Editorial: 15 March 2010

In his excellent ‘Brief Introduction to Indonesian Poetry’, Hasif Amini highlights how young Indonesian-language poetry is – its roots were in the 1920s, as the struggle for national independence from colonialism gained strong momentum and Indonesian (an offshoot of Malay) was proclaimed the national language of Indonesia. Despite its youth, however, Indonesian poetry is vibrant, sophisticated, eloquent and diverse, as can be seen from the poems by Sapardi Djoko Damono and Goenawan Mohamad, two active eminences grises of contemporary Indonesian literature whose shaping influence is felt on the country’s poetry today.