Juan Garrido Salgado (Part 2)

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 I guess today is the poet and translator Juan Garrido Salgado. We spoke last week about Juan's life, growing up in Chile and then coming to Australia as a political refugee. Juan is a poet and translator of both his own work and that of other poets, some from Spanish into English and others from English into Spanish.

Juan, welcome again to the programme. You collaborated with your translator Steve Brock, the poet Víctor Cifuentes Palacios and the poet and academic Sergio Olas on a remarkable, trilingual poetry anthology, Poetry of the Earth, which brings together translations into Spanish and English of poetry written in Mapodongun, the language of the Mapuche people of Chile. Could I ask you to read for a subpoem out of Poetry of the Earth?

Speaker 3
Thank you. This is a poem from Maribel Mora Curriado.

Speaker 2
It's a poem by Maribel Mora Curriado.

Speaker 3
Atrás quedaron los cantos. Nada tiene sentido a esta hora. Evre a la noche en mi cerebro. Tras tocada mi razón te busca o muerte. Compañera nuestra de cada día. Cómo te esconde, sermana. Cómo te disfrazas, sermana. Cuando detrás la cara. Cuando avisaras tu llegada, tu regreso. Allí estás acechando, nuflando la respiración de mis hijos. Allí te ocultas, madre, hermana amiga. Lejan a vos que coarta y que persigna en un pirmón, en tu no deseado, a todo nath stirpe de hijos, huérfanos de sueño. Dime, dónde ocultas tus secretos. ¿Por qué callas ahora que te llamo? ¿Por qué no señalas el cielo con tus manos? ¿Por qué no eliminas la palabra esa que huyen de mis sienes y aquellas que retuercen mi cerebro?

Atrás quedaron los cantos, el vértigo y el vacío. La mirada fija en mi misma, las huellas del retorno y del exilio. El bosque no es más que un recuerdo. El edén que nunca nos fue prometido. Tú lo sabes, sermana. Tú lo callas, hermana. Ya no existe el origen y solo existe el origen hasta que se acabe el impulso del genchen en el infinito.

Speaker 2
Our songs remained behind. Nothing makes sense at this hour. The intoxicated night in my brain crazed my reason, seeks you, O death, companion of our every day. How do you hide yourself, sister? How do you disguise yourself, sister? When will you reveal your face? When will you announce your arrival, your return? There you are, stalking, clouding the breath of my children. There you hide, mother, sister, friend, distant voice that restricts and blesses an undesired peremontum, to a whole lineage of children, orphans of dreams.

Tell me, where do you hide your secrets? Why do you stay silent now that I call you? Why do you not point to the sky with your hands? Why not do away with words, these that escape from my temples and those that ring my brain? Our songs remained behind, vertigo and the void. The gaze fixed on itself traces of return and exile. The forest is no more than a memory of an Eden that was never promised to us. You know it, sister.
You silence it, sister. The origin no longer exists and only the origin exists until the impulse of Nechen ends in infinity.

And there are two words there, Juan, that I should explain to our listeners. First of all, we mentioned peremontum, and that's a concept alluding to the visions and the supernatural experiences of a person initiated as a machi or a Mapuche shaman. We then mentioned Gnechen, and that is a divine being of the Mapuche people, a master of the earth and people.

Juan, this collection of poems from Mapundongun into Spanish and into English is an extraordinary work. What did that project mean to you personally, and what was it like to be part of a team that produced such a significant contribution to bringing the voices of Indigenous peoples of South America to the global community?

06:07

Speaker 3
Thank you for the question, Kate. Yeah, personally, I feel very reward to have that great anthology, what you say, and other voices from the Mapudungun community of Chile, indigenous people who have been part of our life for centuries. They were before us anyway, you know, the Chilean society. And they got a very strong sense of community and language. The Mapudungun was prohibited during the Pinochet regime. No one touched the language in the school. And they was prohibited within the Mapuche community. They couldn't, if they speak the Mapudungun, they was detained.

