2014
Literary feast continues
5 October 2014
Huge amount of stamina required to keep up the pace at the festival - and then write about it at the end of the day! Suddenly very hot here too.
Am aware that my version of the festival is very different from that of other participants, depending on the choice of which sessions one attends at the three venues. Dave and Jen did three separate Asian cooking classes in The Kitchen this afternoon with three different chefs - (no dinner needed for them tonight!) while I attended an extraordinary panel of young male writers all of whom perform their poetry on toning down the testosterone in their mentoring of boys - an amazing 2m tall Somali-Australian was one. Wow! (An excellent example of why we in Oz should allow refugees to stay.) And the American's poem forgiving his teenage self had us mothers of sons in tears!
Then a dash down the hill to a book launch Emails Dari Amerika at the fancy Bridges Restaurant - a compilation of a weekly column that an American academic wrote in Indonesian over three years for a Surabaya newspaper - she wrote on whatever was going on in her personal life. Developed a huge following. I've bought the book! She is a major interviewer at all the Ubud festivals - often at Byron Bay too. Her name is Janet Steele and she has a steely intellect, but showed a much softer side today! It was a wonderful event. Earlier in the day I had heard her interview a London-based Malaysian writer, Tash Aw whom I have read. Both interviewer and interviewee were exceptional.
Actually got a lift up into town next for the launch of the book of the young Indonesian writers selected to attend this year and I finally got to meet the ones whose works I had translated - I was asked to speak briefly about the translation challenges. Many of them read snippets from their works. The humour of the stories I had done really came out in the voices and language of their authors. Not too sure if I managed to make them quite so funny in English! Word play is impossible to translate.
The day had started with a panel on deforestation, "Lost Forests of Indonesia", with Australia's own beloved environmental champion, Tim Flannery. Arrived at the venue to find Dave, himself a biologist, and John deep in conversation with the great man himself. A Dutch animal welfare guy who has lived here as an Indonesian citizen for decades, Willie Smits, spoke about not just problems but possible solutions. It is not enough to save individual orangutans - he also works to empower the local forest communities to be able to make a living from the forests so they are not destroyed for profitable palm oil plantations. And this of course protects the habitat of the animals. He was very impressive, as was Flannery and the Indonesian Greenpeace guy again.
Another session "Outsiders Looking In" was a view of Indonesia by two women who have made their lives here, a Dutch Al Jazeera journalist and the YouTube comedian. They comment on, satirise (in Sacha's case) and report on Indonesia from the inside but are still foreigners which has its advantages at times - especially if you are in trouble with the authorities. It was fun and also sometimes deeply moving. The Dutch woman, Step Vaessen, was a close friend of the Dutch journalist, Sandy Thoen, murdered by the Indonesian military in Timor in 1999. I remember it well from news reports at the time. She and her husband were also in Timor reporting. Her husband never got over the trauma of it and committed suicide in 2010. She has recently made a film of the whole situation surrounding Sandy's death called Tracks to Murder which I hope to find on YouTube.
Am aware that my version of the festival is very different from that of other participants, depending on the choice of which sessions one attends at the three venues. Dave and Jen did three separate Asian cooking classes in The Kitchen this afternoon with three different chefs - (no dinner needed for them tonight!) while I attended an extraordinary panel of young male writers all of whom perform their poetry on toning down the testosterone in their mentoring of boys - an amazing 2m tall Somali-Australian was one. Wow! (An excellent example of why we in Oz should allow refugees to stay.) And the American's poem forgiving his teenage self had us mothers of sons in tears!
Then a dash down the hill to a book launch Emails Dari Amerika at the fancy Bridges Restaurant - a compilation of a weekly column that an American academic wrote in Indonesian over three years for a Surabaya newspaper - she wrote on whatever was going on in her personal life. Developed a huge following. I've bought the book! She is a major interviewer at all the Ubud festivals - often at Byron Bay too. Her name is Janet Steele and she has a steely intellect, but showed a much softer side today! It was a wonderful event. Earlier in the day I had heard her interview a London-based Malaysian writer, Tash Aw whom I have read. Both interviewer and interviewee were exceptional.
Actually got a lift up into town next for the launch of the book of the young Indonesian writers selected to attend this year and I finally got to meet the ones whose works I had translated - I was asked to speak briefly about the translation challenges. Many of them read snippets from their works. The humour of the stories I had done really came out in the voices and language of their authors. Not too sure if I managed to make them quite so funny in English! Word play is impossible to translate.
