Baazadii (at Walton Haal)
fa Jeannette Mercurius Allsopp,
an Richard
Dem se yu doz kom from
waan ainchen French:
abasourdir: bruk stik
inna ya muumuu haad-eez
wat kech ahantabanta. Tu-biisaidz
biitin wail pon di eez drom/ai-paas
swel-op wan tongh dat tiit don bait.
Ai’z (kech) jombii, na liks
fa juk mi til mi na eebl noo moo:
wan-a-dem noo-neem taipaMan
wa doz git gaada-op inna
Wanderings in South
America. Ai iz dis Jombiibush-laif
a-frii-op a-le-goo mad
gud laik mii hed na gud.
Bank-Ous
Belii iz bin
ii doz git ful-op wit di wok
o tiit-an-tungh wa doz bait
di fruut an skin a di dutii
= sun waata eer an aal dem
ada Jombii huu doz gi-op deself
fa tek di ples a baad-main /
shain-ai-tek-ops
wa doz kaaz di (baad) win
in-a dii piipl dem baadii:
si-far jombii a-chyaant:
beg-pree / moor
taimz
ar faiya.
Jombii Senchorii/Gaard
Mii aantii jiijii get shi neem from
keemoo mi broda
fos-chail fa mi modo and mi faado
dii beebii keemoo kudn-a-se
jinet
soo ii se jiijii
an iz soo da neem lef pon shii.
dii sun di reez-an-set pon keemoo
bo na keemoo mi kom taak bot hee
iz jiijii!
mi ansesta jombii jiijii
laik luv bilii.
(shii iz dii waan . . .
di stap govna treen wid dem
udda big-belii Bukston-omun dat dee)
yo gafa troo lasoo pon mi
ar mi go stree-wee from da-wa
mi kom hee fo-see
soo?
leeta fa luv bilii tuu
le-mi fos tel yo bot mii aantii jiijii.
wen mi a-pree in-a mi miro in mii an
mii ansesta neem?
(jiizos jombii tekin tuu laangh fa kom)
iz dem ansesta laik jiijii
mi doz bii tinkin bot
soo?
mi doz tel dem street-op
shi livin opsteez!
Ehe iz shii
mi aantii jiijii
a ool ool afrikaan oomun
shi barn eetiin-nainti-eet
iz chrii senchurii da whomun sii
wen mi kaal dem fa kom
fa diil wid aal diiz
iimorjensii?
shii doz de upsteez
in shi bed an rait hee
in-a mii hed.
mi doz tel dem se
mi niid dii powa-an-lait kaaz?
jiijii upsteez weetin fa shi tii!
Dem een blej ta-noo!
from Jombii Jamborii
Jeremy Jacob Peretz and Joan Cambridge-Mayfield
Listen to:
We, I and I, Aunty Joan and Jeremy, work together on many things, while even if many times making one another crazy—bassidy?—in the process. We met over a decade ago whilst Joan was presenting an iteration of her monumental musical drama, Ting-a-Ling-a-Ling, Schoolbell Ring: Di Bush Tun Reenforest, and haven’t stopped our liaison since. We write together and translate together, which might present some of the complication and tek-ops, but also much or most of the joy and love we share in creating. What we make together we would never make alone. Our writing and other work happens over countless conversations and deliberations, with near-daily dynamics of mystic meditations and static contentions unfolding in their own (multigenerational) time scales. Jeremy’s child/Joan’s godchild is often involved, as are many others. We claim no consistent anything, but we do try to hold tight to the writing system/orthography suggested by the University of Guyana’s Guyanese Languages Unit.
Bidirectional, some of our poems begin in Kriiyaliiz—most do—but also many begin in English/Inglish. We self-translate, after or while we individually and collaboratively write poems and stories about memory. As in the three poems shared here, we usually begin with an ancestor story (i.e., Aunty Gigi/jiijii), a Kriiyaliiz/Creolese proverbial provocation by Aunty Joan (i.e., Clarise “not a woman to take-she-stomach-make-bankhouse”), or a perplexion of Jeremy’s concerning historical sources (i.e., Waterton’s “nondescript” in relation to Aunty Joan’s Yukuriba).
We are still learning so much, including to write in Kriiyaliiz/Creolese, and find need to continuously revise our spellings especially. Mistakes happen, happily. We see this as a new/generative translation tradition at least in textual form. For Jombii centuries/sentries people have been translating Creole languages into others, while guarding and relinquishing glories and (dis)grace, heights and depths/deaths, life-words. Our Jombii words, “wild,” “lowly,” are (de)sedimented with vilified ancestors we love: “burned / retrieved from the pyre / smashed and mixed / and drunk / inhaled, re-membered / forgotten.”
Bidirectional, some of our poems begin in Kriiyaliiz—most do—but also many begin in English/Inglish. We self-translate, after or while we individually and collaboratively write poems and stories about memory. As in the three poems shared here, we usually begin with an ancestor story (i.e., Aunty Gigi/jiijii), a Kriiyaliiz/Creolese proverbial provocation by Aunty Joan (i.e., Clarise “not a woman to take-she-stomach-make-bankhouse”), or a perplexion of Jeremy’s concerning historical sources (i.e., Waterton’s “nondescript” in relation to Aunty Joan’s Yukuriba).
We are still learning so much, including to write in Kriiyaliiz/Creolese, and find need to continuously revise our spellings especially. Mistakes happen, happily. We see this as a new/generative translation tradition at least in textual form. For Jombii centuries/sentries people have been translating Creole languages into others, while guarding and relinquishing glories and (dis)grace, heights and depths/deaths, life-words. Our Jombii words, “wild,” “lowly,” are (de)sedimented with vilified ancestors we love: “burned / retrieved from the pyre / smashed and mixed / and drunk / inhaled, re-membered / forgotten.”
Jeremy Jacob Peretz is coauthor of Jombii Jamborii (forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse), a chapbook of Kriiyaliiz (Guyanese Creole) and English language poems collaboratively written and translated with Joan Cambridge-Mayfield. Jeremy’s scholarship, writing, and multimedia practice have been widely recognized, including with fellowships and grants from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Institute of American Cultures, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, and the Fowler Museum at UCLA, as well as the Caribbean Studies Association’s biennial Best Dissertation Award. Jeremy’s essays, poems, and films are available through such publications as African American Review, Anthropology News, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Caribbean Quarterly, Journal of Africana Religions, New West Indian Guide, and Postcolonial Text. Jeremy holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles and teaches in the Faculty of Education and Humanities at the University of Guyana.
Joan Cambridge-Mayfield is an Afro-feminist environmental protector, former leading member of Guyana’s press corps, and author of the internationally acclaimed novel Clarise Cumberbatch Want to Go Home (Ticknor & Fields/The Women’s Press, 1987). In the 1970s Joan served Howard University’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities. By the 1980s Joan walked away from a scholar’s desk at the Library of Congress to head for the Guyana rainforest where she spent nearly two decades immersed in her environment, researching, writing, and working on her parcel of the “last of pristine Amazonia” at Yukuriba Falls on the Essequibo River. Joan’s musical drama was recognized within the United Nations’ World Decade for Cultural Development. Her writing has appeared in the Antioch Review and was anthologized in Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present (edited by Margaret Busby; Jonathan Cape/Pantheon, 1992). Aunty Joan is also fellow traveler with and widow to Julian Mayfield, and is forever following his profound jumbi guidance.
