TJ Dema
Nació en Gaborone, Botswana, el 14 de agosto de 1981. Destacada representante del movimiento del “Spoken Word”, performer, poeta, escritora y columnista. Ha viajado con su arte a diversos países, entre ellos Francia, Alemania, Dinamarca, Escocia, Estados Unidos, India, Sudáfrica, Malawi y Zimbabwe.
Su obra ha sido parcialmente traducida al francés y fue incluida en una antología de poesía africana, traducida al chino, titulada Sin serenidad aquí. Grabó igualmente el CD multilingüe “Soñar es un regalo para mí” (12 poetas de Botswana), y más reciente publicó el cuadernillo de poemas Mandíbula, 2014.
Pertenece a la agrupación Sonic Slam Chorus. Es la presidente de la Asociación de Escritores de Botsuana y cofundadora del aclamado colectivo Exoduslivepoetry!, que ha coordinado el único festival anual de poesía de Botswana, desde 2004.
Segundos afuera
revista
FOUND IN TRANSLATION
La poesía de TJ Dema
Traducido por Sebastián Velásquez
Para este número contamos con la poesía de TJ Dema. Ella es una joven poeta de Botswana cuya mayor fuerza expresiva se da desde la oralidad. Lo anterior no obsta, sin embargo, para que su poesía esté cargada de imágenes y reflexiones sugerentes.
En los tres poemas a continuación se pueden observar tres exponentes de sus preocupaciones temáticas y artísticas, constantes en su obra. En primer lugar está la pregunta por el mundo negro-africano, sus costumbres, sus mitos, sus silenciamientos. En segundo lugar está la pregunta por la representación femenina, ahora inseparable de su identidad racial. En tercer lugar, aparece la reflexión metapoética sobre la escritura en conjunto, como medio y como fin en sí mismo.
Writing
The feeling exhumes itself first,
You cannot call it
It must ask for you by name
And when the first wave hits
Your chest stale with old air
Unbuckle yourself, float
Do not hold on or back
Do not attempt to sand your beaches with sack
You are hessian
A hungry hour glass for the dune wind
The real work begins and ends with release
Escribir
Primero el sentimiento se exhuma solo
No lo puedes llamar
Debe preguntar por ti, nombrándote
Y cuando la primera ola golpea
Tu pecho está endurecido de aires viejos
Desabróchate, flota
No te aferres ni te ocultes
No intentes arenar tus playas con costales
Tú eres yute
Un reloj de arena con hambre de duna y viento
El verdadero trabajo comienza y termina con la liberación
Tuareg Indigo
I am she who wears colour on skin
Adorning flesh with desert shades of indigo
My stories tell themselves below eyes
Above buttered cheeks
I have no need for a metal sky
A casket carved of bone, mortared in blood
I am a million constellations moulded of mud
The colour of a waking sky
Purple blue memories, sand storm covered secrets
Between my lover the desert
And I
Índigo tuareg
Yo soy la que viste color en la piel
Adornando la carne con tonos desérticos de índigo
Mis historias se narran bajo los ojos
Sobre las mejillas de mantequilla
No necesito un cielo de metal
Un ataúd tallado en hueso, majado en sangre
Soy un millón de constelaciones moldeadas en lodo
El color de un cielo que despierta
Recuerdos azul violetas, secretos sumidos en tormentas de arena
Entre mi amante el desierto
Y yo
Face of Africa
If that is so
Then whose body is this?
Hips thick
Calves log heavy
Ankles weighty enough to carry
The shame that clings to rejection’s brow
Señorita África
Si así es
¿De quién es este cuerpo, entonces?
Caderas prominentes
Pantorrillas pesadas
Tobillos resistentes para cargar
La vergüenza que se aferra a la frente rechazada
T.J. Dema nació en Gaborone, Botswana, en 1981. Es una artista del spoken word. Paticipó en el programa intrafronteras de la Universidad de Lancaster y en el Programa de Escritura Internacional de la Universidad de Iowa. Por su trabajo en la comunidad literaria de Botswana, ha sido nombrada Arise Magazine African Changemaker (2013) y St Louis Top 40 under 40 catalyst (2014). Su libro Mandible (2014) fue publicado por Slapering Hol Press y por el African Poetry Book Fund, como parte de la colección Siete Poetas Africanos de Nueva Generación.
