in conversation with LIT Translation Editor JP Apruzzese
A dialogue between authors and translators
Edward Gunawan – Photo by Sarah Deragon
In March, we published Edward Gunawan’s translations of Hendri Yulius Wijaya’s poems in LIT 39 (Spring 2025) – a rare offering that felt, even then, like an invocation. What emerged was more than just a moment of publication: it was the beginning of a longer conversation, one that moves across continents, languages, poetics, and identities. At its core is a shared space of inquiry, laughter, and care between poet and translator.
In the mysterious undercurrent of every act of translation – across language, identity, history – there is a reaching. A hand extended into the uncertain, into that which resists fluency. As Edward notes, “Translation isn’t merely about equivalence. But also to make space for the untranslatable to be felt and experienced, even if it’s uncomfortable or confusing.”
This conversation between poet and translator is not so much a literary interview as it is an intricate duet, a kind of double exposure. Hendri and Edward’s collaboration – born of queerness, exile, and an unquiet intimacy with language – charts a constellation of creative kinship. Together, they map a terrain that is both lush and dissonant, fraught with contradiction, yet stitched with care. “Language is a playful domain,” Hendri observes, “Opening up various ways to resist the comfort of certainty and embracing the messiness of becoming.”
Hendri’s poetry moves like liquid: mercurial, uncontainable, at times jagged. There is queerness here not merely as subject, but as method – as a reconstitution of the line, the image, the utterance itself. His poems resist coherence not out of obscurity, but because fixed meaning is, for him, a kind of closure, and hence, un-queer. What he builds instead are assemblages – of Binan slang and Western popular culture, of online porn titles and the dull ache of diaspora. These fragments refuse to reconcile. In one poem, you’ll find RuPaul alongside a former Indonesian diva-turned-politician, capturing the ache of a transgender woman’s unrequited love for a young man.
And then there is Edward – translating not to domesticate, but to destabilize. His work doesn’t seek to render the foreign familiar; rather, it thickens the encounter, allowing for moments of slippage, opacity, friction. A seasoned multidisciplinary artist, Edward doesn’t iron out the texture of Hendri’s voice; he scores it, tunes it, listens for its dissonances. The resulting translations hum with ambivalence, breath, erotic excess. They are less vessels than negotiations – between author and translator, text and reader, self and other.
The literary collaboration between these two Indonesian artists – queer, diasporic, critically postcolonial – offers a rupture in the homogenizing logic of global literary production. There are no easy resolutions here, no clean metaphors for identity, no obedient adherence to marketable legibility. Instead, what we find is a radical insistence on mess: spiritual mess, linguistic mess, bodily mess. The kind that unsettles.
This interview traces the pulse of that collaboration across multiple registers: poetic form, cultural specificity, the erotic politics of language, and the spiritual residue of being raised in a country as plural and paradoxical as Indonesia. Hendri, who disavows any easy label of “scholar,” and Edward, whose own poetic practice blurs the line between essay, lyric, and visual storytelling, converge in their shared commitment to holding space for the illegible. Their dialogue – collegial, warm, often irreverent – reveals a relationship grounded in mutual trust, aesthetic affinity, and deep ethical attention.
Let’s start with origins and influence. Hendri, your poetry carries a distinct voice shaped by queerness, exile, and critique. How do these intersecting themes evolve from your earlier work in Intimate Assemblages and Stonewall Tak Mampir di Atlantis?
Hendri Yulius Wijaya: I always see “queerness” not as a substance or identity. Queerness is beyond the gridlock of identity, and in this case, I always approach it as a mode of relating and becoming. In my work, queerness becomes a method of rearranging language, images, and feelings, to make me relate to the world in a new way. Through this approach, I always want myself and my readers to feel a sense of “exile” and “unsettled,” hoping that these feelings will help them to experience and relate with the world in a different way.
As a scholar of gender and cultural politics, how does your theoretical engagement with queerness – as seen in your co-editing of Queer Southeast Asia – shape your poetic choices, whether in tone, form, or imagery?
