Indigenous Species E-Book

Khairani Barokka

• Herausgeber: Tilted Axis Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 16

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A contemporary, feminist take on a Heart of Darkness-esque tale of an upriver journey through a landscape scarred by ecological destruction, and a culture scarred by historical greed. A young girl is abducted and smuggled about a boat bound for the Indonesian interior. As her captors take her ever deeper into the jungle, her uncertain fate is compounded by the sense of her environment as a place of violence, destruction and jeopardy. A long poem accompanied by the author's own 'rainforest gothic' artwork, the book is also a bold and necessary experiment in making a sight-impaired-accessible art book – it will feature Braille alongside conventional text, and tactile, textured images.

Leseprobe

Front cover

Copyright

Copyright © Khairani Barokka 2016

This edition published in the United Kingdom by Tilted Axis Press in 2016.

tiltedaxispress.com

The right of Khairani Barokka to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN (hardback) 9781911284048

ISBN (Braille edition) 9781911284055

ISBN (ebook) 9781911284147

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover design by Soraya Gilanni Viljoen and Khairani Barokka

Designed and illustrated by Khairani Barokka

Edited by Deborah Smith

Typesetting by Simon Collinson

Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Title Page

Indigenous

Species

Words and art by

Khairani Barokka

Dedication

For my mother and father,

who taught me how to love

growing, living things, and

how to try to protect them.

Introduction

In 2013, in Jakarta, I wrote a poem that seemed to propel itself onto the page. The idea I had in mind was to craft an acces-sible spoken word performance, involving subtitles and video art projections. What poured out onto the page encapsulated all the fury, dismay, and deep sadness that wells up when I encounter news stories on Indonesia’s oceans, air or indigenous peoples. Stories of pollution and indiscriminate destruction; of short-sightedness, irresponsibility, and implicit disrespect; of circumstances which no human being should ever have to expe-rience.

The feelings that gave rise to this poem were there in 1997, when widespread for-est fires engulfed Kalimantan’s rainforests,

and I saw my parents, an urban planner by training and an ecologist to whom this book is dedicated, drop everything to try