Native LusoCalifornian poet Lara Gularte is descended from residents of Pico, Faial and Flores who immigrated to California during the mid nineteenth century in search of gold and freedom. There is in her biography nothing extraordinary to distinguish her from the thousands of Azoreans who, starting back then  just as some had done a century before when heading to southern Brazil  began rebuilding their lives in lands as distant as the Azores had been in relation to the mainland for our earlier ancestors. For us to speak of our constant historical peregrinations must never be to speak of or try to reinvent that past as a tragedy, for first we must recall that our fate has been far happier, even more glorious, than that of many other peoples in similar circumstances, some of whom were until present generations also almost always in flight en route to the New World.

No, what distinguishes Lara Gularte is not the collective history of her origins, but something now far more important, and that Portugal has come to realize in fairly recent times. I perceive her to be a figure symbolic of the generation to which she belongs, and furthermore symbolic of those who are starting to appear  both in a deep, significant literary and artistic act that is surely the recovery of memory, and the historical and cultural dignification of an entire people. I write about her here as I could of many other Luso descendant writers in North America, particularly those with the U.S. as their principal homeland. Canada, meanwhile, is a world more or less apart, given that, as we know, our immigration to the north is much more recent  while not failing, however, to take into account a good showing there in both Portuguese and English language literature, too.

Another factor has motivated these lines of mine, namely the interview (and the journal itself) that I cite in my epigraph. The group of LusoAmerican writers and poets who for some years now have been finding one another seek a literary status for themselves that, shall we say, goes beyond their own sense of community or the satisfaction inherent in the act of writing in its various forms and purposes wherever those published pages give notice of their/our existence to others, leading to the discovery of what Portugueseness and all those who see themselves reflected in it and identify themselves with it take part in this American human mosaic, and that this overlooked part in the New World society is not merely decorative or interesting  it was fundamental in the construction of the industrial and agricultural foundations that today sustain much of the east and west coasts.

To do so through serious literature is a gesture of more than creativity and civilization  it is response to the ignorance and defamation with which our people were always portrayed in North American literature, and demands an unapologetic recognition that goes beyond the now shut factories in Fall River or the teats of a cow in California. Kale Soup for the Soul, an intergenerational group of these writers in America, has traveled to many cities in the country giving readings and recitals of their works before others who do not know us. Likewise, some of them have participated in the literary and cultural event in Lisbon called the Disquiet International Literary Program, coordinated by Jeff Parker.

All this is by way of drawing reader attention once again to the long interview Lara Gularte granted to the aforementioned journal The Bitter Oleander, whose existence in the world literary panorama I mentioned a bit earlier. The very introduction to the conversation with the poet opens by highlighting almost exclusively the discovery of her ancestry as the fundamental motivation (so to speak) of almost all of Gularte s poetry, contextualizing her feeling of belonging to the writers’ group of which I have been speaking here, its means of communication and interaction, its objectives of national exposure for this literature not as distributed as that, and yet recalling the wide presence of the Portuguese language in the world.

That poets speak of themselves, their worlds and their imaginations is nothing new. That a journal with an editorial policy of looking at the entire world and launching new or unknown poets of any language or tradition (even home-grown, which in Portugal has never been achieved with respect to Azoreans) through translation validates their presence, and by inference or information, recognizes some others in this way, then its time has already come to stand out among us. Lara speaks for herself, of course, but she becomes, in my reading and view, a living symbol for many others LusoAmerican writing is as good as its theme, is already a canon under construction in which its esthetic quality not only claims for itself the best of the American artistic legacy in general but also the memory of the life and blood of those who founded our Portuguese speaking communities throughout that continent  not ignoring the poetic voices from our ancestral homeland like that distinctive pilgrim soul Fernando Pessoa (we must ignore his lofty immigration status in South Africa, with English as a second language), at the center of their attention, and cited by Lara in verses during the same interview.

Saudade of the home place Lara Gularte says of daily life with her Azorean grandparents and greatgrandparents in California, impacted my life by helping to discover my past, and my familys connection to the California landscape where five generations made their home after emigrating from the Azores. As a young girl I grew up on a ranch in a world of ranches. The maternal side of the family, the Neves, had a large ranch in the northern part of the state where they raised cattle, and mainly lived off the land for their sustenance. My father’s side of the family, the Gulartes, were fruit ranchers in the Santa Clara Valley. All my family were tied to the natural cycles and seasons, and had respect and affinity for the landscape and nature. My father was an influence on me growing up. I believe we have a relationship with the land in sharing the cycles of life and death. because of his love of the land, his deep connection to the natural world. It was his identity and now part of my own.

Lara Gularte speaks of her poetry as excavations in search of this past, of this distant ancestry that remains alive and in her writing totally vivid – its core simultaneously empirical, imagined and especially emotional in her poetry. Along with the telluric experience of her first years of personal family upbringing would come years of formal study (she has a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing), residencies in literature including in the Azores, literary sessions of academic and community natures, awards and publications scattered among various journals, and notable books like Days Between Dancing and Tales of the Siskiyou, and lastly her manuscript Kissing the Bee, edited by Frank X. Gaspar (currently under consideration by Tagus Press), plus additional texts invoking her Azorean American ancestors memory.

She speaks of some of the influences on her writing, ranging from Beat Generation literature to Joan Baez and Bob Dylans music, along with other earlier or classical readings and arts. In addition to her participation in the above mentioned Lisbon gathering, she was also in São Miguel for the writers’ symposium Escritas dispersas. Convergências de afectos [Dispersed writings – Convergences of emotions] sponsored by the Azores government’s Direcção Regional das Comunidades [overseas communities office] held in 2009 at the University of the Azores, about Azorean and Portuguese-American literature. Lara Gularte has returned and been at home – on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Bitter Oleander was founded and has been directed by Paul B. Roth from 1974 to the present. It may not be the best known literary journal of its kind in the United States b
ut it is certainly one of the best in its publication of world poetry in both the original and in translation, each issue highlighting a guest writer or poet. format is itself like a work of art that only the dedication and knowledge of the Roths of this world allow. That the magazine has also wound up with a poet of ours just demonstrates its sense of authentic universality, and is not manufactured as usual. In me they have gained a reader forever. To read a modern poet translated from Hebrew or Mandarin is a rare privilege.

Note: Portuguese original posted at:
https://vambertofreitas.wordpress.com/2015/02/08/de-lara-gularte-e-da-redescoberta-poetica-da-ancestralidade-2

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Lara Gularte, The Bitter Oleander / Autumn 2014 Issue Feature, Paul B. Roth (Editor), Fayetteville, NY. www.bitteroleander.com/editor.html
Read more about Lara’s writing at: https://sites.google.com/a/laragularte.com/www/

Terceira-born, California-educated scholar Vamberto Freitas teaches at the University of the Azores in Ponta Delgada, São Miguel, Portugal, and writes extensively on Azorean and Azor-American topics.

Translator Katharine F. Baker, of Azorean ancestry on her father’s side, earned degrees from the University of California Berkeley and the University of Maryland, and studied Portuguese at the University of Pittsburgh