Projects

El Jesús Maorí y otros poemas

This anthology of poetry written by James K. Baxter and translated by Caleb Harris brings iconic New Zealand literature to Spanish-speaking readers.

Media

Colombia & Aotearoa New Zealand

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Lobo Blanco Editores website

Caleb Harris at the launch of El Jesús Maorí y otros poemas, Vic Books, Wellington (2019) and James K. Baxter, Dunedin (1971). Photo - Lloyd Godman.

In 2007, Caleb Harris was completing his Master of Literary Studies at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. He was invited to translate six poems by a New Zealander for a university journal, Palimpsestvs. The prominence of the poetry of James K. Baxter (1926-1972) in New Zealand, Baxter’s commitment to social justice, and his role in bridging the gap between the Pākehā world and te ao Māori (as he saw it), made him Harris's choice.

Harris translated these initial six poems with the help of co-translator Íkaro Valderrama, a Colombian writer, who later started a Bogotá-based publishing house called Lobo Blanco Editores. In 2018 Lobo Blanco published Harris’s book-length selection of 21 of Baxter’s poems, El Jesús Maorí y otros poemas.

The book had its Aotearoa launch at Vic Books, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington in 2019. The event was co-hosted by the university's School of Languages and Cultures, the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation, and NEKE – The New Zealand Journal of Translation Studies. Harris says the support, advice and encouragement of the School's Dr Jean Anderson and Dr Carolina Miranda (who also proofread) was especially significant.

I worked closely with Íkaro on the translation of Baxter’s poems at the very start of the project. We each love poetry in both languages and spent many enjoyable hours discussing the meaning, music and feel of the poems in the original and in various possible translations. It was an intense immersion in the joys and difficulties of communication, in any language, and especially artistic communication.

Caleb Harris - translator of El Jesús Maorí y otros poemas

The selected poems explore many aspects of Baxter's vision of the world, his poetry and life: religion, social justice, nature, family and global journeys.

Harris has translated the works into a "standard" Spanish with a few expressions and words particular to Colombia, while Māori terms have been retained. A glossary and a notes section offer cultural insights into the poems, so meanings are not lost on readers outside of New Zealand. For example, Baxter’s line “I have walked barefoot from the tail of the fish to the nose” is explained in terms of a famous Māori legend in which the hero Māui fishes up the North Island of New Zealand from the sea.

Harris says translating the musical and symbolic qualities of a poem is a big challenge, but a rewarding one. The most valuable part of the project for him, though, has been gaining insights into another people, its joys and its pain.

“Just living in Colombia for seven years, learning Spanish, getting to know Colombians, their complex country and dazzling literature. Their ability to remain open, collaborative and creative in the face of injustice and loss still moves me.”

Harris says that towards the end of the project, another example of communication across languages and cultures hit home to him: the crucial influence on Baxter of the writer J.C. Sturm.

"Born in 1927, her iwi are Taranaki and Te Whakatōhea. She and Baxter, a Pākehā, were married in 1948. Sturm is arguably Baxter’s most important influence, certainly on his interest in te ao Māori and te reo Māori. But also as a distinguished poet, fiction writer and scholar in her own right.

“El Jesús Maorí y otros poemas has sparked interest in the translation of more Aotearoa literature into Spanish, and given Sturm’s immense impact on Baxter and on many others, hers is the name that keeps coming up.

“To continue the conversation, and with the permission of her literary executor, I’ve translated her poem ‘Travelling’.

“In this context, the poignant final stanza makes me think of the way all human communication, but especially poetry in translation, remains tantalisingly imperfect: “oceans and continents away / from discovery”.

Viajar

para Janet

Demasiado tarde, ahora, para esperar

ver que el sol le reclame

un desierto a la noche,

o hundir su oro inca

en el crecido Amazonas.

Tampoco nadaré, nunca más

para salvarme la vida

en turquesa líquida

en cuevas subterraneas,

ni regatearé amatistas