A Bilingual Edition of Contemporary Balinese Poems

My love for poetry was borne out of my passion for writing. I have turned my hand at creating sonnets and ballads and even avant garde poetry but it is the poetry haiku that I find endearing.

During my travels in Indonesia I discovered the many facets of poetry in the country and those writers who weave words around their daily lives, political situations and their culture. Recently there was an excellent review by Dewi Anggaeni of a collection of Balinese poetry. If you are a great lover of poetry and indeed Bali then you will find this collection of poems delightful and one that you will want on your bookshelf.

Enjoy mystical swirl of traditional and modern Bali
Dewi Anggraeni

Jatuh Bisu/Falling in Silence: A Bilingual Edition of Contemporary Balinese Poems
by Ketut Yuliarsa
Ganesha Bookshop, Bali

To many people Bali has always evoked a world where the spiritual converges continuously with the mundane day to day necessities and events. But the instances of convergence are fairly public and visible even accessible to anyone who happens to be around.

We sometimes wonder what it is like on a personal level; what kinds of clashes and fusions occur internally in this era where the spiritual has to dance gracefully with the demands of the ever modernizing, materialistic life?

To a great extent Ketut Yuliarsa's recently released bilingual poetry volume, Jatuh Bisu/Falling in Silence addresses this curiosity. Born in Denpasar, Bali, Ketut divides his time between Bali and Sydney in Australia. A writer, actor and musician, Ketut is a paradigm of the Balinese and continues to negotiate the traditional and the modern occasionally managing to dovetail aspects of the two realms.

Published last month by IndonesiaTera and Ganesha Bookshop, Jatuh Bisu/Falling in Silence lifts a mystical screen to an inner space where longing and fear, trepidation and reassurance, and regrets and gratitude swirl around and around, now blocking the path, now enchanting the trespasser to step further within.

The collection aptly begins with a rather enigmatic number, If You Can, which dares the reader to enter: seize the senses / of empty space / soul embodied with / words, then entices to explore if you may / a road that leads me / to the world beyond.

Upon entering this realm the reader/trespasser is prepared for a haunting journey by the next number, Twilight, where "mystical space" is waiting: I open the door / light reflected on the floor / a bed under the pillow / lie there if you must.

Ketut uses the visual evocation as a tool to delve further into a buried memory where the thrill of fear and horror renders the immediate world around, eerie and often gory, as in On the Grave and Night Rider.

In Judgment Night, the poet-narrator as a close observer is overcome with bewilderment and terror through his own involuntary, sensuous vulnerability: I am also wrapped in this incense smoke / said to protect us from the magical power called fear / Suddenly there is a scream / a piglet has been pulled out of a sack / hidden under the mountain of offering flowers.

I trembled by the chill of night / my eyes teary with pain from the incense smoke / the echoing sound of mantras has deafened my ears / so I can no longer understand a piglet's cry / being murdered in the graveyard of midnight / to prove the might of the Gods.

Longing and resentment of the passing of a life well loved and well cherished also fill the pages. Ketut's immersion in his cultural past is reflected in all the emotions, sentiments and excitement he paints in Jatuh Bisu/Falling in Silence, wherein the colors of Balinese traditions and lore are unmistakable.

However as rooted as his indigenous Hindu-Balinese psyche is, an insidious stream of Western influence shows itself in definite strands giving his poetry a unique ring now in harmony now in discordance.

This is very much felt in The Arms of Gita, in which a shimmery wave of Christian lore reveals itself in the reliving of the Bhagavad Gita:

There is no death in war, the charioteer declared / the body is merely a piece of meat, a clump of dirt / no different to a boulder of gold. / There is no anger for the wife being stripped / humiliated in public as a gamble, lost / then to be cast away to exile.

The stretched body crucified on a stick / turned out to be an undesirable old cloth / Note the drops of blood trickled out of his palm / transformed into some fish to be eaten by the hungry / by those dissatisfied with just tearing his flesh / for a piece of bread / and a sip of wine.

The volume is best read continuously in one language until the end then to be reread in the other not only to avoid being distracted during the figurative journey but also because each language curiously invokes a variation in the depth of emotions throughout the reading.

Ketut Yuliarsa is no a stranger to the art worlds of Indonesia and Australia. His works have appeared in both countries including Night Voice, an anthology of bilingual poems and another collection, The Morning After. His prose and poetry have been published in The Bali Post and Sinar Harapan dailies. He has also worked in Australian theatre, for example in the production of The Theft of Sita.

Ketut is slated to speak at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali in September.