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Poets depict bittersweet Jakarta
Jakarta's tumultuous urban lifestyle can be more than just a cause of stress
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Jakarta's tumultuous urban lifestyle can be more than just a cause of stress. In a poet's hand, it has a different name: Inspiration.
"The city where we live has influenced us a lot and this is reflected in our poems," Waraney Herald Rawung of Bunga Matahari (Sunflower) community, which promotes the world of words, said.
He and fellow poets of the community performed a reading of their urban-inspired poems Sunday afternoon in a cozy little caf* in Cikini, Central Jakarta.
Bunga Matahari, abbreviated to BuMa, holds a public poetry reading almost every month with each occasion having its own theme. This month the theme was "city". The event was attended by about 30 people, with 10 of them reciting poems.
"I specifically chose the theme because lately I feel BuMa's members have become more and more affected by the city," Ney, as Waraney is known, told The Jakarta Post.
Poems of BuMa reflect the hustle and bustle of Jakarta's streets, skyscrapers, traffic jams and crowds. Loneliness, love and sweetness are somewhere in the middle. Sometimes the poems are about irony, death and even blissfulness.
In his poems, BuMa member Mikael Johani speaks about his relationship with Jakarta and all its urban attributes. His poems, written in English, are filled with irony.
An old man grew Ho Chi Minh's beard
outside the silver din of the 24-hour
McDonald's and patted a grey cat.
Inside other cats wait for men with fat
wallets to take them to their bachelor pads,
refitted with silver disco balls and
corrugated iron roof-fashionable
accoutrements of you, you and you.
The 37-degree heat kills everything
inside and outside an idea
before it had time
to begin.
(Excerpt from "Starbucks Djakarta Theatre at 2:37 a.m".)
BuMa cofounder Gratiagusti Chananya Rompas, better known as Anya, puts it another way. Her poems are sometimes dark, sometimes sweet, but more often than not they are blissful.
RayOfLightSlipsIntoTheEyes
TellingAStoryThatNeverGoesOld
TheCityIsFireworks
ItsFuryShattersTheSkies
JustLikeAWink
-SoTheySay
Craving a moment of nostalgia, BuMa poets also read older poems.
"We read poems by Chairil Anwar, Sitor Situmorang and Subagyo Sastrowardoyo, who each wrote about images of cities. Funny thing is, the feeling is the same (as with our poems)," Ney said.
It seems that from the poems recited that Sunday night, city is more than just a space, but it is a place filled with experiences and interactions. Whether it is the sweetness or the bitterness of Jakarta that the poets capture, each of them embraces the city and all the bittersweetness it has to offer. -- JP/Arghea Desafti Hapsari
