Listening Class

I fell for the trap of believing Chekhov is universal
during the second day of my practicum.
when I picked an audio recording of
A Country Cottage for a listening class,
A story of intrusive relatives in newlywed’s honeymoon,
the file is less than five minutes, and subtly funny.
After checking questions about the plot, new vocabulary
introduced, to conclude, I asked my class to talk about some
unpleasant memories with family and what they impose.
I never thought a classroom of adults could become so chatty.
Some started speaking in Chinese and Farsi
which defeated the purpose of the exercise,
but I can’t tell them not to stop either.
I went around the room. Teacher, one started,
I’m an only son. I love my relatives but my parents
want me to miss work because of guests. His seatmate agreed,
especially true in the countryside. My mother, she begins,
will wake me up early morning to help her cook for the day.
I kept nodding, I don’t know what to say.
No errors in grammar. It slipped my mind,
Chekhov’s characters were aristocrats. In the room,
women are talking more than men.
I went to another desk, hoping for something lighter.
My father was an officer during the Iran-Iraq War,
our town was near the border and the fighting.
Almost every night, someone would be knocking at our door.
and mention our father’s name, the daughters left at home  
would need to take care of wounded strangers.
The secret in second language acquisition
is not functionality, but finding ears for stories
that should have been kept hidden. Not one anecdote was funny.
We ran out of time, before I can wrap things up.
I had mixed feelings to the lesson’s success.
My mentor’s only comment, there was too
many new words, maybe we should put Chekhov to rest.

Image of Anton Chekhov from here. Recording of A Country Cottage available here.

Artist’s Statement

after Balikbayan (2018) by Kwentong Bayan Collective

Balikbayan boxes have been hallowed
out to show the world they truly contain,
cans of SPAM are shanty houses,
CAMPBELL’S piled up as a Christmas Tree
in a room with HEREFORD CORNED BEEF
as cabinets and a miniature box emptied out
in the middle. COLGATE tubes stand beside
packs of IVORY serving as a backdrop to a
town dance. She narrates to the audience
who might be unfamiliar with the concept
her childhood memory of tracing her feet
along with siblings and cousins.
She was naive then, drawing seemed more fun
than actually getting a new pair of shoes
in the box arriving next December.
Everyone was intent as she unpacks
the skill needed to maximize four corners,
the forward-thinking required in taking
note of expiry dates of goods bought half as cheap,
the pleasure and the pain of remitting care,
all learned when she herself left the country
that can’t produce basic necessities.  
Hence, the need to clear the boxes.

Kwentong Bayan Collective official site here.

Second Christmas

After the conference at Ryerson, we went to a gathering less academic to cool down. The newly founded union at the baking warehouse rented space, and invited prospective members, many of which are also family. Food and music really bring our people together, she said like an open secret. Talks about tactics on organizing hotel employees is put on hold as the kareoke starts blasting even before everyone arrives. We’re only here until seven, she says, and goes on to invite them to the event for Lumads before people start drinking, here or elsewhere.

Have you seen the giant Christmas tree at Nathan Philips Square? We were already strolling, and it seems it’s too early to leave downtown anyway. I kept thinking if I offended the girl from earlier, when I said no one reads Virgilio Enriquez anymore, my new arrival opinion shattering her diasporic project. She’s going to be fine, I actually know her. I said, that view of Yonge and Dundas though, from a skyscraper class room is going to hunt me forever.

The night market turned out to be so so, and we actually spent more time gazing at the skating rink. The crowd braving the cold like a beating heart, below concrete arcs acting as ribs. People can’t get enough of the TORONTO sign. I took a video, my fingers shaking, and told my sister we should try this when she gets here. She replied it would be too embarrassing. There’s an area in middle for those just learning how to do it, I assured her. That makes it actually kind of worse.

We should sit somewhere. We walked along Queen Street, bright and gentrified, only to end up ordering ice cream at a Burger King with exposed bricks. No matter the cold, I mused, this really is the proper food for celebrating. By the way, what did you last year? she asked. Just stayed at home, I said without thinking. This hectic Thursday night is so much better. Too bad I work on weekends.

I made it back to Union Station to catch the last train back to Burlington, still hectic during that hour. She was sorry, it slipped her mind I’m not staying in the city tonight. The buses are gone but I can always take a taxi, I shrugged. The station was quiet, while I wait for the car assigned to me. Maybe working late do make people chatty. Heading towards Lakeshore Road, I talked about my first Christmas party here, not with family. Odd that it ended at seven. It’s so that you don’t intrude into people’s evenings, the driver said without looking at me. It isn’t so bad if celebrations are done by seven to be honest. The flurries stopped falling by the time I got off.

Image by Greg’s Southern Ontario, from here.