HYW: Actually, I don’t see myself as a scholar – perhaps, I am just an observer who happens to write and reflect on the world around me. Poetry allows me to craft and imagine queerness and expressions that don’t have to be legible and ‘accepted’ by academic institutions (and…importantly, I like them RAW…LOL). As a method, I approach queerness as a capacity to unsettle fixed meanings and objects, assembling new interpretations by rearranging existing snapshots, images, and objects. Driven by a resistance to fixity, my poetic choices – through imagery and tone – form assemblages. What matters is not coherence, but rather the new ways of seeing and feeling that these assemblages evoke.
Indonesia’s literary landscape is still developing space for queer and experimental writing. How do you position your poetic practice within that evolving national canon? Do you feel your work is in conversation with Indonesian literary tradition, or resisting it?
HYW: Honestly, I don’t really follow the national literary landscape, and I place my work not in the “traditional” understanding of literature or national canon. Honestly, I’d be thrilled if my work ended up in the “porn” canon…Hahaha…My poetic practice, if I may reflect, is better to be perceived as a lens to look at and assemble queerness from everyday objects and expressions (e.g., brand, popular music, porn, internet slang, gay slang, etc.) that are perhaps not captured by the national canon.
Arisan! [ The Gathering! ] — courtesy of Kalyana Shira Films The first Indonesian film to feature two men kissing, portrayed by the characters Sakti (Tora Sudiro) and Nino (Surya Saputra). Directed by Nia Dinata.
I always want myself and my readers to feel a sense of “exile” and “unsettled,” hoping that these feelings will help them to experience and relate with the world in a different way.
– Hendri Yulius Wijaya
Leaning into tradition further, here’s a question for both of you. Many of your poems and translations gesture toward the sacred – whether through religious iconography, ritual language, or longing for transcendence. How do questions of spirituality or religion inform your work, especially as queer artists coming from Southeast Asian contexts often shaped by Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, or animist traditions? Do you see poetry itself as a kind of spiritual practice?
HYW: I can’t answer this question, as I am not religious and I don’t read my work under this light.
Edward Gunawan: Indonesia is a multi-religious and multicultural country, where most of the major world religions are recognized by the State and practiced by its citizens. Remarkable, considering that such diversity thrives within the world’s most populous Muslim country.
Growing up in Jakarta, I was exposed to and have always been hyper-aware of all the different religious and spiritual practices you mentioned – Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and animist traditions like Kejawen. This plurality is simply part of the social fabric, and many Indonesians accept it as a way of life – navigating these intersections daily as communities of different faiths can and have existed side-by-side in relative peace and harmony for the most part. And in my personal poetic practice, I do think that this sensibility has played a significant role in my approach and my work.
It’s surprising though for me to hear that Hendri does not see his work through a religious lens because I do pick up on the various religious references and undertones across the collection. Perhaps, even though religion or spirituality has not informed his work specifically, that distinctly Indonesian pluralistic sensibility still permeates his writing. Reflecting on it now, this subtle, embedded quality may be why I was immediately drawn to Hendri’s poems when I first encountered them.
Thinking more about language, form, and translatability, Hendri, the poems translated for Lunch Ticket, ballast, and The Ana play with fragmentation and multiplicity. Does your multilingualism contribute to this structure? How do you decide which language – or emotional register – a poem will inhabit?
HYW: I often write my poems by speaking the lines aloud to myself. I’ve come to embrace the fact that I am an imperfect multilingual speaker – my English isn’t flawless, as it’s my second language, and my formal Bahasa Indonesia is also far from perfect. But these imperfections have never hindered me (except in the academic settings). In fact, in Jakarta, it’s common for people to fluidly mix English and Bahasa Indonesia in everyday conversation. That linguistic hybridity, coupled with my own imperfect English and Bahasa Indonesia, feels natural to me, and it has become an integral part of my poetic voice. And honestly, language imperfections are part of our everyday life!
