John Waromi

He studied law in the Cendrawasih University in Papua. As a scout he trained in the marines tall sail training ship KRI Dewa Ruci in 1983. In 1986 John Waromi moved to Jakarta as a scout but left in 1987 to join Bengkel Teater Rendra, those days the most prestigious theatre group in Indonesia, led by the famous poet and playwright W.S. Rendra. The following years he participated in guest appearances in the USA, Japan and Korea. Parallel he began to write in Gorong Gorong Budaya in Depok, a cultural journal of West Java. In 2006 he was invited to participate in the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. 2008 he was a participant in the Northern Territory Writer Festival, Darwin, Australia. In his poetry he mourns the struggling individual, cut off all roots, far away from nature and social security. The background for this can undoubtedly be found in the neo-colonial invasion by foreign mining companies in Waromis homeland Papua, where he now lives as an activist.¹

1. What is Poetry? ↩