A quick glimpse at Indonesian women poets through their work

Antologi Wanita Penyair Indonesia (An Anthology of Poems by Indonesian Women Poets); By Korrie Layun Rampan; Balai Pustaka, Jakarta, December 1997; xxiv + 539 pp

BOGOR (JP): Indonesia is fertile soil for poetry. It is generally understood that a poem reflects the contemplation of the poet, who builds up images born of his contemplative mind.

This creative productivity is found among both men and women poets. The abundance of poems created by female poets has prompted Korrie Layun Rampan to compile 100 works considered among the best, in an anthology. Some of the poets included in this anthology have published their own collections of poems.

Korrie, 45, is himself a writer of literary essays, short stories and several poems and was an editor of the defunct Sarinah women's magazine.

This anthology is significant, in that the development of poetry in Indonesia depends to a great extent on the print media. This means that poems published in the media are not usually well documented compared to publication in book form.

The history of women's roles in literature here can be traced back as far as the 17th century when a woman called Sultanah Safiatuddin acted as an arts patron in Aceh.

Then in the 19th century Siti Aisah We Tenriolle in Bugis, Sulawesi, came up with a long work of 7,000 pages known as La Galigo.

Perhaps the first woman poet in modern Indonesia was Selasih, the pen name of Seleguri Ismail. Some lines in one of her better known works, Cinta yang suci (Pure love) are quoted in the introduction: I love you with all my heart/with the holiest love of a mother ... I care not if my soul leaves my body/or if I get drowned in the sea/I care not if I lose all in my possession/As long as I can redeem your soul.

More and more women poets have come up with their works, introducing various forms and themes. Korrie notes that there are in all 111 published women poets in Indonesia and 22 of them have poetry collections to their names.

In this book, Korrie discusses only 30 women poets, noting that many would go unrecorded for the main reason that they did not publish. The works quoted in this book are from the 1940s to the 1990s.

The anthology starts with Nursjamsu with what Korrie describes are her individualistic expressive poems, followed by the "economic" tendency in the use of words by Samiati Alisyahbana, daughter of literary leading figure Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana, to contemporary poet Nenden Lilis A. Works by the 26-year-old Nenden, from West Java, are described as being simple in words, yet profound in imagination.

Age plays an important role in the drawing up of this anthology. It seems that age indirectly depicts the development of themes and the situation explored in the poems.

The collection is also important because it shows a chain in the history of poetry in Indonesia in terms of word choice, sound and mood.

Both noted poets and less known ones are featured, such as Siti Nuraini whose works appeared in the late 1940s.

At this juncture, it is worth noting, though not surprising, that many talented women seem to have lacked room to develop once they married.

The poems are diverse, ranging from domestic life to matters pertaining to society, culture, politics and the environment.

Toety Heraty implies the rebellion that women stage against male domination. Her poems are both forceful and gentle. Lines in one of her poems, Dan Bunga Tenar (And the Famous Flower), testify to this tendency: and the famous flower called a woman/has withered in road corners/both the mien and the charm have gone/I also lost/black pearls of drops of blood/oozing from a hidden wound/when the performance was being experienced to the full:/a male mask dance.

Another poet, Diah Hadaning, is prominent in that she is quite prolific as a poet with 10 poetry collections especially from 1970 to 1980. She writes in simple but fluent language, for instance: birds of the tropical forest/make their nest in the buzzing of machines/their eggs drop the tropical seeds/weeping over the faithfulness of trees/their sound make bloody leaves fall/... while the machines continue to fell history (From Senandung Hutan Kayu Perupuk Kalimantan (Song of the timber forest in Kalimantan).

Literary critic Riris K. Toha-Sarumpaet regrets that the compilation exposes the poets almost as if without flaw. However, the writer's notes do help the lay reader with insights into the richly varied works -- that Diah, for one, mostly leaves social criticism to readers as she acts as witness, though often through an "inflation" of words; or that the "playful" verses of Ida Ayu Galuhpethak, Korrie says, reflect a deep understanding of children.

The poems reflect how women feel and how women, in the profundity of their emotion, view the world.

As this is perhaps the first collection of women poets' works, more studies are needed on their contribution in poetry here.

-- Sjaiful Masri

The reviewer is with a Bogor-based dialog group on literature, Salju Bogor.