Afrizal Malna

'the voice of a cricket in a museum of city sanitation'

An introduction to the work of Afrizal Malna

Asked about his conception of poetry in a 2001 interview with Spanish poet and translator Emilio Araúxo, Afrizal Malna wrote, “Poetry doesn’t live in itself. Poetry lives in the reader who is open to their own memories, their various private and social experiences. Everything that we consider fixed in its position, through the semiotic play of poetry, can attain new correspondences. Those positions open wide and defy us to join them together with fresh contrasts and combinations.”

July 14, 2020

Strolling around in language

translated by Daniel Owen

Afrizal Malna
Daniel Owen

I like sweeping. Ironing clothes. Tasks that mainly utilize repetitive motions, like digging or sawing with hand tools. Tasks that make my body present in their repetitions. Then, little by little, like drops of water, waterless and soundless, recollections appear one by one, to join in the celebration of the event of sweeping that I’m currently performing. The tools I use don’t represent (are not a representation of) my body or vice versa. 

July 14, 2020

Afrizal Malna in conversation with Daniel Owen

Afrizal Malna
Daniel Owen
Daniel Owen and Afrizal Malna, each holding onto a copy of Malna's book.
Photo courtesy of Daniel Owen.

Note: On Friday, September 7, 2019, Afrizal Malna and I met at the Warunk Upnormal in the Cikini area of Jakarta, not far from Afrizal’s home at the time and even closer to Taman Ismail Marzuki Arts Center, a significant hub of creative activity in Jakarta where he’d spent much time over the years. Though we’d met for coffee and conversation a number of times in Cikini, this was the first time at Upnormal, and the first time our conversation was recorded.

July 14, 2020
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