Rivai Apin

Apin graduated from upper middle school (SMA)  and for a time studied law in Jakarta. He has worked as a police assistant (and as a black marketeer), but for the most part, his occupation has been that of an editor. He served in the latter capacity with Nusantara, Zenith, Gelanggang, Siasat, and Gema Suasana; he was a member of the secretariat of LEKRA, and editor of that organization’s cultural magazine, Zaman Baru (New Era). Closely associated with Chairil Anwar, Apin has published comparatively little poetry. Unlike Anwar, however, he has exerted a very considerable influence on the Indonesian literary scene by extraliterary means, principally by his work as an editor. At its best, Apin’s work expresses a powerfully charged social sense in strong, complex language; the poems which follow are some of the most intellectual verse ever written by an Indonesian.