Readings in Translations

//I spent more time researching Wopka Jensma’s life than actually reading this. He was very involved in the cultural scene and the fight against apartheid during his time. Suffering mental illness later in life, leading to vagrancy, one day he walked out a Salvation Army facility and disappeared.//With Raul Zurita, Chile’s history and landscape come alive and goes under your skin, transcendental and nightmarish at the same time.//Another Roberto Sosa, more poems from Honduras during a time when it was a vital strategic asset for Reagan’s Contra War against the Sandinistas.//Adonis rocked the Arabic literary scene with Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs, the comparison to Eliot or Pound shortly came after. Surrealism to interrogate the self, the nation, the sacred. I heard his getting a lot of heat for statements directed on both sides of the war, unfortunately I can’t speak Arabic or French.//Countersong to Walt Wiltman was amazing, but Amen To Butterflies, Pedro Mir’s poem about the Maribal Sisters is just divine.//Some of Humberto Ak’abal’s more ‘modernist’ works, specifically talking about hardships of indigenous peoples in Guatemala. In 2004 Ak’abal declined to accept the Guatemala National Prize for Literature because it is named after Miguel Angel Asturias.//Looked up Ghassan Zaqtan a bit and read about the controversy over his visa application denial when this book was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. The visa officer said his reason, to attend an awarding ceremony, ‘wasn’t convincing enough’ and he also had ‘financial and employment’ issues, from the eyes of the Canadian embassy this means you probably will overstay illegally.//A glimpse of Mario Benedetti’s career in one anthology, and as a poet of commitment throughout his life, it also serves as a nation’s history. From early satire, to urgency of struggle, one poem dedicated to Raul Sendic, to years in exile, to seeking of post-authoritarian closure, ending in elderly introspection that is as biting as his early poems.//Strong influences of Apollinaire, Eluard, Rimbaud, et al meet the urgency of national liberation struggles in Fayad Jamis, in Cuba and elsewhere. Most poems talk about time in exile in Paris, many dedicated to contemporaries like Guillen, Retamar, Depestre.//Christopher Okigbo, towering African modernist poet, darling of postcolonial circles, fought for the then newly established Republic of Biafra and eventually died in combat defending the university town where he found his voice. //Paradox of contemporary Palestinian poetry; various defeats lead to wider readership, as new generations of poets write more ‘palatable’ poetry which usually means ‘you can talk about how miserable your people’s situation, just not how to fight back’. Najwan Darwish, no relation to Mahmoud Darwish, is impressive, the more sanitized the presentation, the sharper the poems appears.//Great poems, horrible introduction, better just skip it. You could learn more about Yannis Ritsos from his Wikipedia page. No in-dept discussion of the Greek Civil War, or how the pre-WWII Metaxas dictatorship burned Ritsos’ books in public, how he was still imprisoned by the post-WWII Papadopuolos dictatorship, so you’re basically reading prison poems without the idea why this guy is in prison. It was mentioned he won the Lenin Prize but doesn’t discusses it’s significance.//David Mandessi Diop is a lesser known member of the negritude movement, born in France to a Senegalese father and a Cameroonian mother, it was only logical for him to be eventually a Pan-Africanist, served as a teacher in newly liberated Guinea, before dying in a plane crash along with his wife and manuscript of a second book of poetry.//A poem mostly made up of names of Latin American revolutionaries from Leonel Rugama. He and three comrades were cornered by the National Guard, when the chief told them to surrender, and Rugama replied, ‘Tell your mother to surrender!’ They were all killed, he was about to turn 21.//Juan Gelman, chronicler of the Dirty War, before and after his exile. His son and daughter-in-law was disappeared by the junta, his son’s remains was only discovered in 1990 in a barrel filled with sand. Later he found out that his daughter-in-law was pregnant at that time, and by virtue of Plan Condor, his granddaughter grew up in Uruguay, they eventually met in 2000. This book is dedicated to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, to the families of the Argentina’s Disappeared, and ‘to all those forced to live in the shadow of absence and impunity, the lingering resonance of brutality’.//Claribel Alegria was already exiled and a wanted person when her mother passed away. She wanted to go home, but her father said something along the lines, ‘there will be two instead of one funeral.’//Early Martin Espada, introduced by Amiri Baraka, and with poems being how I want my diasporic literature to be, looking at Empire in the eyes.//Jim Smith’s poems for, and a bit of translations of, Rugama and Dalton. Struggling with form is very apparent, the target audience is Canadian readers after all. A lot of dark humor via irony. This might be as agitating as it gets. Stand out poem asks what if events in El Salvador happened in Ontario.//

East of Bacolod

Excited, she asked us
to stand in front of the falls.
The picture turned out good.
The water breaking into
well placed boulders, the landscape
layered with small palm trees
and trimmed grass made to
hide the remaining visible mud.
On top, just a glimpse of an outline
of the steel railings to prevent
people falling into the lake
by accident. We walked back to
the hall for lunch, I asked what
this place used to look like before.
Cane fields, of course,
she says matter-of-factly.
When sugar prices crashed, and well,
never recovered, the descendants of the
owners had think fast. Some say the rocks here
were used to extend the city.
Eventually becoming the area
where SM City Bacolod now stands,
frequently attempted
to be reclaimed back
by the Guimaras Strait
to no avail.
My parents recall, a beloved priest
had to be reassigned
since his sermons talked
about the evils of quarrying.
Nonetheless, I’m still glad Alangilan
now has farm resort.
A reason for you balikbayans to visit me.
Less talked about, she adds, Capuestohan
meanwhile used to be an highland outpost,
I’m not sure if by soldiers or rebels.