To Love, to Wander: Poetry

The 1953 publication of Sitor Situmorang’s Green Paper Letter pegged him as a rising poet. Six decades later, the writer is still active. The more than one hundred poems in this book were selected from the several thousand he wrote. The main characteristics of Sitor’s poems are the simplicity of its wordplay and the clarity of its syntax. Sitor’s poetry are a poetry of words; they evoke concepts and call up a series of pictures and images. In his poems, we find a poignant blend of personal experiences and philosophical reflection.

• Sitor Situmoran, Author

  Sitor Situmorang was born in North Sumatra, but from 1950 to 1953 he lived and studied in Amsterdam. In the 1950s Sitor actively participated in the ongoing cultural discourse on the shape and direction of Indonesia’s culture. Over the decades Sitor have won numerous awards for his work. Many of his works have been translated into English, French, Dutch, Chinese, Russian and other languages.

• John H. McGlynn, Translator

  John H. McGlynn has translated several dozen publications under his own name, and through the Lontar Foundation, which he co-founded in 1987, has ushered into print close to two hundred books on Indonesian language, literature, and culture. He is the Indonesian country editor for MĀNOA, a literary journal published by the University of Hawai'i Press the senior editor for I-Lit, an on-line journal focusing on Indonesian literature in translation; a contributing editor to Words Without Borders and Warscapes, U.S. based literary journals; and an editor advisor for Jurnal Sastra, an Indonesian-language on-line journal. He is also a frequent speaker at seminars both in Indonesia and abroad.