So to get that new generation of poets writing a Mapudungun and also in Spanish, they are great, they fit to the fascism in Chile. Because the Mapudungun language today, today is very strong. It's beautiful. And even we, as a Chilean society, we didn't realize we speak in our own daily vocabulary more than a hundred or two hundred words directly from the Mapudungun. We grew up with this world. So for me personally, it's sort of rescued that little bit of contribution from here, from my new country. And also, I think it was a big, big work within Steve and Sergio.

We spent so much time to reflect on how we're going to translate. Just try to keep the spirit of the poem in both language and Spanish. Unfortunately, we don't know much about Mapudungun language. But as the translated in Spanish is very close anyway. So it was a big job, it was an intense conversation within three of us. And finally, we got the result of the book. But before that, when I went to Chile one day, and I talked to Jaime Guanun, who is the person who put all the poet together for the anthology. I always thanks him because he gave us the opportunity to do that. And we got in Chile, we got in Temuco. I remember we spent a lot of time in Café there talking about the possibility of put together all this anthology. And finally, here anyway in Australia.

Speaker 2
Because translating poetry isn't just translating words to words. In a way, that's like queuing at the bus stop. You haven't even got on the bus yet if you're just looking at the words. But to actually put it in motion, there are so many different considerations that you need to keep in mind all of the time. So would you tell us more about the sorts of questions that you had of one another, you and Steve Brock and Sehra or Las, when you were doing this translation work to produce such a beautiful product?

Speaker 3
Yes, I will. But one thing I want to put here, you mentioned, I think, was last week about the 30th of September, it's the day of translation around the world. And we are very happy today to talk about translation. As both of us, we are translators anyway, because you too have been translated poetry and books or novels. As a translator, we know how difficult it is to go into the language of translation. But I think I remember when I read some of the Borges conversation about translation, and he said something about you have to create another poem from the original.

And that's why we try, because I just hear you reading the poem. And for me, it looked like another version of the poetry in Spanish, who is already a translation from the Mapudungun. So there are three language who speak in this anthology. And it was sort of a very honest conversation with Steve in the beginning. And then when Sergio joined our work was really reward, because he knows a lot as well about language, academic thing as well, Steve. And it was a very honest conversation, how we going to do each poem. And we actually, I think, we find that how many drafts of each poem was, I don't know, I lost the count, but it was individually was a lot draft of poem and also collectively.

11:19

Speaker 2
And that doesn't surprise me the number of drafts because you do that, you're looking of course to communicate the language but you also want to communicate the intention of the author or the poet and you want to capture the rhythm and if you can't get an exact rhyme, you can't always do that going between Spanish and English but you can capture the rhythm in different ways.

So you need to, you are creating a new piece of work while conveying the spirit and the essence of the original and as you say, in the case of the poetry of the earth, the trilingual anthology, there are three iterations of the poetry from the Mapo Nongun version to the Spanish version to the English version. So each one goes through a transformation and yet in a way it's like a circle because it does bring it back to a sense of closeness to the original so that you can feel it.

Speaker 3
To the reader of forensic, to the English reader, maybe they know familiar with the Spanish version of the Mapudungun, of course, but that's the amazing things of poetry. You can find the way of revive in a beautiful voice the interpretation or the translation of the original. One day we will find it will be an equal sound or rhythm of the poem, but we can't say it.

Speaker 2
Yeah, and it is part of the drafting is about getting closer. Yeah. Juan, you've also been involved for many years in translating into Spanish the works of some Australian Aboriginal poets. Juan, before I continue with my question, I do just want to advise our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners that the next part of our conversation is going to make reference to someone who has died. Would you tell us about some of the writers whose work you've translated?

Speaker 3
Well, for instance, first of all, I translate one of the youngest Aboriginal poets what I met within the book because he was one of the poets who died in death in custody. And his name is Robbie Walker. And what's amazing, the way I find his little book up and not down made is the book. And it's very small collection of poems. But I find it in one of the second hand bookshop and often bookshop in that time disappear now. But when I find it, in that time, I didn't understand much English at all. But I start reading some of the verses and I feel the similarity of his pain and his voice of being a poet in prison, like I was in Chile.

