When the former Poet Laureate of Ottawa launches his newest book of poetry on October 25, it will coincide with the 110th anniversary of the birth of Borges, who lived from 1899 to 1986.
“Unanimous Night,” the name of Dabydeen’s book and its title poem, was also inspired by one of Borges’ most famous short stories, “The Circular Ruins,” a mystical tale that ponders existence, illusion, and dreams.
Dabydeen explained how the term “unanimous night” holds meaning in his new poetry collection.
“In this book, you have an eclectic mix of poems, ideas, and thoughts, the way the imagination works,” he said.
“The poems are disparate, but you try to exert some control and unity. [With] the title, ‘Unanimous Night,’ maybe subconsciously I was yearning for some kind of unity, or some kind of unanimity.”
The multilingual Borges was also a noted translator who believed that translation was an opportunity to improve and enrich an original work, and that there can be many different translations and reconstructions over time that are just as valid as and not inferior to the original.
In the title poem, Dabydeen is responding to what Borges said about writers writing in different languages, and about translation—“what is lost in translation, but, more importantly, what is not lost in translation, especially with the poetic line.”
“I am a poet responding to the Argentine poet Borges. I am reading and thinking between the lines, looking at the metaphors and the symbols and imagery, and from them, trying to make my own literary imaginative interpretation. It’s different from a regular translator. Here you have a poet looking at another poet and seeing correspondences, linkages.”
Dabydeen said every time he writes a poem or prose, he is trying to “explore my own ‘beingness,’ who I am as a human being.”We have more in common that unites us than what divides us.
In this case, Borges helped him, but Dabydeen said there is potential for a poet to find commonality and unanimity with any other poet or “persons interested in the arts.”
Journeying and Love
As an immigrant writer, Dabydeen said the concept of journeying—moving from place to place—has always “obsessed” him.
Written over a period of seven years, “Unanimous Night” speaks to the themes of journeying and love, “fused with the challenges of immigration and indignation at issues of political injustice,” as described by the publisher.
The works bring together iconic personalities and diverse locations from the distant past as well as contemporary times.
They refer to Christopher Columbus' discovery of the so-called “New World,” 15th century Portuguese ruler Henry the Navigator who sponsored the earliest European marine explorations, and renowned sailors such as Portuguese Vasco da Gama who established a sea route from Europe to India.
Dabydeen also writes about Manu from Hindu tradition, the great Athenian philosopher Socrates, and Greek mythological characters like Odysseus and Poseidon.
Socio-political references include figures such as British novelist Joseph Conrad, South African Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nelson Mandela, and French Martinique-born author Frantz Fanon, known for his theories on colonial domination and decolonization.
At the book launch, Dabydeen will read from the poem “Cosmic Dance.” There, he contrasts Shiva, a Hindu god also known as the King of Dancers, with Britney Spears and Shakira.
Even as he is looking for unanimity, “underlying all of this, you have great ironies also, of history, of an imperfect world, and where we are all longing to be,” said Dabydeen.
‘Sense of oneness of all our selves’
An award-winning English professor at the University of Ottawa, Dabydeen won his first recognition for his writing before age 20. It was the Sandbach Parker Gold Medal for Poetry in British Guiana (now Guyana), South America, where his grandparents migrated as labourers from India in 1917 and where he was born in 1945.
Dabydeen moved to Canada to attend university in 1970.In 2007, he was co-winner of the top Guyana Prize for Fiction for his novel “Drums of My Flesh.”
“Unanimous Night” is Dabydeen’s 20th book and ninth collection of poetry.
When he writes poetry, Dabydeen says his hope is “for all of us from the same cosmic source—we all came from the same creator—to have the sense that we have more in common that unites us than what divides us . . . the sense of oneness of all our selves, all our lives, and all our identities.”
The book launch for Unanimous Night (Black Moss Press, $16.95) takes place on Sunday, October 25 from 2:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Royal Oak Restaurant, 161 Laurier Ave. East, Ottawa. All are welcome to this free event, which is part of the Sasquatch Reading Series. For more information, please visit http://www.e-sasquatch.ca.
