Poets share legacy of courage

Acehnese poets Rosni Idham, D. Kemalawati and Azhari took to the open-air Balinese stage of Puri Saraswati on the evening of Oct. 7 in Tribute to Aceh, the opening event of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) 2005.

The poets were accompanied by Robin Lim of Bali-based Yayasan Bumi Sehat, a midwife, maternity and birthing care foundation working on a social rehabilitation project in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam. Lim also read her poems, inspired by her experiences in the field.

Illuminated by a slide show of tsunami survivors, each poem was read first in Bahasa Indonesia, followed by a direct translation into English provided by the festival's Balinese translator, Kadek Krishna Adidharma.

An audience of about 150, sitting in the folding chairs provided or on the bare stone pavement, listened solemnly as a people's history of prolonged suffering and grief -- yet also their strengths, triumphs and hopes -- unfolded in words and images.

In addition to their own work, D. Kemalawati read a piece by fellow Acehnese poet Maskirbi, who perished along with his entire family in the tsunami of December 2004. Her voice resonating with emotion in the final stanzas, several people were moved to tears by the performance.

"I have written only a few poems on the tsunami," said Azhari, who closed the reading. "The tsunami is only a small part of Aceh's history. Aceh is also about 100 years of conflict."

Whether on the Acehnese conflict or on the tsunami, the poetry was clearly bound by a common underlying quality so that the performance, in essence, became a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. -- Chisato Hara