The day had started with a panel on deforestation, "Lost Forests of Indonesia", with Australia's own beloved environmental champion, Tim Flannery. Arrived at the venue to find Dave, himself a biologist, and John deep in conversation with the great man himself. A Dutch animal welfare guy who has lived here as an Indonesian citizen for decades, Willie Smits, spoke about not just problems but possible solutions. It is not enough to save individual orangutans - he also works to empower the local forest communities to be able to make a living from the forests so they are not destroyed for profitable palm oil plantations. And this of course protects the habitat of the animals. He was very impressive, as was Flannery and the Indonesian Greenpeace guy again.
Another session "Outsiders Looking In" was a view of Indonesia by two women who have made their lives here, a Dutch Al Jazeera journalist and the YouTube comedian. They comment on, satirise (in Sacha's case) and report on Indonesia from the inside but are still foreigners which has its advantages at times - especially if you are in trouble with the authorities. It was fun and also sometimes deeply moving. The Dutch woman, Step Vaessen, was a close friend of the Dutch journalist, Sandy Thoen, murdered by the Indonesian military in Timor in 1999. I remember it well from news reports at the time. She and her husband were also in Timor reporting. Her husband never got over the trauma of it and committed suicide in 2010. She has recently made a film of the whole situation surrounding Sandy's death called Tracks to Murder which I hope to find on YouTube.
Going back to yesterday (I am running out of steam here) I took Stacy with me for the day – had bought her a one-day pass so she could share in the fun. She loved the mental stimulus of it all and got some excellent tips on memoir writing from the fabulous panel of Aussie writers with our ABC Radio's Michael Cathcart as moderator. One of the panelists was playwright Hannie Rayson, many of whose plays I have seen - turns out she is Cathcart's wife. So some of the questioning became quite hilarious. Cathcart later did a very sensitive one-on-one interview with an American born in India, Akhil Sharma, whose book has a powerful theme of grief and family disruption after the elder son is totally paralysed in a swimming accident soon after they arrive in America. It is his own family's story but fictionalised. You Radio National listeners back home can hear it next Tuesday on Books and Writing. Well worth it. Keep the kleenex handy.
Stacy and I both loved the session with old Bali hands on the rise of the Super Bulé - the middle class "whities" who live in Bali as expats without engaging with the local people, language or culture. Serious session in fact, but it had its light-hearted moments. That's my mate with the glasses on his head, Bali's leading journalist, Wayan Juniarta with the Jakarta Post. Brilliant intellect and very funny. Moves easily between his Balinese world and our bulé version of it. He runs the Indonesian writers program at the festival that I translate for.
Stacy and I both loved the session with old Bali hands on the rise of the Super Bulé - the middle class "whities" who live in Bali as expats without engaging with the local people, language or culture. Serious session in fact, but it had its light-hearted moments. That's my mate with the glasses on his head, Bali's leading journalist, Wayan Juniarta with the Jakarta Post. Brilliant intellect and very funny. Moves easily between his Balinese world and our bulé version of it. He runs the Indonesian writers program at the festival that I translate for.
There was a fiery panel, with some of the same speakers as last year, on what it is to be a refugee, with both refugees and a British/Pakistani-born academic/human rights spokesman who absolutely condemned Australia for its abuse of refugees' rights. The audience, mostly Australian gave him a cheer as we hung our heads in shame!
All these hours of talks, each one lasting an hour and a quarter (which is sometimes a bit too long), involve dashes up and down the hot road between venues, hastily grabbing a snack at a food stall or else abandoning a whole session just to sit and have lunch and talk to an old friend.
I got caught up by this evening's temple procession through town but sensibly retreated to Saraswati to wait it out. Dave and Jen were there to pour me a G and T and light up a kretek! I was at the point of collapse by then. Home well after 7 by taxi to a houseful of kids and visitors. Retreated to my granny flat straight after dinner to write this in peace and quiet.
Selamat malam.
All these hours of talks, each one lasting an hour and a quarter (which is sometimes a bit too long), involve dashes up and down the hot road between venues, hastily grabbing a snack at a food stall or else abandoning a whole session just to sit and have lunch and talk to an old friend.
I got caught up by this evening's temple procession through town but sensibly retreated to Saraswati to wait it out. Dave and Jen were there to pour me a G and T and light up a kretek! I was at the point of collapse by then. Home well after 7 by taxi to a houseful of kids and visitors. Retreated to my granny flat straight after dinner to write this in peace and quiet.
Selamat malam.