Juan Garrido Salgado immigrated to Australia from Chile in 1990, fleeing the regime that burned his poetry and imprisoned and tortured him for his political activism. He has published three books of poetry, and his poems have been widely translated. He himself has translated works into Spanish from John Kinsella, Mike Ladd, Judith Beveridge, Dorothy Porter and MTC Cronin, including Cronin’s Talking to Neruda’s Questions (2004). He translated five Aboriginal poets for Espejo de Tierra/Earth Mirror Poetry Anthology (2008). With Steve Brock and Sergio Holas, Garrido Salgado also translated into English the trilingual Mapuche Poetry Anthology (2013).
Interview with Juan Garrido Salgado by Danijela Trajković
Can you, please, tell us, how you see Australian literature scene today? What, if yes, has changed in comparison to 20th century one?
My opinion on contemporary Australian literature, I wish to frame in a political refugee approach from Chile, who took citizenship and decided to live in Australia.
Country that defined a Multicultural society, where the original inhabitants of Australia have a life existence for more than 70,000 years, as native peoples of this land, establishing their communities that have their own culture, languages and history.
Australia has a history of more than 200 years of British colonialism where it imposed on the force of genocide and extermination of the majority of the original inhabitants. The English culture and its language is the official and dominant.
From a strictly literary point of view I believe that there is a turnaround from the dawn of the 19th century where everything was pastoral, colonial and expression of white vision of the nascent society. In 1967, only through a national referendum do white citizens accept as aboriginal citizens part of Australia, so for the first time, they are recognized with the rights of inhabitants and not be part of the landscape vision of this continent country. Australia after 60 becomes a multicultural society where they speak, teach a second language and communicate new Australian citizens in more than 100 languages as part of daily communication, reading and writing at home and schools, universities.
I believe that literature does not yet express this new reality. Yes. There are voices and trends that narrate what we want to be today as a society, some of them are the following: Kath Walker as a Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Kenneth Slessor, Judith Wright, Vincent Buckley, Peter Porter David Malouf, Les Murray, Robert Adamson, Michael Dransfield John Forbes, John Kinsella, Peter Boyle, JM Coetzee (Nobel Prize –winning) Ouyang Yu, Lionel Fogarty, Ali Cobby Echermann, Behrouz Boochani.
Literature Australia has always been in a crisis of identity, recognition of its roots and who we are. Australia is not an independent and sovereign republic, rather we are a creature tied to its umbilical cord of the British kingdom… .even new stories emerge, voices that contradict this tie an umbilical
One of these voices that have come out with international recognition is Behrouz Boochani, an illegal refugee, imprisoned in one of the most inhuman detention camps is Nauru, from there he wrote a poetic-testimonial novel that has won the most prestigious literary awards in Australia as in the rest of the world. And he, author of this book, remains a common prisoner in that inhospitable and cruel prison.
In Chile, your homeland, some years ago you were imprisoned by the authority and your work was burnt. What was greater pain/loss for you: being imprisoned or getting your books burnt? How is the situation now? Are you welcome in Chile and recognized as a great poet?
No one is a prophet in their land, as the popular saying goes. That doesn't worry me anymore. I say fame or great recognition. I came to poetry because of the historical circumstances of my country, and these historical circumstances that influenced my generation. Do not get to poetry by academic studies. I am a self-taught, a passionate lover of her.
We are an aborted generation, without voice, without dreams, or homeland. Many of my friends poets, writers, artists, workers suffered torture, imprisonment, exile, banishment inside and outside Chile. I was very young when the coup occurred on September 11, 1973.
Just entered high school. It was there that my passion for poetry awoke and with the help of my Spanish teacher Don Juan Yáñez, who years later I knew that I was also part of the resistance.
So I joined the literary workshop, Scaffolding, which created small groups of poets of agreements to the sector where we live. My workshop was called Threshold Literary Workshop, most of us lived in the West of Santiago. Imagine living in a military dictatorship, restrictions on all citizen rights, ‘curfew’, we all expect suspects, potential communists or terrorists. We lived that situation daily for less than 19 years.
Until today in Chile one lives with the shadow and the laws created by the dictator and his long list of sinister collaborators.
In the post-dictatorship period of 90, a generational movement of Mapuche poets is reborn, which come to refresh the national literary environment.
One of my greatest satisfactions as a translator was having translated and published in Australia the book: Poetry of the Earth: Mapuche Trilingual Anthology. This happened after a long job and wait. This anthology of Mapuche poets in three languages(Mapudungun, Spanish and English), whose editor is Jaime Huenun poet and academic. We work with the translation of the Australian poet Steve Brock and Sergio Holas, poet and academic.
As for your question, about the burning of my literary works, it was a very sad experience. I lost forever everything written from my "curfew" nights, everything written through literary workshops all turned to ashes that fear and terror of detention and torture took forever.
This happened at the time I went underground, as a resistance activist against the tyrant. I went to study in Moscow and the GDR for a long time ... when I returned to Chile, to the grandparents' house, since I lived with them. They are to whom I owe everything I am, as is my mother Alicia.
