In my decades as a translator of Indonesian literature, rarely have I come across a poet-author as culturally erudite as Nirwan Dewanto. His exhaustive knowledge of Indonesian history is equally matched by his grasp of Western tropes and metaphors.
John H. McGlynn on "The Way to the Museum" |
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"Ten Questions for Phillip B. Williams"
"My process of writing Ours was basically one long free-write. I didn't have an outline; so much of the plot revealed itself to me as I was writing. This posed an interesting problem: I felt that I both guided the story and was guided by it. Imagine me pacing my home, talking aloud to no one present (except in my mind), asking, 'Are you sure you want to do that?' Then I would write the scene and shake my head in disbelief that a character wanted to do that."
viaPOETS & WRITERS |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Katie Peterson on Other Arts
"I find this to be common with poems, which are like my favorite kind of children – give them a job to do, and they'd rather do anything else. But give them nothing to do, and they hate you. A poem ends up being equal parts what you must do and what you want to do, but in a way, with a proportion, inhabiting a mood you can't predict. A map offers a perfect occasion for this, since, like a family portrait, what it leaves in points towards what it leaves out. The poem became about everything the map couldn't record." |
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