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span class="inline inline-left">Making one’s mark: A director of Komunitas Senen creates his own poem on the giant piece of fabric.These lines of poetry, originally in Indonesian, were scrawled on a giant ribbon of plain synthetic fiber strewn across the fences surrounding the Tekad Merdeka monument across from the Senen train station.

These words stood alongside dozens of other poems telling of different stories and expressing different emotions ranging from a yearning romance to animosity towards the government. They were also what was left of the day’s festive affair of various arts, including musical theatrics and, of course, poetry reading, performed in the area.

The giant ribbon of poetry will be kept by the Lontar Foundation and thus remain in Indonesia. But the words and strokes displayed there represented a tie with thousands of others that are part of Spanish anthropologist and artist Angel Arenas’ ambitious project, “The World –A Giant Poem”.

Arenas said the idea for the project, which basically provides a medium for the people to create poetry in public spaces in the form of spanning sheets of paper, came when he was working with poor communities in Mexico City more than four years ago.

“I realized that although [the people in the communities] were poor, they really could write wonderful things… wonderful emotions into poetry. So I was very excited about this. I wanted this information to be known for many other establishments in the city like the media, politicians and also by other people around,” he said.

To achieve this, the giant poem was started, and Arenas plodded on stubbornly in his push to hold the first event in the world’s third largest square — the Center Square in Mexico City — despite the local leader’s reluctance to grant the necessary permits.

“For me the best place is the central square of Mexico where the ancient Aztec culture was based... And finally I did it. With only US$200, I started [the project]. Finally I got the support from the municipality of the city of Mexico,” he recalled.

From then on, the project has been held in over 30 other cities, including in Turkey where it was done on an army base “to promote the idea of peace”.

Over 4,000 meters of material containing poems have been completed and over 100,000 have participated in “The Giant Poem” in over 40 languages.

Arenas said it was only in Indonesia that he along with his organization held the event in more than one city. Jakarta was the fourth in line, with the previous events in Pontianak, Bali and Yogyakarta.

He said the main reason Indonesia was chosen as a destination was because of the country’s position on the equator, making it in line with the poem’s team of four’s target of connecting cities located along the equator.

Around 500 people attended the event in Jakarta, which involved such big names such as Eka Budianta, Toga Tambunan and Tarigan Noer.

Imam Ma’arif from Komunitas Planet Senen said the Senen area was chosen for the event partly because of its historic value.

Senen in Central Jakarta, currently known for its bustling traffic, sprawls of informal businesses and suffocating air, has been notorious and simultaneously loveable for decades, thus making the event’s theme of life in the big city a fitting one.  

“Indonesia’s history of modern culture begins here. This is where [the poets] gather. They hold discussions in a coffee stall at the Grand Theater, but here is also where the prostitution center used to be,” Imam said.

One of the legendary figures that used to roam the area is Chairil Anwar, dubbed one of the founders of Indonesia’s modern literary style and the 1945 generation of poets. Chairil has wrote a number of memorable and passionate poems such as “Karawang Bekasi” and “Aku”. He died at the age of 26 in Jakarta due to various illnesses.  

Komunitas Planet Senen is striving to maintain the poetic spirit of the area, and “The Giant Poem”, according to the event’s release, is “in line with the spirit that [the community] wishes to revive… so that the ‘public space’ can build its existence as a ‘cultural space’.”

Arenas said that each Indonesian city in which the event was held had its own charms, with Pontianak being the essentially equatorial one, and Yogyakarta having the heritage significance of Borobudur.

As for Jakarta, which was 39th in the list of cities in which the event has been held globally, Arenas said “the context is richer, with different arts, paintings, music. It is more varied…”

However, the apparent lack of preparation led to several shortcomings such as the scant promotion.

“Personally, I think events like this should be held professionally, because then the artists would be appreciated. I think it was because they had too little time [to prepare themselves]” a writer who contributed a poem to the event said.

Imam said they only had a week to arrange everything and at one point found themselves worrying about the lack of funding.

Arenas said that in terms of organization, the event held in Borobudur surpassed that of Jakarta.

On poetry: Writer Eko Budianta speaks at “The Giant Poem” event in Senen, Jakarta.According to the team’s information on “The Giant Poem”, given to The Jakarta Post, the requirements involved to hold the event were basically a roll of paper of about 120 meters in length and a public space as well as a permit.

However, Arenas said they had only occasionally held the event for free, with Jakarta being one of them. “We need to cover our work. This takes a lot of work and preparation,” he said.

“The Giant Poem” project usually receives support from governmental organizations such as Tourism Ministries or UNESCO and Instituto Cervantes, which has links with the Lontar Foundation.

The team plans to publish a collection of the best poems in the project, translated into several languages, Arenas, who himself has published a number of poetry books, added. He currently has gigabytes of digital images of the poems created in cities across the globe.

Arenas said the project would continue with no end in sight, even if it has covered 100 cities. This, apparently, is in line with what he says on his website of his wish for his work to be “an ongoing journey”.