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| George McWhirter & Homero Aridjis |
Yesterday, Vancouver’s first Poet Laureate George McWhirter (a Belfastian or Belfaster) found out by the curious fact that the CBC instead of stressing the traffic conflicts on the two bridges to North Vancouver, decided to dip into a bit of culture and informed him:
2 Canadian translators make longlist for $130K Griffin Poetry Prize | CBC Books
The annual prize is the world's largest international prize for a single book of poetry written in or translated into English.
I find this astounding. If McWhirter wins he will have to lie low as people will want to be friends with him.
Meanwhile I can report here that I have a good friendship with McWhirter and his wife Angela, plus with Mexican poet, novelist
and environmentalist Homero Aridjis, and his wife Betty Farber.
In that last century, photographers were notoriously
supposed to be dumb (less bad sounding than stupid), illiterate and ignorant.
Thanks to a four year Roman Catholic education in Austin, Texas I escaped that
fate. It helped that I met many writers I had to work with. I love poetry.
Because McWhirter is over 80, just like Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Bowering, both will get a glowing obituary in this city only when they are gone. Such is the state of “No Memory Vancouver”.
To repeat my use of outstanding, I want to point out here the
curious relationship of Aridjis and McWhirter. Would anybody know McWhirter
speaks good Spanish and that he translates the poetry of perhaps the best
living Mexican poet? My fave translation is Eyes to See Otherwise - Ojos de otro mirar - Selected Poems
Before I change the subject I want to place here a poem by McWhirter that is one of my favourites. It is from his 1995 incubus the dark side of the light (and yes in fine Latin American fashion his 1995 poetry book’s title is in lower case). The poems are about he and Angela spending some time in Cuautla, Mexico.
Impossible Papaya
A trunk
No leaves
No branches
For us to peer
Or birds to speak
At
A quintet
Of yellow knackers
Hanging. Vegetable flute
For the Sky
To razzle-dazzle down
Forcebreed the earth
The earth
With
Celestianl arpeggios
I am most positive that McWhirter knows that papaya is an unmentionable word in Cuba. Women have one and we men don’t.
Homero Aridjis, doesn’t often smile as much as his translator but he is poetic in his speech. This he once told me. “You Canadians don’t know where your Monarch Butterflies winter. We have always known. We just never knew where they came from.”
Homero Aridjis is known as the butterfly poet as most of those butterflies nest in his hometown of Contepec in the State of Michoacán.
This photographer takes time in reading novels by writers who are poets. I have to constantly stop and reread dazzling paragraphs. Such is the case for me of both McWhirter ( I recommend his erotic The Gift of Women, 2014) and any of Aridjis's novels. His Memorias del Nuevo Mundo, 1988, is a definitive novelized account of the conquest of Mexico. Is a much better rendition than the only competition, Salvador de Madariaga's The Heart of Jade, 1942.
But I can also explain why it was that on a trip to Mexico City some years ago, I asked my Rosemary to lend me one of her black bras. Why? Read in the link below. It is about an Aridjis poem
Hotel Géneve - Tourist in 1934
I have no idea where I found out (I was around 18) about a statement that read, “Coincidence happens more often than not.”
I am currently reading a book by an Argentine novelist I did not know existed until my West Vancouver Argie friend, Roberto Dósil, insisted I read La Princesa Primavera by César Aira.
The story is about a youngish woman living in a little castle of the Panama mainland who translates bad romantic novels from French and English into Spanish. The 118-page novel is written as one chapter. You find out how the intelligent princess navigates the fact that the writing before she translates is terrible. It all changes when a big black ship is seen at the horizon. Of course this is a magic realism novel.
Should McWhirter have a look at it?
PS - In 1985 a writer, philosopher Ramón Xirau (taught me philosophy for two years at Mexico City College 1962/63) left his house and could not breathe. He went inside and called his friend Aridjis. Shortly after that the pair started El Grupo de los Cien, (Group of 100) made up of intellectuals, writers, poets, etc. They persuaded President Miguel de la Madrid to make automobile circulation in Mexico City to be one where even numbered and odd numbered license plates would alternate in their permission to be on the road. From there they went to whales, turtles and they had the government limit the logging of Oyamel trees (fir trees) in Michoacán where Monarchs nested.
PSII The flannel shirt that Aridjis is wearing in my photograph was called "una canadiense" by Julio Cortázar in his Rayuela (Hopscotch). His protagonist suffers a cold Paris winter and decides to buy one.
