Yuruhary Gallardo-García, Translating the poetry of Caribbean Poet, Althea Romeo Mark
Traducir en el Caribe, la poesía de Althea Romeo Mark
See link to the original Spanish
publication
/traducir-en-el-caribe-la-poesia-de-althea-romeo-mark/
Yuruhary Gallardo-García
Yuruhary Gallardo-García (she/her/hers)
Graduate Employee, Ph. D. Student
Department of Romance Languages
School of Global Studies and Languages
University of Oregon
Note: Below is a translation of the above article. Spanish is not my Mother tongue. For better accuracy, see the link above.
The
poems, in Spanish and English, follow the essay.
There are several points I would like to explore in this essay on my translation, from English into Spanish, of the work of Antiguan poet, Althea Romeo Mark. I will begin by listing some of the most important concerns that led me to translate her. First, to highlight her relevance within the literary field of the English-speaking Caribbean. She is the author of seven collections of poems and has also participated in several anthologies, including Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi. The Silent Dancing Spirit (1974) and Musings in a Tea Shop: An anthology by Poetry and Prose Open Mic (2023). She has published in journals and received awards for her work, one of them, the Marguerite Cobb McKay, awarded in 2009 by The Caribbean Writer, a refereed international literary journal of the University of the Virgin Islands that makes its purpose clear in its subtitle, “Where the Caribbean Imagination Embraces the World. In addition, Althea Romeo Mark was one of the founders of the Liberia Writers Association, an international group of writers based in Liberia, West Africa, the United States, and other parts of the world. Her interest in creating these international ties between poets also led her to participate in poetry festivals in Colombia, Kenya, and Romania, and since 2004, to contribute as a poetry editor to Liberia's contemporary literary journal Seabreeze.
Althea
Romeo Mark has a long history. Her individual and collective projects,
published books, and contributions as a teacher to the promotion and recognition
of Caribbean and Pan-African literature make her work a valuable object of
study.
However,
its low visibility in the Spanish-speaking literary field confirms to me that
it is not only pertinent, but indispensable to read it and share it with
Spanish readers interested in learning more about women's literature in the
Caribbean.
1
Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín, Colombia (2010), Kistrech
International Poetry Festival, Kenia(2014), y Curtea de Arges Poetry Festival,
Rumania (2017). 2024,
Vol. 19, Núm. 2 71
This situation brings me to my second point and one of the concerns that mobilizes my work as a translator: this is a woman from the English-speaking Caribbean, who is interested in issues of migration, feminism, culture, and ancestral practices such as weaving. These themes are not only linked to the poetic interests of other women from the English-speaking Caribbean, but also to women from the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. In other words, Althea Romeo Mark speaks Caribbean and, more specifically, she speaks Afro-Caribbean.
That is what my translation tries to show: that in
translating a poet from the English-speaking Caribbean, we open ourselves to the exploration of other
Caribbeans, who express themselves in other languages and with other symbols.
In the translation of an Anglophone poet, not only the Anglophone Caribbean
emerges, but all those messages that give account of a vital experience in
these geographies that draw an arc from Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago,
Antigua, to even reach Florida, Louisiana, among many other territories,
creating a fabric that allows us to think about the diversity that tells common
stories.