True. Many of your English-translated poems have appeared in international journals. How do you respond to the idea of “translatability” when your poems are so deeply embedded in specific Indonesian cultural, religious, and linguistic contexts?
HYW: I worked with Edward Gunawan during the translation process, and I deeply appreciate his masterful ability to translate specific Indonesian contexts into “international” ones – whatever that term may mean. What I learned from this process is that translation is not just about finding linguistic equivalents; it’s an act of challenging the known by introducing the unknown, drawn from Indonesian specificities. It becomes a way of unsettling dominant Western queer narratives, creating space for other ways of feeling, speaking, and understanding the world that do not rely on fixed “substantive meaning” but are influenced by flows of meanings from different locations.
Turning to Edward, some of Hendri’s poems resist narrative and exist more as meditative fragments. When translating for ballast or Lit Magazine, how did you handle that tension between opacity and clarity, especially for English-language readers?
EG: It was quite a long back-and-forth process of trial-and-error, really.
One significant challenge in translating Hendri’s work is his integration of Bahasa Binan – a colloquial, continuously evolving, and coded language created and spoken by Indonesian queer and trans communities (who are collectively known as Binan). This linguistic innovation intentionally remains indecipherable to mainstream Indonesian society, functioning similarly to how Pig Latin has been woven into queer vernacular and Ballroom culture. The complexity runs deep: beyond English readers, many Indonesian readers themselves cannot understand these Binan terms.
In one early draft, I eschewed clarity by deliberately preserving these Binan terms without English translation. I had hoped to document the linguistic phenomenon of this sub-culture and maintain the authentic disorientation experienced by Indonesian readers encountering the original poems, initially believing that a glossary in my endnotes would provide sufficient context for curious readers.
But after sharing these poems in readings and open mics (as part of my typical revision process), I realized that these untranslated terms had the unintended distancing effect of foreignization and exotification. So, I decided to translate these Binan terms into English after all in my latest draft, while maintaining the accompanying glossary, to strike a balance between accessibility and cultural documentation.
Bunda Dorce Known as “the Oprah of Indonesia,” Dorce is Indonesia’s first trans superstar who had a successful entertainment career as a singer, comedian, and talk show host (from the 1980s to 2000s). She was often referred to as “Bunda” or “mother,” and was one of the first public figures who successfully achieved medical and legal gender transition in Indonesia. Upon her passing in 2022, her final wish to be buried in the Muslim tradition as a woman, however, was not respected by her family or religious leaders.
Fascinating. So, continuing with the notion of translatability, several of Hendri’s translated poems – such as those in ballast and Lunch Ticket – play with silence, breath, and white space as part of the poetic architecture. How did you interpret those visual and spatial cues in translation?
EG: As a highly visual person, I recognize how each poem’s physical form serves as a deliberate container – a vessel that carries layers of hidden meaning and unspoken context. So, I do pay very close attention and try my best to mirror the visual and spatial architecture in the original poems, from line breaks right down to the punctuations. Preserving this visual integrity, I feel, isn’t simply a translator’s obligation but essential to conveying the full dimensionality of the work. The poems’ visual presentation isn’t merely aesthetic – it’s semantic and emotional, revealing connections that might otherwise remain invisible to readers encountering these works in English.
Hendri, some of your most evocative poems resist closure, refusing neat emotional or narrative resolutions. Is that an intentional rejection of contemporary commercial Western literary expectations – or a gesture rooted in something more personal or culturally specific?
HYW: This approach is rooted in my understanding of queerness itself. Neatness and closure, I’m afraid, risk producing stabilized, fixed meanings. That’s why I consciously avoid narrative resolutions and instead aim to open up a range of feelings, ambiguities, and interpretations. For me, as I mentioned before, queerness lies in that openness – in resisting the comfort of certainty and embracing the messiness of becoming.
[Translation] becomes a way of unsettling dominant Western queer narratives, creating space for other ways of feeling, speaking, and understanding the world that do not rely on fixed “substantive meaning” but are influenced by flows of meanings from different locations.