So when I translate it, I find and I feel the way of pressing the translation was my own experience being in prison as well and rescue Robbie Walker's voice in another language. That was my first experience being a translator in Australia. And then I start knowing the poetry of Lionel Fogatti and Ali Kotbih Echeman. You know, so what is for me is one of the great poets of Aboriginal culture and Natalie Hacking, too. So I know them personally. So in I value always the spirit of resistance and the poetry and the spirit of culture alive, alive today in our society. So the poem, they are very powerful. And in my translation, I try to continue some continued working.

I have been doing a lot of drafts as well. And I will hopefully finish soon one new project called Anthology as well.

15:42

Speaker 2
Brilliant. 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, you have now more than 30 years experience in writing poetry and translating poetry. How has your approach to translation changed over time?

Speaker 3
Yes, always, it's always changed because I learned as well, reading a lot and reflecting my poems from another experience of life, because I think still the past of what I lived in Chile is still very part of my life as well as a memory, as a resistance, but I have to understand I live in another culture and in another country with another language. So instead of reflecting now my new experience being here as well and the poems have been changed a lot too.

Speaker 2
Could I ask you to read another of your poems for us?

Speaker 3
Yep, I will read one from my new collection of poetry. It's the Dilemma of Writing a Poem, published just this year by Punch and Wattman. I am very grateful for the editor, David Masground, who gave me the opportunity to be part of the collection of poetry in Australia. I will read some of the poem about the garden as well. This poem is a tribute to Victor Jara. Maybe Kate will explain a little bit more about Victor Jara, but I took the idea of his hand and the poem called, and my hand are all that I have. Victor Jara, this is one of his lines.

I have come to the garden, my hands are all that I have. My sweat and my breath are subverts of Victor Jara. The fruit lucinen leaves orphans become fertilised wings. It is in bones, roots, breeds the confusion of life. Talk with the cabbage and ask if I can write a poem and there lives left there. The sun went at me and dropped my pencil out of nowhere. I write it as a mystery of gift of life that gives everything in a moment.

Speaker 2
Thank you. And Victor Jara was a singer-songwriter, very, very popular in Chile in the 1960s and the start of the 70s, but he was arrested during the very early days of the military coup in Chile in September 1973, and his hands were broken in prison, and then he was killed. And he remains a symbol of hope for the Chilean people. His songs are like ballads. They tell of everyday life and of love of the simple things in life too, and they're still listened to by Chilean people all around the world.

Speaker 3
And also just the commemoration of this year within the 50th anniversary of the coup, since the coup happened, was a very beautiful moving tribute to Victor Jara. Was 2000 guitar playing one of his son in the stadium of Victor Jara, where he was killed by 40 bullets. So his memory is there, 2 ,000 guitars playing a tribute. Amazing. Wonderful. And like Victor Jara in his songs, Juan, you integrate everyday observations with some of the challenges and dilemmas and big questions about who we are and how we live in this world, how we live with nature.

Speaker 2
And you also remind us of the beauty of nature and of life around us. And you said before the title of your latest collection is the dilemma of writing a poem. We did tell us why you chose that particular title.

20:08

Speaker 3
Yeah, because I think, well, the point was reward before I put the title of my new book. That point was published in different magazines in Australia and also in one of the newspaper, alternative newspaper in Melbourne, in Kavaola, Australia. The Saturday today was published there as well. For me, to be published one of my poems in Saturday today, paper is like winning the Nobel Prize of Literature. But the dilemma of writing a poem has become because it was a reflection of within the pandemic, where everyone had to be inside, no one was allowed to go out.

So one day I start writing that little short poem about what is the dilemma of living at the moment, or in my case of writing, because everything changed completely. And we look like we're living in a completely different world. And worse anyway, for many people, and many people suffering so much at that time. And we lost a lot of our everyday activity or life. We couldn't talk to people who love, contact them. So for me it was a great dilemma. And that's why I thought it's good to put that in remembering what happened.

