Black on black stack mangosteens
Pity the kemuning as its flowers fall
My dark-skinned beauty is sweet to behold
A light-skinned woman is …
Pulasan grows at branch’s end Harvest keranji with a wooden rod O Man! Do not seek to be praised. Know that all praise belongs only…
Last weekend featured the most exciting Malaysian cultural event I’ve heard of in a long time: a flash mob of people wearing sarongs descended on…
Malaysia has a peerage system comparable in some respects to what is practiced in the UK, whereby Malaysians of common origins can be conferred a…
The last two weeks saw a number of milestones pass for me. 20 years as a muslim. 10 years in Malaysia. 10 years running this…
If you’ve enjoyed my feeble attempts to translate Malay poems and songs over the years, perhaps you’d like the Poetry Translation Centre. Contemporary poets of…
A mimeograph of John Ciardi’s poem was waiting on each boy’s desk as we took our seats for the first class on the first day…
Garam di laut, asam di darat Di dalam kuali bertemu juga — Limes* from dry land, salt from the sea In the pot may…
Reduplication is the name linguists give to the doubling up of words. It doesn't happen all that much in English, aside from making adjectives more…
I can’t recommend The Raid: Redemption. It’s an Indonesian action movie that has won some acclaim internationally. I watched it because I’d seen Merantau, by…
Beloved I would spin the sea-spray fashioning a belt for you I would braid the rolling waves to spread a sleeping mat for you…
Ivan Illich was an influential theorist in the decade I was born. I had heard of his most famous work, Deschooling Society, and it had…

The Jungle is Neutral

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