Part of our monthlong focus on Indonesian poetry sees the PTC partnering with the National Centre for Writing, SOAS, the Oxford University Poetry Society and the Newham Poetry Group to deliver a series of workshops on three contemporary Indonesian poets.
PTC’s Commissioning Editor, the poet Edward Doegar and senior SOAS lecturer Soe Tjen Marching will facilitate these collaborative translation workshops across the UK. Wonderfully, this tour will include the PTC’s first-ever poetry workshop in a bowling club.
The Poets
Shinta Miranda was born on 18 May 1955. Her poetry collection Constance (was published in 2012, and her poems have been published in more than 20 anthologies. She has also written short stories that have been published in Malaysia and Indonesia. She was one of the editors of the cultural and political magazine Bhinneka. Her novel, Langit Dam Square was published in 2017.
Putu Oka Sukanta was born in Singaraja on 29 Juli 1939. He has published six collections of poetry including Selat Bali [The Balinese Straits], and Bulan Di Atas Belo [The Moon above Belo]. His also published six collections of short stories and several novels. Many of his books have been translated into English, German, French and Balinese. Putu Oka has made documentary films and written books about the Indonesian genocide in 1965-66. He has received several awards, including the NEMIS Prize from Chile, International Human Rights Watch New York in 2012, and Herb-Feith Human Rights Education Australia in 2016.
Norman Erikson Pasaribu is a writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Dubbed by English PEN as ‘part of the long tradition of queer Catholic writing’, his first book of poems Sergius Seeks Bacchus won a PEN Translates Award in 2018. Translated into English by Tiffany Tsao, the book will be published in the UK by Tilted Axis in 2019. In 2017, he won the Young Author Award from the Southeast Asia Literary Council. In the same year, he was chosen as a writer’s in residence in Vietnam by Indonesian National Book Committee and Ministry of Education and Culture. He published a collection of short stories in 2014 and is currently working on his first novel. He is one of most the most celebrated young writers in Indonesia today.
The Facilitators
Translator Soe Tjen Marching is a writer, academic and a composer of avant-garde music from Indonesia. She has won several awards for In 1998, she won a national competition for Indonesian Contemporary Composers held by the German Embassy. In 2010, her work has been selected as one of the two best compositions on the International Competition for avant-garde composers held Singapore. Marching is also a creative writer and a Senior Lector in Indonesian at SOAS University in London. She has published several novels and academic books.
Edward Doegar is a poet, editor and critic based in London, and the commissioning editor at the Poetry Translation Centre. His poems have appeared in various anthologies and journals, including Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe) and Granta. He is a consulting editor at The Rialto, a fellow of The Complete Works and was general manager of the Poetry Society between 2013 and 2017. His pamphlet, For Now, was published by Clinic in 2017.
This series of workshops was supported by the Indonesian National Book Committee & the London Book Fair.