– Hendri Yulius Wijaya
Let’s talk more about your collaboration and creative process. Edward, as a translator, how did you approach Hendri’s poems and navigate difficult terrains of trauma, queerness, and politics? What were your guiding principles?
EG: I believe Hendri and I share a similar postcolonial transnational sensibility that anchors both of our approaches to this project.
Though Western-educated, we maintain a critical stance toward established Western notions of empowerment, liberation, and equality. I personally have to continuously remind myself of the diversity and complexity of the Indonesian LGBTQIA+ experience – to recognize the various intersections of sexual orientation and gender expression with religious upbringing, educational background, and socioeconomic status.
We are also both unafraid to be quite messy on the page, and I definitely followed Hendri’s lead in resisting narrow interpretations and the (re)productions of “stabilized, fixed meanings.”
That said, one of my initial missteps was imposing stylistic uniformity across the collection in my pursuit of consistency, as though these poems emerged from a single consciousness. The collection, I discovered, is fundamentally polyphonic – each poem embodying a distinct voice with unique cadences, tones, registers, and perspectives. Honoring this multiplicity became essential to authentically representing how different individuals navigate the complexities of queer and trans existence in Indonesia.
So, I learned to simply sit with these voices and listen without judgment. This process was slow and humbling – a full year passed before I showed Hendri my first three translations. I also had to embrace elements I initially found challenging, if not impossible, to translate: the collection’s acerbic humor, its Kafkaesque absurdity, its bawdy carnality, the over-the-top camp. These qualities aren’t merely stylistic choices but survival strategies – reflections of the surreal realities these speakers navigate simply to exist in the world.
You’ve created your own hybrid works, such as Press Play, which blend illustration, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Did that multidisciplinary sensibility influence how you interpreted and translated Hendri’s emotionally layered poetry?
EG: For sure. Having worked across different media and genres on creative works that are deeply rooted in historical and academic research, I find it rather organic to extend the same approach to this translation project.
I agree that Hendri’s poems are “emotionally layered.” To me, this is because the speakers in these poems often address multiple audiences simultaneously. I find this to be one of the most distinctive features of this collection – the blending of a deeply intimate lyrical voice with astute pop-culture social commentary while engaging in Western political philosophy discourses.
Once again, many Indonesian readers (including queer and trans folks) are likely to miss some of these intellectual touchpoints, simply because they may not be well-versed in such Western post-liberal discourses.
And this is where my B.A. in political science proved to be unexpectedly valuable. While I still have to refresh my knowledge of certain texts, having familiarity with the academic works and scholars referenced throughout – from Michel Foucault to Gayatri Spivak – transformed what could have been an overwhelming intellectual challenge into a manageable one. This foundation allowed me to focus on the nuances of translation rather than struggling to grasp the theoretical frameworks underpinning the poems.
In both The Way Back and your public-facing reflections, you discuss embodiment and internalized silence. How did translating Hendri’s more corporeal or sensual poems challenge or resonate with your own understanding of queer embodiment?
EG: As a writer whose background is in creative nonfiction and lyric poetry, I feel I navigate self-embodiment and personal disorientation with relative ease in my own work. However, I’ve always found it challenging to inhabit another’s physical experience and write convincingly from that embodied perspective.
This is one of the craft elements I deeply admire in and have learned from Hendri’s work: the ability to not merely enter the intellectual terrain of different speakers, but to fully inhabit their corporeal realities – capturing the tension between social forces and personal desires in the physical body, how it manifests and moves through the flesh, how trauma reshapes one’s relationship to the self. His work has taught me that true empathy in writing extends beyond entering their heads and understanding another’s thoughts – it requires feeling how the world presses against their skin.
Given what you’re saying about inhabiting others’ corporeal realities, what did your collaboration process look like across these translations? Did you revise side by side, or send versions back and forth? How much was translation a solitary act versus a conversation?
