolated in that time. Of course, some relationship with some Latin American people in the Pennington hostel, where we arrived as a refugee, political refugee in Adelaide. And it was a time where we started knowing the city and the people. And suddenly, another friend from El Salvador told us there's a mass in solidarity with Chile in September, because the in solidarity with the, you know, the people who was killed in September 1973.

So we went, we went and was a big surprise. It's like a bit at home when we start the mass, even we didn't understand the English, but we feel the spirit and the solidarity so much. And that's mass in solidarity with Chile. And of course, Sister Janet was leading that special occasion. And from that time, she welcomed us. She welcomed us and we feel so much at home. We feel so much at home. And from that time, we started working together, you know.

Speaker 2
Part of the work that you do with the community is you cultivate a community garden and you write about that in your poetry. Would you read for us one of your garden poems and then talk with us about why gardening and helping others through gardening is so important to you?

Speaker 3
A morning blessing, a train is passing, passing, and leaves a cloud. I can see only faces through the window. On the other side, we are planting gold-nugget pumpkins in Antiberonica in anti-maggy plots. Hands, soil, seeds, straw and water, element of life, together sharing the earth. Her memory is still growing vegetable in us. The past is a pelican's wings in the sky, tribute to her aboriginal ancestor.

Speaker 2
And I'll talk with you later in the program about your work in translating the works of Aboriginal poets. But for now, I want to pick up on that theme of cultivating because that comes through a number of your poems and you work with people in the community garden, sharing that skill in sowing seeds and caring for vegetables. Could you tell us more about that?

Speaker 3
Yeah, I think. Well, we are very, very fortunate to have that beautiful place where people can go and contribute to society and planting organic vegetables for not only for us and our meal together but also for the people who need it in our city who ask for food, you know, and we gave that beautiful and fresh vegetable to them as well. And that was the vision of Sister Janet Mead who created Play for All of Us and of course Gina is one of the coordinators but we were very lucky to have that play as we call Paradise in the city, I think.

Speaker 2
So it's a community garden and the produce that grows there actually goes towards helping feed people who are homeless?

Speaker 3
Yes, in families who need it because, you know, the disadvantage economically in the diaspora for food, and we include some vegetables, you know. So...

20:15

Speaker 2
So that's another beautiful part of that spirit you talked about that welcomed you so much.

Speaker 3
Yeah, I am one of the lucky ones because I never worked before in Chile. I never got the opportunity to work in... I learned all what I know a little bit about gardening from that experience being in the garden. You know, with people, with people who are very humble, but they contribute a lot to society. And that is one of our rewards.

Speaker 2
It's a beautiful reward to have that, isn't it? To get that reward, helping others and then seeing the results of your work. And also, as we said before, building a strong sense of community and different communities, bringing different communities together. So in a way, it's an extension of what you were doing in the population in Chile when you were a young man.

Speaker 3
Yeah, that's right, because in that time, we often go into unions, places or churches, we make sort of like you said before, Ojas Comunes kitchens. Ah, the soup kitchens. Yeah, soup kitchens, you know. So at that time, we were young and we contribute, we're going to knock the door of the houses where we live and ask them if they can contribute with some food or something to put into the soup kitchen, you know. To make sure that nobody goes hungry.

Speaker 2
So even though people don't have much, they all share what they have among themselves so everyone gets a bit of something.

Speaker 3
That's it.

Speaker 2
It's a wonderful spirit.

Speaker 3
Yes, it is. They still are here in some part of the other lives.

Speaker 2
Juan, you've collaborated over the years with several Australian translators and we're planning a conversation with one of your translators in a future program. You also now translate a lot of your own poems yourself as well as the work of others. So I want to talk first about the early days of working with an Australian poet and translator on translating your poems from Spanish to English. So what was it like when you first started, when you built that relationship? You had your poems written in Spanish and you found someone who translated them into English. Talk to us about that.

Speaker 3
Well, I will start with a little story was published as well in one of the anthology for refugees writer. My story was when my younger daughter, or well, it's only daughter, she was studying English in the Charquero near the Pennington Hostel. And one day she came very upset and we asked her what happened, you know? And she said, I'm going to be mute here. And we say, why? Because no one speaks Spanish here. And I don't know English, how to respond in English.

So her feeling, my daughter's feeling, is sort of my process of being a poet, rescued my voice. And translation with Steve Brog, when I started knowing him and collaborate with him, it was like that. I stopped becoming a mute poet or a mute person and I started sharing my poetry through translation. And it was wonderful for me to hear my poetry in another language. We saw not only passion, but we saw convinced message to people.
Speaker 2
Steve Brock's translations of your poetry are beautifully done. I admire them very much. You've been here for a bit over 30 years now and so now you translate a lot of your own poetry and you also write poems in English now. So being able to express yourself in two different languages would give you a lot more creative freedom. What do you think about that?

Speaker 3
I think so. I think, well, I've become without any academic sort of background, I've become a translator and also a poet in another language as well. And also, it's unbelievable the dilemma here. I have been 33 years of my life in another country, who is my country now, and become absorbed and learned that language and put it into my as a voice of a poet. And even if it's not 100% academic right, but I don't care. At the stage of my life, poetry become more free and become more find the way of pressing in English my own way. So my identity as a Chilean in Australian poet, I think now it's become more clear and more understanding and more accepting from my poet community, not only in other like but also in Australia.

25:24

Speaker 2
Juan, could I ask you to read another of your poems?

Speaker 3
Yes, I will read one what I really like. And it's about the tree. From this book of collected poems, was published in 2005 by Phy -Ilan Press, Rom Preeti, who passed away a few years ago. He trusts my poem and give me the opportunity for publish this book in Melville.

Battle with a foreign world. I am a tree living in a city where people are. I can't speak their language. I can't write them either, but I dream every day. But half I could like to be a poet. I have many leaves that are my eyes. I see every way my heart is a story house for my fruits. My roots are invisible toys, stamping on the soil and deep relationship with warm hands, a snail, an spider, plants, sea, and flowers too, sharing the great silence of our mother earth. The sun, our father, protects us. He's all white with me. My brother will visit me sometime and together we dance in the sky or jump over a cloud and swim through the immense blue. A glass of water from my sister gives the most refreshing liquid. Everyone is equal with other. It is not easy to live as a tree. I can't walk. I have to be here forever. To survive here is not an easy matter. You have to convince them of who you are. I am a tree dreaming of being a bird in a nest, inside my poet's heart.

Speaker 2
That's very beautiful, Juan. Thank you so much for telling us some of your story today. There's a lot more that I want to ask you about writing and translating poetry, so let's continue with part two of our conversation in next week's program. Our guest on Emerging Writers today was the poet Juan Garrido Salgado, who's the author of a number of poetry collections, and we'll hear from more of them in our next program. This program can be heard at the same time each week on Vision Australia Radio, VA Radio Digital, online at varadio.org, and also on Vision Australia Radio podcasts, where you can catch up on earlier episodes.

Speaker 1
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28:58

Speaker 2
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