Well in my piece I noticed something strange, many of my books and my cardboard box were gone. It was in that box where I accumulated all my poems.
My grandmother, seeing my reaction, cries and tells me: ‘... in the town a rumor had started that there was going to be a house-by-house raid by the military. ' I told them enduring the pain and rage not to worry. My grandparents were given the task of making holes in the courtyard of the house and burying the subversive, red, Marxist-Leninist books. They made a fire and threw all the poems against the tyrant. I knew that this had already happened in other nearby towns. I only saved from fire and oblivion, 10 or 15 poems that I had taken on my underground trip.
Although after my experience of torture and jail I decided to publish a small book called Variants of Ultimate Freedom. signed by Samuel Lafferte. Published by clandestine editions ‘The Enthusiastic Hondero’ .. Santiago Chile 1987.
The title of the book is the poem selected by the literary contest for the ‘Political Prisoners of Chile’, whose jury was Juan Cameron, Raúl Zurita and another poet who did not remember his name. They decided to share the prize as we had shared the prison time.
Last summer you were invited to the festival in Nicaragua. Tell us about your experience there. Also, is there any festival you would like to go so much and haven't had a chance yet?
It was a dream come true, the simple reason I had always wanted to know the homeland of Sandino, Lionel Rugama and Ernesto Cardenal, priest, poet and Minister of culture of the historic Sandinista revolution. Once of the great moment of my experience of being in Nicaragua was when I visit Don Ernesto Cardenal , we have a chat about his new poetry book that have been writing. And I talk about my translation of aboriginal poets as well as the Mapuche anthology that we did in Australia and I gave a copy to him. in my To read in Granada city in the someplace where many poets have been to it it is a great feeling, especialy when you know the history, the struggle and the background of those place of ”Casa de los Tres Mundos”, that was an old colonial Casona, belong long ago to Ernesto Cardenal family.
His childhood and youth were there. At some day of my poetry reading was the celebration of the Sandinista Revolution’s day. I felt if it was like an underground reading against the official ceremony. However I enjoyed everything not only the possibility to share mi experiences as a poet and resistance fighter ..also my reading include my translation of the aboriginal poets and their history of brutality and persecution by the white colonialist system that still is very much part against the aboriginal people. I start my reading with a voice of Robbie Walker –Comparison- Human beings are like guitar string: / If they are not in tune to each other/ The result is noise…not music.
My reading were amazing experience where poets and the organizers of the events ‘Casa de los Tres Mundo’ by the director Dieter Stadler, and the Centro Cultural Pablo Antonio Cuadra with the President Festival International de Poesia de Granada, Nicaragua, Francisco de Asis Fernandez and Gloria Gabuardi.
Yes I love to go to Medellin Colombia, and Russia Poetry Festivals. I would love to read together with you in you country.
Apart of being a poet you are a translator as well. How do you feel about poems after you finish their translation? Do you currently work on some translations? Have you ever thought of quitting translation work and focus only on creating your own work?
I felt if another poetical voice is being born. It is a hard word but very reward when people o poet’s comments or even the poem have been accepted for a publication in magazine. It mind my works as a translator it been done.
Yes at the moments I have a long list of projects to translate, too many, I thought. Sometimes, made me confused. I need a full time works as a translator.
But in another hand, I love words and languages I felt honour as human beings to have the passion for poetry. I felt blessed to learn both languages Castellan and English. I have to made my time more productive as a poet, translator, activist and an actor.
Nowadays children do not read books as much as in the past. What is that, in your opinion, that distract young generations from reading and how to make them love books?
I think literature should be compulsory at the primary and secondary school. Poets and writers should be employed in the school as a part of the staff. Inspirations and writing have to be a human motivation from early days of learning process .it doesn’t means every kids will be a writer or poet. But kid will enjoyed writing poems or listening it.. Kids will be happier in the classroom.
You are a family man. How much are a poet and his needs understood inside his family?
In my life as a poet, it is a continue and personal battle of making time as a productive and creative space for my poetry and myself.
How is a poet seen by the eyes of his environment? Are women attracted to him and are men jealous of him?.
For me that is not an issue. If I am attractive to a woman. I will do everything for her attention. Yes, I would love to share poems of my favourite poets or even write poems that she inspires me.
What/ who is the biggest enemy of a poet today? .
Always. I think the enemies of the artist and poets are and will be an oppressed regimen. A political regimen who doesn’t respect human rights, and create wars, any can of injustices a regimen that put money and profit first and people last.. How you will enjoy reading books when are so expensive as well as going to a cinema, theatre.
If you could change your life and start everything from the beginning would you be someone else, doing something else and not writing?
I will be an Araucaria tree, which is a very slow process to grow even; take its high dimension in a thousand years. I will any bird the most common.
What is your advice for having a quite peaceful inner life of a human being living in everyday environment of fast life where a person is expected to finish so many activities by the end of the day?
I always say, follow your Quest; follow your passions in life. but at the end of the day enjoy the most simple things that the mother earth gave to us or life itself making for us to share. Be grateful and solidarity with people that life is most hard then our life. Selfishness made your soul a desert and empty place. No a garden to play life as it is.
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