The author maintains that the poets are the
weavers of words, who now continue on page the craft that grandmothers began at
the sewing machine, in embroidery, and in weaving. To translate the work is to relate
it to the work of other Caribbean women to establish new links in
Spanish-speaking, English-speaking, and French-speaking Caribbean thought and
poetics
Concerning access, it is necessary to
clarify that this translation reflects the pressing need to translate more
women authors of African descent, as expressed by John Keene in his article titled
“Translating Poetry, Translating Blackness,” which includes poets of African descent living in the Caribbean, whose production escapes the
preferences of the market or the tastes imposed by the centers of power. So, not only the visibility of their works but
also the study resulting from their editorial circulation may be affected. As explained in the book published by ECLAC (Economic Commission
for Latin America and the Caribbean) entitled “Afro-descendant women in Latin
America and the Caribbean: debts of equality,” black women are affected by “the long-lasting
effects deployed by colonialism” thanks to the (...) “racialized populations, in general, who continue to occupy positions of lower prestige and
greater precariousness” (ECLAC, 35). This can undoubtedly be extended to the
academic space where, despite the efforts to recognize the work of these
marginalized groups, there is still a tendency to study established authors and
widely circulated work. This is why the ideas put forward by Keene are
fundamental. We understand the need to claim attention for
these authors, using tools provided by the academic and editorial spaces, as
the author says, a focus on the following is needed:
72 2024, Vol. 19, Núm. 2
(…) literary cultural production that other
literary translators tend to
overlook for a range of reasons. These include
writing, especially poetry,
by women writers, by LGBTQ writers, and by
writers of African descent,
all of which (and whom) tend to be less
frequently translated than writing
by men, writing by white writers (in multiethnic societies), and
cis-heterosexual/straight writers. (Keene, 4)
By translating Althea
Romeo Mark, I hope to be contributing to the diversification project that the
field deserves. Translation is, from my point of view, a way of bridging the
gap. It allows the poets to cross from one territory to the other with their poetry,
thus allowing others, the readers, to discover what they have in common and
also what differentiates them.
The idea of difference is especially important
when it comes to building cross-cultural and multilingual bridges through
translation because, along with the intercultural and multilingual bridges through translation, along
with capitalist multiculturalism, as
Gayatri Spivak puts it in one of her essays on translation,… we translators have the task of considering
language as a producer of meaning and identities. And in this case, for
example, we recognize that the Caribbean is not one but
many
people and cultures. Therein
lies the beauty of translation: in discovering ourselves in difference,
recognizing the rhetorical particularities of Anglophone Caribbean poetics, we can compare it to other experiences. Spivak reflects on the
measurement of the Caribbean imagination in favor of a progressive realism that
serves to win prizes, and that transposes, in a superficial way, what is
essential to a culture, she tells us: “The bone flute has been neglected by Caribbean
writers, says Wilson Harris, because progressive realism is a charismatic way
of writing prize-winning fiction. Progressive realism measures the bone.
Progressive realism is the too-easy accessibility of translation as transfer of
substance” ( 326).
In this sense, Spivak reminds us that, in feminist translation, there is something that cannot be measured or
transferred in its totality: rhetoric that frays, can't be measured or transferred in its
totality:….
In Althea Romeo Mark's poetry, the bone flute is
present, showing the subtle elements of the Caribbean, the rhythm, the ways of
transmitting experiences and knowledge, at the same time confronting the
flattening machines of progress, the possible oblivion of the spiritual dancer
Moko Jumbi, the passage from ancestral weaving to the weaving of words recited
in “performance halls.” The author is aware that migration and progress are modifying
the ways of relating and yet she invites us readers to open ourselves to the
experience of feeling the rhythm of the needle that enters and leaves the
fabric, of the waterlogged slippers that move forward carrying water from the
well to the house, and also of the silence that lets the rhetoric of her
message seep through and that undoubtedly reminds us that there is something
ungraspable in the poem.
73 2024, Vol. 19, Núm. 2
It is precisely there that
I discover my work as a translator: in translating this Caribbean poet, I do
not want to diminish her imagination and experience. On the contrary, I want to
share the amazement that, though I am a Caribbean translator, there is something that
escapes me. Althea Romeo Mark, as we can read in Patricia Jabbeh Wesley's brief
commentary on her new collection of poems, On the Borders of
Belonging, has an honest prose, the prose of a woman who knows what it means to
cross the border, to be always in a movement of survival, to remake herself
again and again in the word. My task, and I will conclude here
in much the same way as Gayatri Spivak, is that like her, “I will not check it out
and measure the bone flute. I will simply dedicate these pages to the author of
Beloved, in the name of translation” (329). I likewise dedicate these pages to
the Caribbean and Pan-African poetry of Althea Romeo Mark in the name of
translation, so that her Caribbean may also exist in Spanish.
74
2024,
Vol. 19, Núm. 2
Moko Jumbi
i.
La cosa enmascarada baila.
