Jaden piblik/Public Garden

My Poetry Translation and Recording Featured in a “Sound Walk” at the Boston Public Garden

ECHOES APP

Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States

A collaboration with between Cantabridgian poet Jacques Fleury and Bostonian musician Rachel Devorah Wood Rome, Ph.D.by Jacques Fleury

“Sun Bathing” Image C/O Jacques Fleury

I am featured in a “Sound Walk” recording on the Boston Public Garden!

I was commissioned by Berklee College of Music Professor, Dr. Rachel Rome, who discovered me on the Haitian American Artists of Massachusetts Facebook page, to translate and record a poem to her naturalistic electronic musical composition at Berklee recording studios.  The recording is divided into three sections, each having its own sound and intent achieved by dividing the poem into three parts. You can listen to it as part of your meditation practice, whether manually or at the Boston Public Garden itself should you be visiting or live in the Boston area.

The poem was originally written in English  by Dr. Jason Allen Paissant, a professor of Jamaican descent who speaks seven languages. 

It is about the manmade  erosion of our natural wonders and entitled TREENESS. Below is the poem, the translation and link to the public garden recording which you can listen to manually or visit the garden to listen automatically on the app. 

Check it out!

Link to my Haitian Creole translation of the poem Treeness at the Boston public garden, which will be there indefinitely…

You can visit and listen for years to come on your phone by downloading the ECHOES app!

Link to listen to the recording on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/jadenpiblik

Link to download on Echoes App to listen manually if NOT in Boston or at the Public Garden if you are:

https://explore.echoes.xyz/collections/d859Ek1TXRNh64gz

“All Soundwalks are located at Boston Common and Boston Public Garden. Boston Common and Public Garden are open 

from 6:30 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. each day.

Installation Title: Jaden Piblik/public garden

A diverse collection of plants from around the world live together in the Boston Public Garden, embodying the ideals and contradictions of the United States. Heralded as the “first public botanical garden in the United States,” this historic site reflects a uniquely American paradox: the aspiration for multicultural democratic inclusivity juxtaposed with the tenants of colonialism. Nature is not left to thrive on its own terms but meticulously curated, shaped to conform to Victorian notions of beauty and order. jaden piblik is an electroacoustic soundwalk setting of the Haitian-Cantabrigian poet Jacques Fleury’s Haitian-Creole translation of the English-language poem “Treeness” by Jason Allen-Paisant. The work bridges languages and traditions, resonating with the complex, layered histories embodied in the Public Garden itself.”-qtd. from the Echoes website.

Treeness

By Jason Allen-Paisant

A tapestry of earth suspended

In a forested temple

Beneath the roots

The sheer face of a cliff

Music from a rock gong

Among the snakes

Of the rhododendrons

Trembling at the blackness

Of their skin a human walking

Among the birds

Past the barrier of time

A climb away from land

Where we punish ourselves

Because there are no trees

Because the woodlands

Have been cut down and

Land has no time for itself

If my thoughts can become

Ageless let them travel to a place

Called Infinite from

The words that kill time that kill

Things that kill vines let me lie

In the infinity of a beetle in

Its meshwork in the muscles

That grow from its burrowing a way

From the noises

Of the crowd whose sounds silence

The music of rhododendrons

Who shun the temple of the rock gong

And the sacred hanging tapestry where

The birds’ thoughts echo

Dear tree let me lose

my head and find it in the

Hairs of the birches

In the air where my feet meet

the river that blossoms

From their exposed veins

Treeness

By Jason Allen-Paisant

(Translated to Haitian Creole by Jacques Fleury)

Yon tapi sou latè sispan

Nan yon tanp forè

Anba rasin yo

Fè fas a absoli nan yon falèz

Mizik ki soti nan yon gong wòch

Pami koulèv yo

Nan rododendron yo

Tranble nan nwa a

Nan po yo, yon moun ap mache

Pami zwazo yo

Pase baryè tan an

Yon grenpe lwen tè a

Kote nou pini tèt nou

Paske pa gen pye bwa

Paske rakbwa yo te koupe

Epi tè a pa gen tan pou tèt li

Si panse m ka vin san laj

Kite yo vwayaje nan yon kote

Yo rele Enfini

Soti nan pawòl ki touye tan ki touye

Bagay ki touye pye rezen

kite m kouche nan infini yon skarabe

Nan net li nan misk yo

Ki grandi nan twou li ale

Pou li soti nan bwi yo

Nan foul moun ki fè silans

Mizik la nan rododendron yo

Ki moun ki evite tanp gong wòch la

Ak sakre tapi pandye a

Kote panse zwazo yo fè eko

Chè pye bwa, kite m pèdi tèt mwen

Epi jwenn li nan cheve nan Birches yo

Nan lè a, kote pye m ‘kontre

Larivyè Lefrat la ki fleri

Soti nan venn ekspoze yo

______________________________________________________________

Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His latest publication “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at all Boston Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, University of Wyoming, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, amazon etc… He has been published in prestigious publications such as Spirit of Change Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Litterateur Redefining World anthologies out of India, Poets Reading the News, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene among others…Visit him at:  http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury.–

Rachel Devorah Wood Rome
Rachel Devorah Wood Rome is a Boston-based electronic musician, educator, and labor organizer. She values machines for their patience and capacity to remember. She is interested in superhuman prolongation, opaque complexity, the re-signification of archaic tools and materials, and parallels between the physical properties and social meanings of spaces. Her work has received support from the Adrian Piper Foundation (Berlin), EMS (Stockholm), INA/GRM (Paris), the Goethe Institut [DE], MassMoCA [US], the New Museum [US], New Music USA, STEIM (Amsterdam), Swissnex [CH], and Villa Albertine [FR]. It has been released on pan y rosas discos (Chicago); Infrequent Seams (NYC); and Full Spectrum Records (Oakland), published by parallax; Feminist Media Histories; and Ugly Duckling Presse, and has been heard in fourteen countries on four continents performed by/with artists such as Nava Dunkelman, Fred Frith, Forbes Graham, Brad Henkel, Seiyoung Jang, Ava Mendoza, Roscoe Mitchell, Robbie Lee, Lydia Moyer, Ryan Muncy, Liew Niyomkarn, Erin Rogers, and the William Winant Ensemble. She is employed as an Assistant Professor of Electronic Production and Design | Creative Coding at the Berklee College of Music, and Vice President of Full-Time Faculty with MS1140 AFT Massachusetts.