HYW: We communicated frequently through emails and calls. I trusted Edward’s masterful skills and allowed him to take the lead on the initial translation. When he sent me the drafts, I always saw how thoughtfully he engaged with the nuances of my work – capturing not just the words, but the tone, rhythm, and emotional textures. Our collaboration was less about correcting and more about conversing and honoring both the original context and its new expression. In other words, we celebrate the translation process as a form of queerness itself; resisting closures, assembling new meanings, and disrupting the dominant ways of writing itself.
EG: Yes, there were so many emails and video calls! We live in different time zones, making side-by-side revision sessions impossible. We eventually settled into a rhythm of sharing my drafts monthly once the project gained momentum.
But as I mentioned earlier, a full year passed between Hendri granting permission and my presenting the first three translations. So, in those very early days, it was quite solitary for me. Hendri probably thought I was such a flake for “disappearing” on him then! It was only after sharing those initial poems that we began meeting virtually each month for very animated discussions of the work.
My process involved sending five pieces, which Hendri would review and provide initial written feedback before our calls. During the call, we’d talk at length about the different issues that came up. At times, I’d share the proliferation of words or phrases that I had considered. When opportunities arose, we’d also try different options together and I’d make revisions alongside Hendri. And on very few occasions, I presented different versions of the same poem to see which resonated the most with Hendri.
After these video calls, I’d continue to revise while translating additional poems from the collection. Around the fourth month, our pace accelerated dramatically – I began sending up to 25 translations at once. This shift might have been a reflection of my growing confidence in my overall translation intentions and strategies for the project, which Hendri enthusiastically affirmed. This was how I managed to complete my first full draft of the collection in a relatively compressed period. Hendri and I then had an intensive video call to discuss the project as a whole, where we identified recurring phrases and motifs that we could employ to maintain a sense of cohesiveness.
On this note, I’m profoundly grateful for Hendri’s wholehearted trust from the beginning. He made space for exploration and experimentation. And even when he disagreed or didn’t quite like what I’m doing, he generously and graciously supported me as I found my way through and figured things out. I never felt rushed or pressured in any way at all. He also essentially allowed me to make the final call on the translation edits.
It really does take a village for me to complete this project. So, beyond our collaboration, I must also give credit to the translation working group that I formed with two former MFA classmates, where we bring our various works-in-progress each time we meet. Their insights were instrumental in clarifying and sharpening my intentions for the project.
After completing my first full draft, I have since made a couple of major revisions based on feedback I solicited from trusted readers and mentors. I also gained additional perspectives through formal translation workshops, and by sharing the translations in readings and open mics. These communal spaces not only provided real-time feedback on how the translations were landing with the literary and queer/trans communities at-large, but also sustained me during periods of doubt and discontent from the work.
I also had to embrace elements I initially found challenging, if not impossible, to translate: the collection’s acerbic humor, its Kafkaesque absurdity, its bawdy carnality, the over-the-top camp. These qualities aren’t merely stylistic choices but survival strategies – reflections of the surreal realities these speakers navigate simply to exist in the world.
– Edward Gunawan
Were there specific poems that sparked long conversations or disagreements about interpretation, tone, or political implication? How did you resolve those differences?
HYW: To my knowledge, no.
EG: I also don’t recall having any pronounced disagreements, though one of our most extensive conversations centered on pronouns.
For context, Bahasa Indonesia – like many Asian languages – employs non-gendered third-person pronouns. This linguistic feature required careful consideration during translation. I methodically reviewed each relevant poem with Hendri to determine his intentions for how speakers should be referenced in English. In some poems, we preserved gender ambiguity intentionally. In others, specific gendered pronouns proved essential to the poem’s meaning. One particularly nuanced piece required a mid-poem pronoun shift to authentically reflect a character’s transition journey.
For the collection’s opening poem, I proposed a substantial shift from a third-person to second-person address – a decision that could be seen as too radical a departure without proper context. Fortunately, Hendri immediately grasped my reasoning, sparing me a belabored justification of this choice.
Let’s talk a bit about your audience, the reception you’ve received, and the politics of translation. Edward, your translations appear in publications with distinct editorial identities – from the global-facing Asymptote to the socially engaged MAYDAY. Did the audience or platform ever influence how you shaped or edited a translation for publication?
