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NLA News - home October 2005 Volume XVI Number 1

Bahasa Muse

Ian Campbell discusses writing poems in Indonesian, and his recent donation of works to the Library’s Manuscripts Collection

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Evening poetry reading and literature discussion session organised by Lingkar Studi Sastra, a literary group associated with the Cirebon Arts Council, Cirebon, West Java, 4 October 2004. (Ian Campbell with members of the Cirebon arts community.)
Photograph courtesy Ian Campbell 

When historians of Australia look back at the early period of the 21st century, they may well characterise it as the time when external issues and events in the Asian region became a dominant aspect of our own Australian story. Indonesia, our large neighbour, has played a significant part in this new relationship. While, quite naturally, almost all of the current Australian discussion and writing about Indonesia has been in English, it can also be carried out by Australians writing in the Indonesian language, Bahasa Indonesia, too—by Australians of Indonesian heritage, or those who like myself acquired the language from formal training in Australia.

In my own case, I have been writing poetry in the Indonesian language, on Australian and Indonesian themes, for some years now. Some of this poetry has been published in the Indonesian mass media and in literary magazines or newsletters. Over the period May 2002 to February 2005 a number of my Bahasa poems have been published in Jakarta, and in the literary pages of the largest circulation paper in Bandung. In February this year, I donated copies of these publications to the National Library’s Manuscripts Collection.

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Ian Campbell reading his Indonesian-language poem, ‘Sesudah pembakaran (After fire)’, to a group of about 80 people at the evening poetry event sponsored and organised by Lingkar Studi Sastra, Cirebon, 4 October 2004
Photograph courtesy Ian Campbell  

I had commenced my studies of the Indonesian language at the University of Sydney in 1966–67, and in the 1980s I also undertook post-graduate research on aspects of Indonesian family and inheritance law, culminating in the awarding of a Master of Arts. However, it was my taking up of successive public service positions in Sydney in the late 1980s and early 1990s—involving liaison with the vast array of ethnic and refugee communities now settling in Sydney—that indirectly stimulated my interest in their literature. I started writing poetry in English, some published in ethnic press publications, particularly in the Vietnamese and Arabic language press in Sydney.

With this new interest, I discovered that in 1991 the prominent Indonesian poet Sapardi Djoko Damono had collaborated with two Australians—initially the Canberra academic and poet, R.F. Brissenden, and, following Brissenden’s death, with Sydney University’s David Brooks—to produce the first-ever anthology of Australian poetry in Indonesian translation, Mendorong Jack Kuntikunti—Sepilihan Sajak dari Australia. It was my reading of this bilingual anthology that showed me that, in many cases, superb translations of Australian poems and concepts could be achieved in Indonesian. The poetry of Judith Wright, Kenneth Slessor and David Campbell (no relation), for example, found new voice through translations in the Sapardi and Brissenden anthology.

In 1992, while visiting Indonesia, I read some of the reportage about the fateful flight of a plane, piloted by a young woman, Fierda Panggabean, lost over West Java. I began to write a long poem about these events. The result was the narrative poem ‘Selamat jalan Fierda’ (Goodbye Fierda), which I finalised after return to Australia. It was published in Sydney in 1993, in the Indonesian-language community newspaper, Warta Berita Aquila. Ten years later, in December 2002, it was published in Indonesia itself, in the national Jakarta-based literary magazine, Horison.

That poem, however, was not the first one I had published in Indonesia. In early 2002 I had written a long poem in Indonesian about my experiences in the South Coast (New South Wales) bushfires of that year. Titled ‘Sesudah pembakaran’ (After Fire), this piece touched on the theme of ‘fire’ (kebakaran) and ‘firing’ (pembakaran), and fire’s positive and negative effects. For instance, the creative firing of raw clay was played against the devastating natural phenomenon of the bushfires which all Australians know. I was aware, too, that Indonesian news had carried stories about the Australian fires, and that Indonesians, especially as a result of the long-running jungle fires in Kalimantan, could appreciate the effects which large-scale forest fires always have in human and other terms.

Perhaps it was the poem’s strong thematic content that led the literary editor of Kompas to include it in the newspaper’s monthly Bentara literary segment, along with poetry from young Indonesian poets. The same poem was also published in the newsletter of a Bandung literary association in late 2002, as well as in Kompas’s yearly book anthology of poetry. So, alongside poems by 46 prominent and emerging contemporary Indonesian poets was the poem in Indonesian I had written about the Australian bushfires!

