Poetry from home and away featured at festival
Poetry from home and away featured at festival
By Mehru Jaffer
JAKARTA (JP): If poetry indeed be trouble drowned in tears,
then be prepared for a full flood at an international poetry
festival to open here on Thursday.
In collaboration with Winternachten, The Hague's yearly
literary event in Holland, Theater Utan Kayu (TUK) has chosen 21
poets from 10 countries to come here and pour their hearts out in
verse, especially about the pangs of being in a minority and
about identity politics in pluralistic societies.
"The purpose remains to expose Indonesians to poetry being
written in other parts of the world," explains Ayu Utami, the
program coordinator, an author and also editor of Kalam, TUK's
literary magazine.
She feels that a festival like this one is sure to find a
great reception in a society where an oral tradition of
story-telling remains strong.
As one belonging to the small community of media activists
along with those who like to participate in intellectual and
artistic activities free from censorship and pressures of the
market, she feels that like-minded people here lack contact with
writers even from other Asian countries, especially those not
from English-speaking ones.
"There exists a language barrier within countries. We
simply do not know each other's language. With this festival a
network will develop," she hopes.
For the same reason some of the participating poets come from
countries as far flung and diverse as South Africa, Austria and
Japan.
One of the many Indonesian guests at Winternachten, Utami was
inspired by the unique event where literature remained the
nucleus and intercultural relations received a tremendous boost.
On her return, it became her dream to hold a similar event at
TUK that has been the venue since its inception in the mid-1990s
of many an intimate, noncommercial performance.
According to Ton van de Langkruis, artistic coordinator of
Winternachten, his festival too receives continual requests to
hold the event outside the Netherlands as well. The Jakarta
festival is the first one to be organized under the new name of
Winternachten Overseas, to be followed by a meeting of authors in
South Africa next year.
Apart from readings by poets, the event includes an exhibition
and a literary book festival too. At the newly opened Aksara
Bookstore in Kemang, South Jakarta, poets Eddin Khoo, a Chinese-
Indian from Malaysia, and Mustafa Stitou, who is Dutch of
Morrocan origin, will initiate a discussion "Minority and
Identity Politics in a Plural Society".
Senior Indonesian poet Sutardji Calzoum Bachri thought that it
was a good idea to give young and promising poets a platform to
both air and share their thoughts.
He feels it is time to listen to the voice of the times and of
the future. It is true that the eldest Indonesian poet
participating in the event is perhaps no more than 40 years old.
While Taufik Ikram Jamil, B Prasetyo, Alkatiri, Acep Zamzam Noor
and Joko Pinurbo will participate in the three-day festival in
Jakarta, others like Dorothea Rosa, Sindu Putra, Ulfatin Ch and
Zawawi Imron will join the festival when it moves to Yogyakarta
for another three days on April 30.
Most eagerly awaited is the poetry of Surianto from Suriname
whose ancestors left their village in the Pekalongan area of
central Java decades ago. Interestingly Surianto writes his poems
in old Javanese, which he has inherited from his family now
settled in Suriname, in a somewhat distorted form, so to speak.
Sitot Srengenge from TUK who received about seven poems from
Surianto for translation into Indonesian for the festival catalog
discovered that the poet no longer followed the formal structure
of the ancient language that is divided into three levels for
communication with the revered, the not so familiar
and intimates.
For information on the festival, telephone 8573388.