EG: Not at all. Tailoring my translations for different audiences or platforms – essentially succumbing or catering to various gazes and readerships – would fundamentally contradict these poems’ core intentions.
When I notice this impulse arising in myself, I interpret it as a signal that my translation approach still lacks clarity or conviction. Rather than adjusting the work superficially to fit external expectations, I’d return to refining my fundamental intention and methodology before sending them out.
That said, readers who encounter my translations of Hendri’s poems across different journals may notice distinct variations, particularly between the earliest and most recent publications. The significant evolution between drafts – such as my shifting approach to Binan terminologies that I mentioned earlier – reflects my own development as a translator grappling with this collection’s unique challenges. These changes emerged organically from my deepening relationship with the work over time, not from strategic reshaping for particular publications.
The integrity of these poems demands a translator who stands firmly in their approach rather than bending to accommodate different venues. This conviction has become increasingly central to my practice as this project progresses.
What does it mean to bring Hendri’s Indonesian queer poetics into an English-speaking literary world? Do you see the translation as a form of bridge-building, cultural activism, or creative rewriting?
HYW: I trust you to answer this question, Ed 🙂
EG: I believe all three motivations significantly influence most translation projects. For me, however, the journey toward translating Indonesian queer literature began with a profound and shocking realization: despite Indonesia being the fourth most populous nation with 285 million people, only a handful of openly queer Indonesian authors write and publish in Bahasa Indonesia. This stark disproportion struck me deeply as a fellow queer Indonesian.
As such, I do see this translation project as an act of resistance against erasure. Each poem and its accompanying translation stand as counterpoints to the shrouded invisibility facing Indonesia’s LGBTQIA+ communities – a tangible assertion that we exist, we create, we endure.
With Hendri’s work specifically, I’m drawn to introducing English-speaking readers to his distinctly contemporary sensibility. His poems offer a necessary alternative to the limited, often stereotypical portrayals of queer Indonesian and Southeast Asian experiences currently available. Through his complex, nuanced perspectives, readers encounter a vision of queer Indonesian life that defies simplistic categorization – one that engages global conversations about sexuality and gender while remaining deeply rooted in local/regional contexts and realities.
What do you hope readers – especially queer readers across borders – will take away from encountering these poems in translation? Is there a particular emotional or political impact you’re hoping to generate?
HYW: I hope to express queerness in multiple forms rooted in the Global South, without essentializing what “the Global South” is. By merging diverse imagery and cultural artifacts from both the North and the South, the poems aim to reveal the multiplicity of queer experiences – disrupting the dominant Western narratives of queerness itself.
EG: I share Hendri’s vision that this collection creates pathways and opportunities for alliance- and solidarity-building across global queer communities, particularly those beyond Western borders. For too long, queerness has been framed through a restrictive Western-centric lens – predominantly white, cisgender, gay, male, and economically privileged.
This collection challenges that limitation by presenting queer experiences shaped by distinctly Indonesian cultural, religious, and political contexts. The poems illuminate how queerness manifests differently when interwoven with postcolonial identity, religious plurality, economic precarity, and linguistic diversity. They remind us that queer existence is not universal but contextual – transformed by the specific conditions in which it emerges.
My hope is that these translations contribute to a more expansive, inclusive understanding of queerness – one that acknowledges and affirms its infinite variations across cultures and communities. By amplifying these Indonesian queer voices, we participate in the essential work of decentering Western narratives and creating space for the full spectrum of queer possibility in our global conversation.
Through [Hendri’s] complex, nuanced perspectives, readers encounter a vision of queer Indonesian life that defies simplistic categorization – one that engages global conversations about sexuality and gender while remaining deeply rooted in local/regional contexts and realities.
– Edward Gunawan
So, looking ahead, Hendri, what role does poetry play for you today – as a queer Southeast Asian thinker and writer – especially in contrast to your nonfiction or academic work? Is it a space of freedom, refuge, confrontation, or all of the above?