Largas piernas con zancos saltan,
se balancean y columpian abandonándose
al sonido de los tambores de acero—
Plin, plan, plin-a-lin.
.
Pavo real orgulloso,
levanta su can-can anaranjado y púrpura,
gira y arremolina
su arcoíris en capas.
ii.
El joven pregunta,
“¿Se esconde el diablo detrás de la máscara?
¿Pateará y
gruñirá
si lo tocamos?
¿Nos derretiremos como metal
desapareceremos ante su
mirada de acero?
¿Nos desterrará al infierno?
¿Deberíamos refugiarnos?”
iii.
El diablo del campo en ti
hace tiempo murió.
Tú que repartiste muerte
a mujeres y no iniciados,
ahora te burlas de tus
ancestros.
Mujeres, bajo el hechizo
de bacanal,
les reto a dar
el golpe mortal.
¿Llora su pérdida
el mundo espiritual?
Ahora provocas risa
y no miedo.
Jumbi, celebras con
nosotros,
te burlas de tu pasado,
enmascaras tu pérdida
en el jolgorio del carnaval.
Moko Jumbi
i.
The masked thing dances.
Long stilt legs leap,
sway, and swing in abandon
to the tune of steel pans—
pling, plang, pling-a-ling.
.
Peacock proud,
it lifts its orange-purple
can-can,
spins and swirls its
layered rainbow.
ii.
The young ask,
“Does the devil hide behind
the mask?
Will it kick and growl
if we touch it?
Will we melt like metal,
disappear before its steely
stare?
Will it banish us to hell?
Should we take refuge?”
iii.
The country devil in you is
long dead.
You, who doled out death
to women and the uninitiated,
now mock your ancestors.
Women, under the spell
of bacchanal,
dare you to strike
the deadly blow.
Does the spirit world
cry for its loss?
You now stir laughter
and not fear.
Jumbi, you jam with us,
mock your past,
mask your loss
in the revelry of carnival
En el pozo
Nadie ha escuchado
los baldes deslizándose al abismo.
Nadie ha escuchado el chapoteo.
Se sienten pesados,
pesados como roca, van arriba,
entonces a duras penas algo da paso.
Después de decir
la oración a los muertos,
las cubetas se deslizan rápidamente arriba.
La gente se apura alrededor de las tumbas,
El único sonido
es el chap-chap de los talones resbalando en las
sandalias.
Palanganas balanceadas en las cabezas,
el agua gotea y se escurre
derramándose sobre los hombros.
Al valiente que ha halado hacia arriba los baldes
desde el centro de la tierra,
ellos contienen un agua que calma.
Si los espíritus permiten,
llegarán con esfuerzo
a la cima de la montaña peñascosa
las palanganas aún tres cuartos llenas.
At the Well
No one has ever heard
buckets gliding into the abyss.
No one has ever heard the splash.
They are weighted down,
rock-heavy, hauling up,
then something grudgingly gives way.
After the prayer
to the dead is said,
pails glide swiftly upward.
People scurry round graves,
the only sound
is the flip-flop of slippers on heels.
Basins balance on heads,
water drips and trickles
and spills onto shoulders.
To the brave who pull the buckets up
from the center of the earth,
they hold a soothing water.
If the spirits allowed,
they would trudge
to the top of the craggy hill
basins still three quarters full.
Historias
feas
I.
Susurradoras
Se agitan en el suelo,
lloran, y ocultan sus rostros
cuando les hablo.
Y ustedes,
estoy ante sus tumbas.
Los titulares gritan sus historias.
Háblenme, hermanas mías.
Díganme cómo se siente
conocer tanta oscuridad.
Sus historias debilitan mi espíritu
pero deben ser escuchadas, y
necesito contarlas una y otra vez.
II: Inmigrante
Raza equivocada,
religión equivocada,
clase equivocada,
género equivocado.
Soy un perro callejero
en un pueblo extraño.
Mi sueño
de subir a la cima
fue destrozado
con agua hirviendo
arrojada a mi cuerpo.
Soy
un susto
escaldado.
Amor despreciado
Escuché mis dudas,
rechacé el matrimonio.
