My Dream Job E-Book

Norman Pasaribu

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

Seitenzahl: 71

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

From the author of Sergius Seeks Bacchus and Happy Stories Mostly Norman Erikson Pasaribu, comes their first English-language poetry collection. Expertly crafted, My Dream Job is a tender playground of intellect and wit, where cultural extraction is the muse and spectres, the hope. The ultimate eulogy for a postcolonial dream.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Praise for My Dream Job

My Dream Job Interior Title Page

Report on Norman

Glossary

Tell Me Your Body Count

Are You Sure You Don’t Want to Quit?

Things I’ll Remember

Post-het

A Queer Writer in Translation, Descending the Stairs

Tell Me What Happened

Winter 2018 Poem

Job Speaks of the World Under

Call Me by Your Name, Which Is Irresponsible and Not-Meteoric

Tell Me What Happened

Before the Melbourne Reading

Wahai Mardan

Ode to Water

My Dream Job

Notes on the Annunciation

My Life Is the Afterlife

Brown Rivers

Tell Me What Happened

Ode to Job

A Dutch Boy Came to My Reading and

Tell Me What Happened

Potret Ibuku Sebagai Sosok Tanpa Nama di Mimpi-mimpi Biasa

Notes on the Machine

My Dream Job

To Our Lady of Our Sorrows

Acknowledgements

Publication Notes

Notes

Editor’s Note

About Tilted Axis Press

Landmarks

Cover

Table of Contents

Praise for My Dream Job

‘In this shimmering and uncanny poetry collection, Norman Erikson Pasaribu skilfully wields religious imagery and multilingualism as a means of estranging us from the familiar alienation of a hyper-capitalist, queerphobic and racist society. Words like “mother”, “ghost”, “god”, “job”, “body/nobody” reverberate with a multiplicity of meanings; in “Tell Me What Happened”, a haunting familial tableau emerges: “Whenever Ghost consumed that plate of palatial sushi, Ghost thought of Divine Mother and felt miserable. How tragic it was, Ghost thought, to be part-god and hungry.” Shifting between multiple personae, Pasaribu grapples movingly with the uneasy compromises that accompany conflicting loyalties to one’s family, loved ones and community, as in “Job Speaks of the World Under”, where the speaker attends a literary festival in the Global North and wonders if they will “forever be seen / as a voiceless subaltern”. This is a book that simmers with a defiant rage, all the while offering the reader palpable moments of tenderness, or something akin to hope.’

—Mary Jean Chan

‘Hằng chăm chú và cảm phục dõi theo những hoạt động văn học và thi phẩm của Norman Erikson Pasaribu, tôi làm bạn với một kẻ viết luôn trúc trắc sống, kẻ bước đi và ngồi lại với những cuốn sách, khóc và cười một mình và với mọi người, kẻ thường tuyệt vọng và đôi khi cuồng nộ, và trên hết, một kẻ viết mê mải và bền bỉ với chữ nghĩa, rắn rỏi chất vấn sự tàn độc của thế giới này. My Dream Job, tập thơ đầu tiên viết bằng tiếng Anh của Norman, nhắc tôi những lời June Jordan khẳng quyết chữ của mình: “Họ đã dạy mi đọc nhưng mi học viết.” Norman nuôi mình bằng mơ, và những cơn mơ dẻo dai sống. Nhưng vẫn là không đủ: Norman viết và những bài thơ hài hước và đầy bóng tối này đang đòi ta một cử chỉ, một hành động, một bận tâm, để nuôi dưỡng những cơn mơ như một phần thiết yếu tốt lành của đời thường.’

—Nhã Thuyên

‘Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s collection inverts then rotates the condition of memory to emanate carefree, surreal logics.’

—Bhanu Kapil

‘Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s My Dream Job is a masterclass in the lyric poem. Funny, cutting, intelligent, queer—it has everything I want from contemporary poetry. Its subtle and thoughtful experiments in form kept me in awe. My Dream Job reminded me that it is my job and my joy to attend to poems like the beautiful array of them in this book.’

—Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of Coexistence and A Minor Chorus

‘My Dream Job is a timely and unflinching book of powerful lyric that unravels postcolonial, religious and personal entanglements. In a “linguistic polyamory”, Norman Erikson Pasaribu creates an opulent presence of the splintered self, enraged by queerphobia, racism, inequality and cultural alienation. There is screaming across our helpless sky; there is hard love “everlastingly longed” for. This is a soulful poetry that beckons solidarity.’

—Dong Li, author of The Orange Tree

My Dream Job

POEMS

For Ompung-ompungku, thank you.

And for my parents, I’m sorry.

And for my goose, Jek—rest well, Tukang Ribut.

There once was a man named Job who lived in the land of Uz.

—The Book of Job, New Living Translation

JOE SABIA: What was your first job?

KENDALL: Dog walking.

—‘73 Questions With Kendall Jenner’ by Vogue

My Dream Job

My dream job grew up with me in the green-fenced house near the river, ten kilometres from the exit of the highway. My parents always worked, let us non-biological twins roam and ruin the house. We read Cán Xuě in the morning, drank last night’s coffee throughout the day, taught ourselves how to talk to see-through fish before we went to bed. Cán Xuě, the brown snow that refused to melt. We were also exceptionally dirty, two chimeras of meat and mud, as my dream job liked to flirt with the hot afternoons, swimming alongside baby mosquitoes. My dream job spoke Crabs. My dream job walked with me to where the school bus waited for us. Inside, my dream job would just give up their seat. With the sisters encircling us at school, my dream job learned about the world with me. In the library, we gathered the Greek and German and Toba Batak words for river. We wed the three of them, alchemised a linguistic polyamory. The liquid trinity gave birth to copious amounts of rivers, a new generation of water. For a moment, we were giving out rivers to anyone for free. Neighbouring strangers venerated our rivers because our rivers remember. After the night’s Hail Mary, my dream job would whisper at me in the dark. We would reach for one another. Each time we succeeded, I found our hands were still covered with prayers. I’d lick the prayers away. My stomach would go full of grace. One day, I was supposed to grow up and wear my dream job like a sweater. My dream job was supposed to stay the same. I was supposed to go to tall buildings and play with money. I was supposed to buy back my parents from their houses of work. This was the way of the world, the sisters said. They hinted that money was water as well and that was why we called it liquid. One day, I would grow into my dream job, the sisters said, walk around tall buildings, play with money. One day, everyone would forget my dream job, the sisters said. But not our rivers, I said, who will remember.

Ia adong na mala, ndada olo ho mandjalo, ia olo ho mandjalo, ndada olo halak mala. Ia adong ulos honomu, na maruloshon ma sa adong, ia adong na marulushon, ulos ma soada. Ia adong na manganhon, sipanganonmu ma soada, ia adong sipanganon, na manganhon ma soada. Ia adong siihuthononmu, na mangihuthon ma soada, ia adong inam ma soada; ia adong do amam, inam ma soada. Molo adong do ibotom, ho ma soada, ba molo adong do ho, ibotom ma soada…

When there is somebody who is willing to give you something, you will not accept it. When you are willing to accept, there is nobody to offer you something. When you have an ulos, there is nobody to wrap it around. When there is somebody, there is no ulos. When there is somebody to eat food with, you have no food. When there is some food, there is nobody to eat it with. When there is somebody you want to follow, there is nobody who will follow them with you. When you have a mother, then you have no father. When you have a father, then you have no mother. When you have a sister, then you are not there. When you are there, then you have no sister…

—God telling God’s fourth grandson His fate, as recorded by Guru Ruben

This text is part of a diverse set of Batak myths that are no longer accessible to the Batak public as a result of the Dutch colonial project in Nusantara and the Christianisation of Batak people. This passage was acquired by Ph. O. L. Tobing from the Leiden University Libraries for his PhD dissertation ‘The Structure of the Toba-Batak Belief in the High God’. The English translation here was done by Tobing and was slightly edited by the author of this book.