Hotel Gèneve - 18 December 2012

Homero Aridjis - UBC Faculty Club - Spring 1993

Early December of 2012 I told Rosemary, “I have to go to Mexico City because our friend and Hilary’s godfather, Raúl Guerrero Montemayor is dying of prostate cancer. Can I borrow one of your black bras?”

That journey that took me to go to Mexico City with a Rosemary’s underwear in my suitcase began in 1993 at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty Club. Mexican poet and novelist, Homero Aridjis, was there for a talk courtesy of the Vancouver Writer’s Festival. I photographed him and wrote about him for Celia Duthie’s The Reader. From that point I realized I had to read as many of his books as I could. I can state here that I have read all of his books.

 

But there was a poem, Turista de 1934/Tourist in 1934,that I discovered about a Mexican gent bedding an American gal on a bed at the Zona Rosa’s Gèneve Hotel that inspired me to photograph Rosemary’s bra at that hotel.

On this Thursday, 24 October, 2024, there was Writer’s Fest program on Granville Island in which George McWhirter (Irish poet/novelist and first Vancouver Poet Laureate) & Chilean poet and writer Carmen Rodríguez discussed the complexities of translating and in particular translating Homero Arijdjis’s poems into English.

For fun I printed the picture of Rosemary’s bra and circulated it with the audience.  I then asked McWhiter to explain the circumstances. Since I had warned him about this, he handed me a neatly printed little paper containing Mexican writer Gabriel Zaid’s poem called Maidenform in Spanish and with his translation into English! 

And so one photograph to illustrate two poems.

The poem Tourist in 1934 is in this blog  

And here is Said's poem Maidenform

Maidenform

Barquilla pensativa,

recostada en su lecho,

amarrada a la orilla

del sueño.

Sueña que es desatada, 

que alza velas henchidas, 

que se desata el viento, 

que desata las vidas.

Maindenform

Thoughtful little boat,  

laid out on the bed, 

moored to the shore

of sleep.

She dreams she's cast off, 

sails at full stretch, 

the wind up, 

that she unhitches lives.