Tradicionalmente no había una separación entre música y poesía en Botswana. Es extraño para mí ser una especie de “chica de calendario” para el spoken word ahora, que tanto se refiere a la tradición de la poesía. Ya sea que esté apropiando la tradición o rehuyendo de ella, esa falta de separación es para mí lo que define la poesía.
-T.J. Dema en entrevista con Joshua Barnes
“La voz poética de Dema es poderosa, fuerte, dando un mensaje al mismo tiempo de confusión y paz interior.”
-Misgana Ghidewon, Universidad de Pensilvania.
“Una poeta que no se limita a la página o al performance.”
– Sampsonia Way, proyecto de literatura y justicia social.
“Poeta fundadora del movimiento Spoken Word en su país.”
-Universidad de Iowa.
Sueños
Los sueños son malvados
Prefiero las pesadillas
Te muestran lo que pasa aquí adentro
Reflejan aquello que sigue allá afuera
Los sueños mienten
Te llevan por un camino
Donde el chocolate blanco fluye sin barreras
Y las moras caen de los árboles sin sacudirlos
Nada es menos fiel
Menos real
O más falso que un sueño
Y hace que cada uno de mis pasos sea tan difícil
Estoy cansada de pasar noches en vela
Persiguiendo mañanas vacilantes apostando mi tiempo
Solo para gastarlo en remendar cosas rotas
Que no tengo deseo alguno de arreglar
No daré más vueltas dentro de esta piel
No lloraré un futuro que nunca he tenido
Me rehúso a sangrarme a mí misma
Por un remedo de realidad enraizada en los ecos distantes
De la que alguna vez fue una voz familiar
Cantando yo sé que puedo, yo sé que puedo
Porque yo sé que puedo
Ser la muchacha que soy ahora
Vivir la vida que tengo ahora
Escoger ser el sueño en el que estoy ahora
Quizás entonces no será tan difícil
Sólo respirar ahora.
Traducción: Gustavo Osorio de Ita
DREAMS
Dreams are evil
I prefer nightmares
They show you what goes on in here
Reflects what goes on out there
Dreams lie
They lead you down a path
Where white chocolate flows undammed
And mulberries fall unshaken from the trees
Nothing is less faithful
Less real
Or more untrue than a dream
And does every waking moment have to be so hard
I am tired of spending sleepless nights
Chasing hesitant tomorrows biding my time
Just to spend it mending broken things
That have no wish to be fixed
I will not spin and spin inside this skin
I will not mourn a future I never had
I refuse to bleed myself
For an almost reality rooted in the distant echoes
Of a once familiar voice
Chanting I know I can, I know I can
Because I know I can
Be the girl I am right now
Live the life I have right now
Choose to be the dream I am in right now
Maybe then it won’t be so hard
Just to breathe right now
JUST BECAUSE
Because I know you are going to ask
where the flowers are,
I have picked roses red and sweet,
left them by the wayside for the birds to eat.
Because I know you are going to ask
where the sweets are,
I have made you halwa with these hands
stirred and then spilt what was yours.
Because I know you are going to ask
where I am,
I have long left the place I was
to walk slow between the trees
Where your greedy eye cannot reach me.
LETHE
This is not that river
portico filled with wet shadow
and sand.
This is deciduous memory
and it grates against
whatever remains
whatever reasons
designs we have concealed.
Each day concedes there is nothing
not one thing to take away from here.
Yet we make work of shredding everything
and our hands clutching at round river rock
tell us that some things stay
rooted as gingko on the bank
while others erode into the current.
