Four Poems by Mayamor in TRIPWIRE 19

Jacob Laneria

Nov 6

The latest issue of TRIPWIRE: a journal of poetics is now available for order. The volume includes four poems by revolutionary martyr Felix Salditos also known as Mayamor, which I translated from Hiligaynon to English. After a few months, this issue, like all previous issues of TRIPWIRE will be freely available for download. Sharing my introduction/translation notes for this project:

Mayamor is one of the pen names used by poet Roger Felix Salditos, who was active in the revolutionary movement in Panay Island, Philippines. Salditos and six other companions were killed in Antique in August 2018, in what authorities claim to be a firefight but rights groups contend to be more likely a massacre. According to the National Democratic Front, the 'Antique 7' was part of the underground movement's education and propaganda staff. A few of Salditos' poems have appeared in several party cultural organs, but most are posted in a blog he maintained. He primarily wrote in Hiligaynon, but his poems written in English were collected and translated into Filipino by another revolutionary poet Kerima Lorena Tariman, published in 50: Mga Binalaybay ni Roger Felix Salditos (Sentro ng Wikang Filipino-UP Diliman, 2020).

Because of his revolutionary work, Mayamor has a distinctly casual and conversational tone in his poems. This makes translating him straight forward, but also challenging. Though Hiligaynon is also my mother tongue, I grew up in an suburban neighborhood. This is on top of being primarily proficient in English, and to much lesser extent Filipino, the languages of instruction in the Philippines. Those coming from middle-class or urban backgrounds would find Mayamor's language archaic, though this variant is actually the one used by the sectors he has immersed with; peasants and indigenous peoples. That said, I retained the names of local flora of which he mentions several. This is to be expected since his poems tackle recurring subjects of hunger and making do in the country side. Translating them into English seemed unnecessary. In discussing political and economic concepts, Mayamor often derives English words into Hiligaynon and I simply reverted them back; 'globalisasyon' is globalization, 'liberalisasyon' is liberalization for example. His poetry is exceptional in how it concretizes historical materialism through the lived experiences of the marginalized, always expressed in accessible language. He describes losses in agriculture due to liberalization as a 'sharp pain in the stomach', while after discussing the harm done by pesticides he declares concentration of land ownership as 'the true plague to society'. In translating these poems I want to get across that for Mayamor, revolution is not abstract but rather corporeal and urgent.

Tariman's translations is included in full in her collected works, Sa Aking Henerasyon, published by Gantala Press in 2022, available for order here. Valuable studies on Mayamor's work has been made by Karlo Mikhail Mongaya and Jose Monfred Sy.