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Poetry reading and literature discussion session in Tasikmalaya, West Java, 1 October 2004. Organised by Yayasan Sanggar Sastra Tasik, the Tasikmalaya literary association
Photograph courtesy Ian Campbell
 

Over the last few years I have approached the writing of poems in Indonesian in a number of ways. Sometimes I have taken poems that I have written in English, primarily on multicultural themes, and developed these into new poems in Indonesian. As the poet, I am not constrained on these occasions by the need to adhere as closely to the original poem in English as a literary translator might need to. Indeed, given the different sound and grammatical structures of the languages, this is not possible. Rather, as in the case of my poem, ‘Meninggalkan Beirut’ (Leaving Beirut)—about a woman leaving Lebanon because of civil strife in the 1970s—I look to the particular qualities of various Indonesian words to produce new resonances of sound, imagery and pace, even if my aim is still to produce a moving poem about loss and involuntary flight. This poem was one of a series published in the Bandung newspaper’s weekly literary supplement in February 2003.

Conversely, for other poems my original drafts may at first appear as an odd jumble of English and Indonesian key words, phrases and ideas. Gradually, they then take shape into a coherent poem which is wholly in the Indonesian language. At times, I am also guided by a sense of rhythm and mood, particularly when a musical effect is sought, as for example in my poem ‘Keroncong di Plaza Senayan’ (Keroncong—traditional music—at Plaza Senayan). This poem was written following my visit to a Jakarta shopping mall in 2001, at a time when a musical group was playing keroncong tunes.

The poem ‘Semenanjung Bilgola’ (Bilgola Headland/Peninsula)—published in Indonesia as part of a 2003 interview about my poetry writing, and later also the title poem in a collection produced in Cirebon, West Java, on the occasion of my visit in October 2004—reflects not only on the environment around Sydney’s northern beaches and my parents’ involvement in the conservation of a coastal headland, but also on the nature of our memorials to our parents. The poem draws some inspiration from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry (in German), but also from the poetry of West Java poet, Acep Zamzam Noor, particularly his poem, ‘Angin dan Batu’ (Wind and Stone).

Another poem, ‘Musim celana di Australia’ (Trouser Season in Australia) is my lighthearted response to the well-known poems (in Indonesia) of Joko Pinurbo, about the humorous aspects of our daily life, whatever society or culture we may live in. Some of my more experimental recent poetry, such as ‘Di kebun raya, Mt Tomah’ (In the Botanic Garden, Mt Tomah)—which includes an imaginary dialogue—draws upon aspects of the style of poetry being written by Cecep Syamsul Hari and others, from Bandung. So it is not just a tabula rasa that my poetry presents—I hope my own creative writing is open to the environment of current poetry writing in Indonesia itself.

The Mt Tomah poem was one of three poems published in the literary pages of the Bandung daily, Pikiran Rakyat, on 29 January 2005, just a month after the disastrous tsunami. It is a poem about ageing and was prompted by visits, over time, to one of the places that I love in the Blue Mountains, near Sydney. But it also draws upon Indonesian imagery, and reminiscences from over 35 years earlier. In the last line of the poem, written just after the Aceh tsunami, I reflected upon the power of nature.

Another poem, ‘Travel Warning’, deals with some of my experiences, both real and surreal, of being in Indonesia in September/ October 2004, when travel warnings had been issued by the Australian Government. The short poem, ‘No Warning’, written in January 2005, with the backdrop of the incomprehensible scale of events in Aceh, is a reflection on those events. These poems have become part of a whole series of reflective poems written and published in January/February 2005, by Indonesian poets themselves, following the catastrophic tsunami and earthquakes in Sumatra. Here are a few lines of my poem, ‘No Warning’:

No Warning

tak ada peringatan,
sekarang laut merah,
menelan semua,
tertinggal saja kemuraman
dan ikatan kemanusiaan kita.
there was no warning,
now the sea itself is red,
as it swallows all,
and what is left is the dim gloom
and the ties that bind our common humanity.

This leads me to my final point—namely that, as creative spirits, what we can express through writing in not just English, but also in Indonesian perhaps, are the values, experiences, hopes and fears of Australians who are united by the bonds of common humanity with Indonesians, and the other peoples of this one world. Despite seemingly different cultural roots and experiences, we are strengthened, revealing ourselves as a people willing to learn about, and creatively contribute to, the wellbeing not just of our own country, but of our region.

IAN CAMPBELL is currently researching contemporary poetry from West Java. In 1998 and 2001 he wrote National Library of Australia News articles on his great-uncle Arthur Wheen, translator of E.M. Remarque’s novels. In 2002 he donated to the Library material relating to the life and work of his grandfather, the pioneer Australian ornithologist Archibald James Campbell

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