Come tomorrow you will not know
why you cannot forget
dogmata of fairy tale
or from adult memory
erase the giver of this drink
whose fluorescent face
turned your tactile midnight form
to foam
in that loud morning light
CIRCUMCISION
Not quite cold, as one morning
When one flag came down and another rose glistening
Azure and multi racial racing up the pole
Had there been such joy
It had been years since it had been done
Since a crowd had gathered waving goodbye, with smiles on their faces
In their thousands they waded into the unknown
They went to a place where for the barber
The trouser must come off
And between rock and shrub
Each boy must sever the leather bag he is
Of games and childhood name calling
To become a strapping, fore shortened adaptation of his former self
Puberty is for the body
The mind hungers after ceremony
And my people know how to
Seduce it into wrapping itself in tattered cloth
To walk barefoot back into this world
We know no other way that works
But to teach pain to the weapon
Before applying green relief to that appendage
Hoping that knowing compassion
Will soothe all of tomorrow’s inflamed and painful bits
Back to this moment
When the huntsman stood still before a falling blade
THE YARN OF THE HIDDEN SPINDLE
This is what they say
Once in the long ago
Inside the city of Silica
After the last of the silkworms had died
We turned to food for clothes
Not for barter but to take
And make dresses of milk
Fuel of corn, residue of the edible oils
We had depleted our selves
And could no longer sustain emotion without an act
All day caramel coloured, cane hands pulled corn out of fields
At night without a tree in sight
The heavens would fall, until morning
We lay blanketed in life’s per kilo fumes
For the first time more humans died around the world
In a day, than just
Africans moulting in poverty with its mundane and petulant hand
Then one day, we pulling
Out of the fields came a man with a crown
Of husks and palms you could clean see through except for the children
All yellow brown and golden who were born with needles in their eyes
Their mothers’ thighs webbed together not with thread but lies
From fathers who flaxen
Wilting under the day clay
Had long since shed their secondary duty
To become camouflage men again
You see, they told their blind sons and daughters
We could not carry more than one title, more than one name
And so they chose they who had a choice
To be only men
Once we saw we were dead
Mainly the ones in skirts with our young
Littered among the living as though we too
Were alive
Fear sent forth phantom fingers
Winged as mercury, foraging messengers turned mercenary
Afraid the mirror had a mouth
Man and his motive found only shards
With no one to see, Silica had shattered
Those who looked beyond that wounded city’s shuttered eyes
Say they saw a mountain of spindles
Cob webbed
All that wood unused
Sat still and sleeping
BREAD FOR THE BIRDS
It rose above us like a god
I remember thinking what or
who would willingly give wings to such rage
But there it was
and so a benefactor must exist
somewhere behind this communal mirror glass
a huge beastly, angry cloud of a thing
is setting its course
likening it to mine and yours
I remember seeing the sky
as it scrunched its face
filling its cheeks with smoke
hurling rage at every man’s door
at life’s very factory gate
Huffing, puffing till it seized
sneezed, pouring citrus rain upon us
Yet none of us, not one of us knew what to call it
And since that day
it always seems as though
no matter what we do
for each birth
we must give away one more
than we will receive
For each ten dead
perhaps five daughters will be born
to remind us
how we should have held on
to what we had
before fortune called
before tomorrow was gone
For we are but bread for the birds
dead before our very breath is heard
Light as lead feathers lost to the wind
we sink in a quagmire of our own making
To look at us now
we are but jaded shopkeepers
with nothing left to sell
Merchants charmed into
a blind folded trade
against a merciless rage
And the machines
they do not even care
whether we live or die
this war to them
is nothing personal
In this war, to them
we are the ones on a fool’s errand
For when the summer does not an end seem to find
when the ice crackles quiet against your feet of clay
will you know the sound of death coming
It is not loud, or crass
the earth will not crash, upon itself
to warn you of your folly
The wind will no longer howl
her protest at the closed window of your soul
And when hot becomes the new cold
will we remember then what the prophets of old foretold
how they spoke of an ungrateful tribe
turning a king’s providence into a tomb
In this ginger-breadman existence
we think ourselves gods
changing things
breaking things
to live as kings
leaving costly crumbs wherever we go
Yet we are but bread for the birds
we are the baker and the baked
our deeds name us the sly fox
still we are running
running as fast and as far as we can
from these facts and our selves
And when our time upon this wheel is done
our sons into this chaos are born
they will mourn the authors of their demise
with a truth as sincere as a lie
While the air turns their gaze putrid
with the loss of everything green
they will become the perfect puppetier’s industrial dream
For we are none of us
the light beams we should have become