Una rabieta ácida me quema la cara.
El orgullo de este hombre es más fuerte
que su amor profesado.
Ningún otro me tendrá ni me amará.
Escapar
Mi deseo de independencia
me costó la libertad.
Padre hace su reclamo,
promete quitar la vida que creó.
Sumisa,
madre con labios apretados
me cuela migajas.
Precio de novia
Las madres eligen,
tías y abuelas
aprueban el veredicto,
deciden quién gana la belleza del pueblo.
Me llevan lejos, un trofeo,
la inteligencia no es parte de mi valor.
El precio que consigo llena las arcas.
Entre rocas
Envuelta en un capullo de vieja cultura.
Ansiaba ser una mariposa.
Un tira y afloja y gritos de vergüenza familiar
me arrojaron a un río helado.
Mi ataúd, un carro
sacudido por la ráfaga del agua,
sobre un lecho de piedras lisas y azules.
Nadie escuchó mis gritos.
Porque soy una mujer
Nos temen
portadoras de la raza humana.
Todas somos Dalila ante sus ojos.
Nuestra juventud, nuestra belleza, arrebatadora.
Nuestros olores, seductores.
Nuestras voces, algodón de azúcar.
Violada, porque soy mujer,
mi clamor provocó una lluvia de piedras,
dio inicio a la avalancha mortal.
Silenciada, porque soy mujer.
Un lugar donde los hijos son reyes
Cuando veo a mi niña,
la agonía surca mi rostro, sacude mis huesos.
Las bocas gruñen y arrojan culpas amargas.
Tres hijas son imperdonables.
Los hijos no nacidos no desean
ser acunados por manos que
sólo han cargado hijas.
En nombre de los hijos no nacidos,
he sacrificado hijas,
escuché sus gritos ahogados.
La muerte de mi hija es intrascendente,
y la mía también,
en un mundo donde los hijos son reyes.
Ugly stories
Whisperer
You flail upon the ground,
wail, and conceal your face
when I speak to you.
And you,
I stand before your grave.
Headlines scream your story.
Speak to me, my sisters.
Tell me how it feels
to know such darkness.
Your stories sap my spirit
but they must be heard, and
I need to tell them again and
again.
II: Migrant
Wrong race,
wrong religion,
wrong class,
wrong gender.
I am a stray dog
in an alien town.
My dream
to climb to the top
was shattered
by boiling water
flung at my body.
I am
a scalded
fright.
Spurned love
I listened to my doubts,
rejected marriage.
An acid tantrum sears my face.
This man’s pride is stronger
than his professed love.
No other shall have or love
me.
Runaway
Desire for liberty
cost me freedom.
Father stakes his claim,
vows to take the life he
created.
Cringing,
tight-lipped mother
sneaks me crumbs.
Bride price
Mothers choose,
aunts and grandmothers
approve the verdict,
decide who wins the village
beauty.
I am carted away, a trophy,
intelligence no part of my
worth.
The price I fetch fills
coffers.
Between Rocks
Swaddled in an old-culture
cocoon.
I craved to be a buttlerfly.
A tug-of-war and cries of
family shame
hurtled me into a freezing
river.
My coffin, a car
rocked by water’s rush,
sits on a bed of smooth blue
stones.
No one heard my screams.
Because I am a woman
They fear us
bearers of the human race.
We are all Delilah in their eyes.
Our youth, our beauty,
beguiling.
Our smells, alluring.
Our voices, cotton candy.
Raped, because I am a woman,
my outcry provoked a hail of
stones,
sparked a deadly crush.
Silenced, because I am a
woman.
A Place Where Sons Are Kings
When I see my baby girl,
agony furrows my face, jolts
my bones.
Mouths groan and pelt bitter
blame.
Three daughters are
unforgivable.
Unborn sons do not wish
to be cradle by hands that
have held only daughters.
In the name of unborn sons,
I have sacrificed daughters,
heard their strangled cries.
My daughter’s death is swift,
and so is mine,
in a world where sons are
kings.
Soy nativa
Siempre estoy feliz
y libre,
no me preocupo
por nada.