HYW: Certainly, writing poems is a space of freedom and refuge. When I write an academic paper as a non-academic person, I have to adhere to rigid conventions which debilitate my creativity just for the sake to get published and enter the conversation. Poetry, on the other hand, allows me to be fragmented, emotional, and playful. It gives me the freedom to explore uncertainty and carve out my own “uncharted territory” – a space to express what often feels unspeakable in academic language, and to play with words and ideas without the need for neat resolutions or narrative closure.
Gaya Hidup Ceria — courtesy of Lambda Indonesia / Dédé Oetomo Gay zine published by Indonesia’s first LGBTQIA+ organization Lambda Indonesia in 1982. Oct 1982, Dec 1982 & Jul 1983 zine covers
Edward, as someone whose own creative work – like The Way Back – explores queer loss, longing, and memory, did translating Hendri’s poems affect your personal creative process or deepen your understanding of queer diasporic language?
EG: Personally, this project has heightened my awareness of my privilege as a “naturalized” US citizen, where I can live and work in a country that, despite its imperfections, has historically protected freedom of expression and made meaningful advances in queer and trans rights. This privilege carries responsibility – to amplify voices that face genuine peril for their creative expression, to recognize the contingency of these freedoms rather than take them for granted.
On a craft level, Hendri’s playful deconstruction of language has changed how I see my own writing. His willingness to shatter conventional tones and registers, mixing them up, and reconstructing them into forms that authentically capture Indonesian and Southeast Asian queer experience, has expanded my own creative possibilities. Before this translation project, I would often find myself paralyzed by the imagined gaze of a mainstream literary audience – second-guessing myself to accommodate expectations I’d internalized.
I feel more trusting and more emboldened now, confident in the knowledge that the imagined reader is no longer an abstract arbiter but a fellow traveler in shared experience.
Now that many of these poems have been published internationally, are there future plans for a bilingual collection? What would that book look like – and what possibilities or risks do you imagine in putting such a work into the world?
HYW: Perhaps Ed, you can share more about where the project stands with publishers?
EG: Yes, we’ve always envisioned publishing this as a side-by-side bilingual collection, complete with an extensive endnote glossary that contextualizes the cultural, linguistic, and historical elements that might elude English-language readers.
I’ve submitted proposals to various publishers over the past year, though we’ve yet to secure a commitment. We’re keenly aware of the recent challenging publication landscape – the current administration’s hostile stance toward DEI initiatives and queer/trans representation has significantly impacted arts funding. Many independent presses and literary organizations have seen their grants dramatically reduced or eliminated, severely constraining their ability to take on new projects, particularly those representing marginalized voices.
Several publishers are still considering our proposal, and we remain optimistic. Regardless of the outcome, we take pride in this work and find satisfaction knowing that individual poems from the collection have already found homes in literary journals where readers can engage with them online.
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About the author: Hendri Yulius Wijaya is a writer, scholar, researcher, and author of Intimate Assemblages: The Politics of Queer Identities and Sexualities in Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and the co-editor of Queer Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2022). He has also authored and co-edited several other books that range from academic essays to creative non-fiction and short story collections. For his long-term engagement with LGBTQ+ rights and sustainability issues, he was invited to deliver the 2023 Tomlinson Memorial Lecture at the Nottingham University in the UK. Stonewall Tak Mampir di Atlantisis his debut full-length poetry collection.
About the translator: Edward Gunawan is a Bay Area-based writer and translator who authored 2 chapbooks, most recently the Start a Riot! Prize-winning The Way Back (Foglifter Press, 2022). An Indonesian-born Chinese queer immigrant, Edward received the Gabo Prize in Literary Translation and Multilingual Texts by the journal Lunch Ticket. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University where they earned a Distinguished Graduate Achievement Award. Their translation work has appeared in Asymptote, MAYDAY, and West Branch. Other publications include: TriQuarterly, Aquifer, and The Town anthology (Nomadic Press, 2023). Visit addword.com for more.
