a1188: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

Charles Arthur writes: I just found this on the Internet:

Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry
Edited by Jack Hirschman, Paul Laraque
Curbstone Press, USA. (publication imminent)

Open Gate is the first bilingual volume of Haitian Creole poetry published in
English. Seven years in the making, this anthology is the result of the
dedication of its editors and translators, Paul Laraque, Jack Hirschman and
the Haitian poet Boadiba, as well as Max Manigat, one of the first teachers
of Creole at the university level.


INTRODUCTION - Pòl Larak (Paul Laraque)

Open Gate is, to my knowledge, the first bilingual anthology of Haitian
Creole poetry translated into English. The idea came up in 1993. The
president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, overthrown by a military coup
d’état supported by the CIA, was then in exile in the United States.
Alexander Taylor and Judy Doyle, Co-Directors of Curbstone Press, which had
published my selection of poems (Camourade, 1988), wanted to know what they
could do, in their field, to help the Haitian people. I first thought of an
anthology of Haitian poems written in French and in Creole and translated
into American-English. I consulted with my friend Jack Hirschman, one of the
greatest living American poets, founder of the “Jacques Roumain Cultural
Brigade” in San Francisco, and a translator of poetry from many languages
including French and Creole. He advised me to concentrate on Haitian Creole
poetry. He was assured of the cooperation of Boadiba, a brilliant Haitian
poet fluent in American English, for the translations. I made sure to have
the collaboration of Max Maniga (Max Manigat), one of the first teachers of
Creole at the university level, thanks to my brother Frank Larak (Franck
Laraque), professor emeritus at the City College of New York.

We established some criteria for the selection of the poets: we would limit
ourselves to contemporary poetry, start with poets already translated—like
Moriso-Lewa (Morisseau-Leroy), Jòj Kastra (Georges Castera), Kaptenn
Koukouwouj (Michel-Ange Hyppolite), and myself—and put the emphasis on
militant poetry because of our background and our publisher’s progressive
readership, while giving an objective image of Haitian Creole poetry capable
of expressing the deepest human feelings and the most revolutionary ideas.

Creole is, with voodoo, one of the most important elements of Haitian
culture. It is a mixture of French, spoken by the white masters, and of the
Black slaves’ African languages and dialects, during colonial time. It can be
either a revolutionary tool in the interests of the masses, or a reactionary
one if manipulated by the cruel exploiting classes. It is a beautiful
language with the rhythm of the drum and the images of a dream, especially in
its poetry, and a powerful weapon in the struggle of our people for national
and social liberation.

This anthology begins with Moriso-Lewa (Morisseau-Leroy), the founder of
modern Creole literature, author of Diacoute (1953), which would become
Dyakout (l, 2, 3, 4); and Antigòn an Kreyòl (Antigone in Creole). The latter,
a play, was performed in Port-au-Prince in l954 and in Paris in 1959 and was
followed by other plays, since the theater is the most direct and most
sensitive means of communication between progressive authors and the masses.

Basically, Moriso-Lewa opened the gate of Haitian Creole poetry. Besides him,
the first group of pioneers (1950/1960) includes Emil Roumè (Emile Roumer)
whose poems have not been translated into English, Frank Fouche (Frank
Fouché), Klod Inosan (Claude Innocent), and others; while Rassoul Labuchin
and Jòj Kastra (Georges Castera) belong to the second group (1960/1970); and
Woudòf Milè (Rudolph Muller), Pyè-Richa Nasis (Pierre-Richard Narcisse),
Koralen (Jean-Claude Martineau) and Lyonèl Twouyo (Lyonel Trouillot) to the
third (1970-1980)—this according to Maximilien Laroche, a Haitian literary
critic and professor of literatures at Laval University (Quebec), in the
Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie créole (Caraibe, Océan Indien), Editions
Caraibéennes (1984).

