Met up with Dreamer Idiot (below) for a cup of tea at Bangsar Village. How strange to have a friend and share a blog (Puisi-Poesy) with someone you've never met in real life. We had tons of bookish and poetic things to talk about, and then I took him over to Silverfish where he acquired even more books (note the Kino bag in hand). It was a pity he could not stay for Lakshmi Pamuntjak's reading, but next time he is in in town we must organise something poetic and fun.
If Dreamer Idiot was shy-shy all you have to do is point a camera in Pang's direction (below) and he's posing. He wants you to appreciate the words on the back of his t-shirt.
Thai artist-activist Chumpon Apisuk brought along Kumjing:
The lady even has her own passport. Discover why here.
But the star of the show was of course Lakshmi (snapped later at Devi's Corner) who read from a couple of stories in The Diary of RS: Musings on Art which I enjoyed very much. I bought a copy of Ellipsis, her collection of poetry.
There was a q&a after the reading and the conversation strayed onto the fact that Indonesian writers have been feeling very isolated over the past 10-15 years, and are little recognised in the West because of the language barrier. Few writers write in English (Lakshmi and Richard Oh being among the exceptions) and translations are limited. It is surprisingly difficult to find copies of Indonesian books in Malaysia, even though the two countries share a common language.
10 comments:
Personally, I find the Indonesian language quite hard to understand, in comparison to Malay. I've never really been able to decipher properly what is being conveyed. (As a side note: when I was little, I was forced to read a Quran translation in Bahasa Indonesia. Oh the pain! The pain!!)
But going back to the topic, it's probably difficult to find their books here because most Malaysians prefer their other exports--their marginally better (when compared to M'sian equivalents) movies and music.
Wow! It's sure looks like a lot of fun, Sharon!
Here's a link to the interview I did with Jack Canfield - http://www.klweekly.com/main.php?art_id=books_canfield
man, she is hot!
why u never SMS me and remind me, Sharon???
Totally forgot. Wanted to pass her a copy of KUTU....
ted - i must say that the only books in indonesian i've struggled with are kids books because that's the standard of my bahasa ... but i did manage to understand quite a lot of ayu utami's reading at the litfest which was largely in indonesian ...
eternal wanderer - yes it was fun. and amir mohammad was there selling t-shirts for his film. real collectors items.
thanks for the link - the article is a very interesting one
visitor - aiyoh - never knew you were that into poetry. she is very beautiful and photogenic.
nah, i'm not into poetry. i just like beautiful women. :P
Thanks for posting Lakshmi's pretty face. Now I realised that I had actually bumped into her at Bangsar Village on Saturday night. It must be after her talk at Silver Fish. ( I was too late :(
I recognised her dress and of course, like The Visitor, I also like to look at beautiful women....hehehe....When she walked past, heads turned.
says one beauty about another (sorry visitor, was speaking to yvonne, not you!)
love your website yvonne ... laughed so hard at the article about frisky passengers ...
Did a divine re-order of nature occur here, i.e. brains and beauty flowed down to the archipelago, the sisa ended here?
hey, i'm beautiful too ... on the inside.
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