Bebo
para pasar el tiempo.
bailo hasta medianoche,
duermo hasta el mediodía.
Soy nativa.
Debo seguir siendo pobre
porque la pobreza
es una definición de
mi natividad.
Si cambio mis costumbres
es una mala señal
para otros que admiran
mi natividad.
Hoy
Soy nativa.
Mañana
Podría ser guerrillera
en un intento de cambiar
mis costumbres nativas.
I am a native
I am a native.
It doesn't matter
what kind of native I am,
but “being a native”
tells me
I am different
from other men.
My native ways
make me distinct.
They tell me
I must wear grass skirts,
climb coconut trees,
dive into oceans for nickles,
smile a lot before
cameras
and show my white, strong
teeth.
I am a native.
I am always happy
and free,
I don't worry
about anything.
I drink
to pass my time away.
dance until midnight,
sleep until mid-day.
I am a native.
I must remain poor
'cause poverty
is a definition of
my nativeness.
If I change my ways
it is a bad sign
to others who admire
my nativeness.
Today
Iam a native.
Tomorrow
I might become guerilla
in an attempt to change
my native ways.
Tejedoras de sueños
Mujeres de mi sangre
son tejedoras de sueños.
Las redes se extienden hacia el cielo,
cada hebra teje esperanza,
cada hebra hilada con
fe de acero.
Cabezas en las nubes,
resistimos a los tempestuosos
dispuestos a derribar visiones.
Desgarradas y frágiles después de la batalla
Confeccionamos fantasía
en futuros reales y fértiles.
No romperemos el código
de las precursoras cuyos hilos sutiles
trascienden en el tiempo
tejiendo y portando
la promesa de generaciones.
Dream Weavers
Women of my blood
are dream weavers.
Webs stretch skyward,
each thread spins hope,
each thread spun from
faith strong as steel.
Heads in clouds,
we weather the huffs and puffs
of naysayers ready to blow
visions down.
Frayed and fragile after
battle
we fashion fantasy
into real and fertile futures.
We will not break the code
of forerunners whose gossamers
reach across time
netting and bearing
the promise of generations.
Transición
Cuando las máquinas aplanadoras
traen la civilización
la era de la inocencia
silenciosa se va.
Queda enterrada
bajo la suciedad del progreso.
Habrá memorias,
sueños, glorificación de
un pasado nebuloso.
Transition
When bulldozers
bring civilization
the age of innocence
quietly takes its leave.
It is buried
under the dirt of progress.
There will be memories,
dreams, glorification of
a nebulous past.
Indiana en África
Lo que veo aquí
fue una vez parte de nosotros
no hace mucho tiempo.
En algún lugar
de la memoria
en nuestra vida,
nosotros, también,
cocinamos
en ollas de carbón,
cortamos madera,
cargamos agua
sobre la cabeza,
machacamos nuestra yuca
y maíz,
salamos y ahumamos
nuestra carne y pescado,
tuvimos que ser ingeniosos.
Nos decían, en ese entonces,
que éramos pobres.
Hoy
veo
que fue
una etapa de
evolución.
West Indian in Africa
What I see here
was once a part of us
not too long ago.
Somewhere
in memory
in our lifetime,
we, too,
cooked
on coal pots,
chopped wood,
carried water
on our head,
pounded our casava
and maize,
salted and smoked
our meat and fish,
had to be ingenious.
They told us, then,
we were poor.
Today
I see
It was
a stage of
evolution.
Tejedores de palabras II (Nueva versión de Sobre
convertirse en un tejedor de palabras)
Nosotros, la próxima generación,
nos hemos convertido en tejedores de palabras—
canciones, poemas e historias,
expresados en nuestra escritura, lectura y canto,
creando nuevos sonidos en homenaje
a la mujer en su máquina de coser
acelerando y zumbando,
manos girando y girando,
tela bailando.
Este tejido fue arraigado en nosotros
por nuestra abuela, Alvina,
la costurera. Una profesión vista y escuchada.