Speaker 2
Now that we are able to go out and about again, when you read a lot of your poetry at live events, you've been to poetry festivals in Australia and overseas, what is that experience like of reading your poetry to a live audience?

Speaker 3
Hmm, yeah, it's a changing because I always thinking, you know, how I going to be receptive with my poetry, but I always find a very friendly audience and receptive audience about my political poetry. And just recently I come back from the Perth Poetry Festival two weeks ago, and was a great experience of reading, but also doing a workshop on political poetry. And I got 15 people who attended the workshop, and we ended up with reading collectively a poem of Pablo Neruda, all to the simple man who was the beginning of my theater activity, you know?

And everyone in the workshop will read in English, and I read in Spanish, and was beautiful experience. So I think Neruda and political poetry is still alive, much in Australia.

Speaker 2
There's a question that I've been asking on this program, which is where and when people write. But I know from poems of yours that I've read over the years that you'll write anywhere and everywhere in an aeroplane, for example, coming back from the Perth Poetry Festival. So are you able to sit and write wherever you may be?

Speaker 3
Yes, I tried to make myself before I started working in the garden, half an hour, just reading or writing and every day, just for half an hour with a cup of coffee of course. And after that I can review in my home or in another place. But I always write and I got a keeping a notebook. I think I got more than 20 books at home and patting my children and saying, why are you collecting all that for me only? So that's the way I write and then I put it into the computer and sometime I send it to you and another friend for review.

And I am very grateful for your personally, Kay and Steve and other people giving me the opportunity to review my poem as well. I edited this, something that I really enjoyed doing.

Speaker 2
And I've thoroughly enjoyed talking with you today, Juan, thank you so much for coming and sharing with us your story and also your poetry and your translating. Our guest on Emerging Writers today was the poet Juan Garrido Salgado. Juan is the author of a number of poetry collections. Juan's published works include 11 poems of 1973, translated by Stuart Corken, published by Pigguro Press, also by Pigguro, Unmoving Navigator, who fell in love with the ocean's darkness, translated by Peter Boyle.

Juan's collected poems from 2005, with translations by Steve Brock. His dialogue with Samuel La Ferte in Australia, published by Blank Rune Press in 2016, Hope Blossoming in their Ink, published in 2020 by Puncher and Wattman, and Juan's most recent work, The Dilemma of Writing a Poem, published in 2023 also by Puncher and Wattman.

As we mentioned in the programme, Juan contributed to the Mapuche Trilingual Anthology, Poetry of the Earth, edited by Jaime Luis, Winoun Bia, and published by the Interactive Press Literature Series in 2014, and a bilingual collection that Juan translated himself, When I Was Clandestine, published in 2019 by Rochford Press. Juan also translated the works of some Australian Indigenous poets for the 2008 anthology, Espejo de Tierra Earth Mirror, produced with support from the Chilean Embassy in Canberra. This programme 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.

26:45

Speaker 4
De nuevo quieren manchar mi tierra con sangre obrera Los que hablan de libertad y tienen las manos negras Los que quieren dividir a la madre de sus hijos Y quieren reconstruir la cruz que arrastrará Cristo Quieren ocultar la infamia que legaron desde siglos Pero el color de asesinos no borrarán de su cara Ya fueron miles y miles los que entregaron su sangre Y en caudales generosos multiplicaron los panes Ahora quiero vivir junto a mi hijo y mi hermano La primavera que todos vamos construyendo a diario No me asusta la amenaza, patrones de la miseria La estrella de la esperanza continuará siendo nuestra La estrella de la esperanza continuará siendo nuestra Vientos del pueblo me llaman, vientos del pueblo me llevan Me esparcen el corazón y me aventan la garganta Así cantar al poeta mientras en alta me suene por los caminos del pueblo Desde ahora hay para siempre

Speaker 1
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26:45

Speaker 2
Vision Australia Radio. Blindness, Low Vision, Opportunity.