Aquí era el paraíso: Seleccion de poemas de Humberto Ak’abal = Here Was Paradise: Selected Poems of Humberto Ak’abal

According to Wikipedia, “Humberto Ak'abal... (31 October 1952 – 28 January 2019), was a K'iche' Maya poet from Guatemala. Ak'abal wrote in his native language of K'iche', and then translated his poetry into Spanish. With the translations of his works into numerous languages and international recognition, Ak'abal is considered to be ‘the most renowned Maya Ki'che' poet’ in the world and one of the best known Guatemalan writers in Europe and Latin America.”

Ak'abal was 38 before he published his first book of poetry. From his more than 25 books of poetry, Patricia Aldana, who was born and raised in Guatemala and who is perhaps best-known as the founder of Groundwood Books, has selected 64 of his poems to share with Canadian youth. The poems, which each appear on facing pages first in Spanish and then in English, have been divided amongst 12 themes or categories that bear titles such as “Love”, “Bugs”, “As Evening Falls” and “Living and Dying”. The number of poems in each category vary from a low of two in “Love” to nine in “Village Mornings”. Separating the sections and introducing the theme of the next section are colorful two-page spreads created by Amelia Lau Carling who was also born and brought up in Guatemala, and the content of her art for this book reflects the country of her birth.

In the “Introduction”, readers are told that “Ak'abal wrote for adults, but his masterful simplicity makes the poems accessible to readers of all ages”, and the publisher suggests an audience of grades 4 and up/ages 9 and up. Part of Ak'abal’s accessibility is due to his poems in this collection being quite short, ranging in length from “Stones” two lines to just a pair of poems, “Crying Fit” and “Cemetery”, that require a second column of text. Though adults will be able to identify a number of Ak'abal poems that will appeal to the low end of the recommended audience range, in the main, the collection’s contents will find a more receptive independent reading audience amongst high schoolers.

For some readers, what may be missing from this bilingual collection is a sense of context. The use of the past tense in the book’s title should raise the question, “If there was paradise, why isn’t there paradise now?” Those young readers who actually do stop to read the “Introduction” will learn: “The history of Guatemala is complex. It has the highest Indigenous population as a percentage of any country in the Americas. And Maya people have suffered terrible discrimination, violence and poverty since the arrival of the Europeans.” Ak'abal wrote from within the numerous parameters of his own life, and Canadian juveniles, not knowing the backdrops to Ak’abal’s life, will apply their own understandings to his work. For example, the ghosts that Canadian children will meet in the eight poems in the section entitled “Ghosts” are likely quite different from the ghosts Ak'abal had in mind when he created the poems in his native language of K'iche'.

Nevertheless, the contents of Aquí era el paraíso: Seleccion de poemas de Humberto Ak’abal = Here Was Paradise: Selected Poems of Humberto Ak’abal are to be savored and ruminated upon. Kudos to Patricia Aldana for bringing these poems to us.

On Ak'abal’s official website, readers will discover that “The K'iche' language has no word for poet; he is called ‘singer’.” Even that fact is poetry.