Vimos su pie presionar, bombear,
pedalear arriba y abajo,
mientras ella giraba patrones de tela
bajo el sonido penetrante
de una aguja que salta y apuñala,
mientras cosía una manga a una camisa,
un bolsillo a los pantalones
una pretina a una falda.
Nuestras madres desataron
su propio genio creativo,
hicieron bailar las agujas
dando a luz a
bordados intrincados.
Sus tejidos y ganchillos provocaron
nuevos movimientos y sonidos tintineantes.
Nosotros vimos el vals de agujas largas,
el movimiento silencioso de las manos trabajando.
Sus obras encontraron el camino
a los centros de mesa y respaldos de sofás
de familiares y amigos.
Sus vestidos de ganchillo
se convirtieron en invaluables reliquias.
Y nosotros los nietos,
observando, imbuyendo la magia,
ahora seguimos tejiendo,
en lugares públicos, salas de espectáculos
que viven con nuestras palabras y cantos.
Word-Weavers II (New version
of On Becoming A Word Weaver)
We, the next generation,
have become weavers of words—
songs, poems and stories,
voiced in our writing, reading
and singing,
creating new sounds in tribute
to a woman at a sewing machine
revving and humming,
hands twisting and turning,
cloth dancing.
This weaving ingrained into us
by our grandmother, Alvina,
a seamstresses. A profession
seen and heard.
We watched her foot press,
pump,
peddle up and down,
as she spun cut-patterned
cloth
under the jabbing sound
of a hopping, stabbing needle,
as she sewed a sleeve onto a
shirt,
a pocket onto pants
a waistband onto a skirt.
Our mothers unleashed
their own creative genie,
made needles dance
as they gave birth
to intricate embroidery.
Their knitting and crocheting
made
new motions and clicking
sounds.
We watched the waltzing of
long needles,
the muted movement of hands at
work.
Their work found their way
to the center tables and sofa
backs
of family and friends.
Their crocheted dresses
becoming priceless heirlooms.
And we the grandchildren,
then watching, imbuing the
magic,
now carry on the weaving,
in public venues, performance
halls
that are alive with our spoken
words and songs.
Fuentes citadas:
Keene, John. “Translating Poetry, Translating
Blackness”. Poetry
Foundation, 28 de abril de 2016,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2016/04/translating-poetry-translating-blackness.
Spivak,
Gayatri. “The Politics of Translation”. The Translation
Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, Third Edition, Routledge, 2012,
pp. 312-330.
Romeo Mark, Althea. Two faces, two phases.
Publisher Althea Romeo Mark, Liberia, 1984.
Romeo Mark, Althea. The nakedness of new.
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Suiza, 2017.
Althea
Romeo Mark is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The
Nakedness of New and If Only the Dust Would Settle (English-German), and four chapbooks, Beyond Dreams: The Ritual
Dancer, Two Faces, Two Phases, Palaver, and Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi: The
Silent Dancing Spirit.
Her
work has been inspired by major transitions in her life: Her family moving from
Antigua (then a British colony) to the US Virgin Islands. She moved to Liberia
in 1976 and had to flee with her family in 1990 due to the Liberian Civil War
(1990-2014), and her family had to declare themselves refugees in London, UK.
And finally, her family started over again in Switzerland, which
welcomed her husband, who had studied medicine there. Her family’s new
beginning was a challenge because of culture and language. Switzerland is now
home.
Awards and prizes include: The 2023 Vincent
Cooper Literary Prize to a Caribbean author for exemplary writing in
Caribbean Nation Language (a term used by celebrated post-colonial Caribbean
author Kamau Brathwaite to describe vernacular language born in the Caribbean).
Poetry
Prize for poems published in POEZY 21:Antologia Festivaluluiinternational
Noptile De Poezie De Curtea De Arges, Romania; the Marguerite Cobb
McKay Prize, The Caribbean Writer for her short story “Bitterleaf,”
in Volume 22; short
story prize for “Easter Sunday,” Stauffacher English Short Story Competition in
Switzerland, Poetry Award for
poem “Ole No-Teeth Mama,” Cuyahoga Community Writers
Conference and a Scholarship Award from Breadloaf Writers’ Conference,
Middlebury College, Vermont, USA.
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