none of us it seems example what we were meant to become
beacons in a world with only so much sun
If by some small chance
you are a voice, dissident,
amidst the few
they will ask you
who you think you are
to find your own right
when everyone else
is left behind, tell them
Tell them your castle is made
of sand and air
you are a thing alone
fragile
breakable
exposed in this roofless forte
And that thing, that nameless thing
that started it all
it was us
it was us all along
FIRST BORN LULLABY
His girlfriend called me today
Name Lila, hair the colour of fire
Brown skin Jezebel whose profane name did ring a bell
Thick lipped I could sent her lack of manners
as easily as I’ve seen Indian henna
Imagined my palm cruise and bruise her cheek
but stopped for fear she’d lose his other seed
He’d come home that night bed-ready
Breath-heavy, forgotten what he’d asked just last night
That we wait and in every way he began to forget
That I and only I was to give him each and every heir
I could smell her hairspray as the water sprayed against him
I found that place on his shirt she had stained with rouge in our lives
Still I stayed, prayed that when he bought me candy
It meant we were going steady
When he brought me flowers
It meant tomorrow was ours
My girlfriends say I’m crazy for putting up with this
Playing mind games just because I’m waiting for his next kiss
Its not worth it, they keep telling me its not worth it
Worth it, because he threaded my eyes shut
When none of them would hear me speak
When they would not say that they believed me
My mind wishes to forget all this
But my heart keeps telling me that he’s a hit and miss
thing can’t afford to count life’s bruises
Crying over the last glass of spilt milk
Won’t show you where the juice is
I had already given him everything
Birthed his son and was often heard and seen
Bleeding lullabies as I leaned back to duck
Though never quite fast enough
To duck this man’s blows
I know you don’t understand
How could you possibly begin to see
That he was the kind of man
That made me forget
Where I was at
How I was going to build a new universe
Save myself if only through verse
Monday wrapped her fingers of blue
through every other day until he came through
I breathed his name like I was a part of this game
Where he’d said hi, stopped time
Until something changed
Because not everything stays the same
Some people crave love, not I
Not when I remember how Saturdays where the worst
Demon in a bottle, he would cuddle it
Like he was cursed
Protect it like mother hawk hovering over her nest
He wouldn’t eat, this man barely breathed
And in a senseless rage he would selfishly raid
The cookie jar and the fridge, disregarding our son’s needs
My son’s first lullaby
Was hearing his mother cry
As ribs cracked against her heart
He in womb, his father’s fist
Attempting to build him an early tomb
And my little one couldn’t grow up fast enough
To block his daddy’s blows
Maybe play music loud enough
To block out arguments about family woes
Now my son knows what he’s not supposed to
And I’ll not trade his innocence
For any kind of kiss
For any sort of passion
So why is it tonight I still find myself
Singing lullabies about how
Your daddy was the kind of man
That could make us forget
How we were going to build a new universe
Save you, my son and myself
If only through verse
But when he was gone
Monday wrapped her shades of blue
All finger like through every other day
Until he came through
We breathed his name like he was a part of this game
Where he’d said hi, stopped time
Till everything changed because nothing ever has to stay that way
Ovários
I
Quando chega a meia-noite
Descubro que estou há tempo demais
De ponta-cabeça a soprar minhas entranhas
Um guarda-chuva no vento
Ocupada demais na crença
Em sonhos
Na mágica a ser encontrada
Em canteiros de abóbora infestados de ratos
E homens com tempo
E um sapato de vidro a mais em suas mãos
II
Mulheres aprendem
Que às vezes há sangue
Mas não morte
Elas aprendem a esconder o útero com seios
A escolher aquilo que se pode perder
A receita otimista ou na prateleira o bolo constante
Elas aprendem a agarrar a lâmina
Da faca na costela emprestada
A esvaziar o cálice e contentar-se
Com nada de nada.
(tradução de Ricardo Domeneck)
Ovaria
I
When midnight comes
I find I have been away too long
Blowing my insides upside down
An umbrella in the wind
Too busy believing
In dreams
In the magic to be found
In rat-infested pumpkin patches
And men with time
And one too many glass slippers in their hands
II
Women learn
That sometimes there is blood
But not death
They learn to conceal the womb with breast
To choose that which can be lost
The hopeful recipe or the constant cake in cupboard
They learn to clutch the knife
Blade to borrowed rib
To empty the cup and be content
With utterly nothing
Só porque
Porque eu sei que você vai perguntar
onde estão as flores,
eu colhi as rosas, rubras, doces,
e as deixei à beira da estrada, de comida aos pássaros.
Porque eu sei que você vai perguntar
onde está a sobremesa,
eu fiz halva para você com estas mãos,
amassei e então derramei o que era seu.
Porque eu sei que você vai perguntar
onde eu estou,
há muito deixei o lugar onde estava
para caminhar devagar entre árvores
Onde seu olho ganancioso não me alcança.
(tradução de Ricardo Domeneck)
.
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