POETRY & LITERATURE
Hasif Amini, under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State, visited Dactyl Foundation on Nov 2, met with founder Neil Grayson on site and with co-founder Victoria N. Alexander, former Poetry Director, Sharon Lattig, and Dactyl's Poet of the Year, Kevin O’Sullivan, to discuss poetry, free speech and the aesthetics of democracy via live video link from a Society for Literature, Science and the Arts conference in Portland, Maine.
Mr. Amini is the editor of Kalam, a cultural journal published by Komunitas Utan Kayu (KUK), an arts and media organization. He is also the organization’s literary curator. In addition to his dual roles at KUK, Mr. Amini is the poetry editor for Indonesia’s leading daily newspaper, Kompas, which carries a full page of work by established or upcoming writers in every Sunday edition. He also writes a weekly column for the paper.
Utan Kayu consists of three organizations working in the arts: Theater Utan Kayu, the Lontar Gallery, and the cultural journal Kalam. KUK is also home to three media institutions – The Institute for the Study of the Flow of Information, Radio 68-H, and the Liberal Islam Network. The organization supports progressive broadcasting, trains journalists, is an open forum for experimental arts and discussion of intellectual issues, and provides a place for people concerned with positive change to meet. KUK’s book publishing, conferences, and international literary biennale bring diversity to both academic and cultural discourse in Indonesia.
Mr. Amini began working with Kalam in 1999. Previously he studied economics at the University of Indonesia but left this to pursue a career working with language and literature. In 1992, along with several colleagues, he founded Gorong-Gorong Budaya, a discussion group that published a number of books on culture. An accomplished translator and editor, Mr. Amini is particularly known for his translations of poetry and prose to English from Indonesian, his English having been honed during a year spent living in New Zealand with the AFS Intercultural Learning Program. Among his work, he translated and co-edited with Margaret dan Leon Agusta the poetry anthology The Poets’ Chant (1995) that was published in connection with the Istiqlal International Poetry Reading ’95. He edited the short story collection Para Pembohong (1996) and translated selected fiction works of Jorge Luis Borges under the title Labirin Impian (1999). Presently, he works as the editor of Kalam and co-editor of Prosa, as well as developing discussions of poetry in the cultural column “Bentara” in the newspaper Kompas.
video will be online soon
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Video and images by Neil Grayson