The opening section of Open Gate—“The Pioneers”—will reflect the decades
noted above. Among the Pioneers included in this anthology, Frank Fouche died
in exile in Canada and Moriso-Lewa in Miami; two are still in the United
States—Koralen in Massachusetts, and I in New York—while the others are
living in Haiti*. So is the poet and painter Frank Etyèn, who wrote the first
Haitian novel in Creole as well as many plays in which his imagination
matches the horrors of Haitian reality.

I went back on a visit to my native land for the first time in 1986, after
the fall of the Duvalier dynasty. When my wife retired in 1989 in New York,
we returned to Haiti in the hope that we would stay for the rest of our
lives; but while visiting our children and grandchildren here in New York in
September 1991, the military coup happened. Less than three months later, on
December 7, my younger brother, Guy F. Laraque, was murdered in Delmas, a
suburb of Port-au-Prince.

The second section of Open Gate is called “The Society of Fireflies” after
the name of the only Haitian literary movement still in existence, the
Sosyete Koukouy, founded in 1965 by Pyè Banbou (Dr. Ernst Mirville). In
Haiti, Togiram (Emile Célestin-Mégie), Jan Mapou (Jean-Marie Willer Denis)
and others joined the Society. Some of its members were jailed and exiled by
the bloody Duvalier dictatorship.

Under the leadership of Jan Mapou—first in New York and then in Miami—and of
Kaptenn Koukouwouj (Michel-Ange Hyppolite) in Ottawa, its branches have been
very culturally active in the United States, Canada, and Haiti. Its New York
branch has been re-activated by the biographer-poet of this anthology, Max
Manigat. Many of its poets are featured in the second section, including two
of its members who have gone back to Haiti: Deita (Mercedès F. Guignard), one
of the first Haitian women to have written and published poems in Creole; and
Manno Ejèn, co-founder of the Haitian newspaper Libète published in
Port-au-Prince.

The third section of the anthology focuses on “The New Generation” of
Haitian poets, featuring mainly those in the Diaspora and, for the most part,
work that’s been written within the past 15 years. Some of the work has been
selected from the two-issue 1992 publication of the magazine Conjonction,
“Lamadèl—100 poèm kreyòl’’; other poems came directly from poets throughout
the Haitian Diaspora, from Haitian communities in “Nuestra
America”—including revolutionary Cuba—where militant poems are being written
in Creole, as well as in French, English and Spanish, presenting the wide
spectrum of Haitian poetry to the world.

The small number of female poets is typical of a society dominated by the
male and where women, in spite of their importance in both the economic and
family life of the country, suffer a triple exploitation based on sex, class
and color. Woman’s liberation cannot be dissociated from the total liberation
of mankind. In the meantime, symbolized by Deita in Haiti, Jaklin Skot
(Jacqueline Scott) in Africa, and Siz Bawon (Suze Baron) and Boadiba in the
US, the struggle for sexual equality goes on, not only in the so-called Third
World but also in the most industrialized capitalist countries submerged by a
new wave of conservatism and neo-fascism since the disappearance of the
Soviet Union as a superpower and the emergence of a new imperialist world
order in which an apocalyptic Bosnia has replaced a socialist Yugoslavia.

But, “No despair!” proclaims our co-editor, Jack Hirschman. Looking at our
“actual future,” he predicts that “the robots are going to destroy the
corporation world” and that the people—“every man, woman and child” will
have a stake in the “public ownership of all robots.” Poetry is in the eye
of the storm.

As stated by Amilcar Cabral, hero and martyr of the struggle for the
liberation of Africa, “only societies which preserve their culture can
mobilize and organize the masses against foreign domination.” In the case of
Haiti, victim of a second American Military Occupation and of a multinational
trusteeship to reinforce its political, economic and cultural dependence,
Cabral’s statement could be reversed: “Only societies which mobilize and
organize the masses against foreign domination can preserve their
culture,”—as proven by Cuba.

Revolutionary both in content and in form, as an explosive mixture of love
and liberty, poetry will contribute not only to transforming the world, but
also to changing life.


      Pòl Larak (Paul Laraque)
      New York

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