UWRF 2012: Poetry in the Making

With writing life becomes more interesting. Writing teaches to most of us that we are not looking at things as closely as we ought to and we are not understanding them as deeply as we ought. These days, we let life slide off us. -Ted Hughes

I travel to Bali for Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) 2012 just a day after I landed from my London trip. I went to UWRF with Lisa @asil, one of my best girls who also just back from San Francisco. So we both pretty much on jet lag state and that explains a lot of sleep happening and the case of missing Kecak dance in Friday afternoon :))

In UWRF 2012 I got a lot of inspirations from the talks, got the urge and sudden kick to get back writing fiction, or in this case, a novel. Knowing exactly how a good fiction would do to you: emotionally pushed you to the edge.

But I have other thing to get done this time. I came to Ubud with one goal in mind: to become a better poet. I mean, the lovely nature, beautiful culture, loving heart, and ‘Poetry in the Making’ book by Ted Huges are the best elements to write poetry.

Yesterday @talitazahrah asked me on twitter, what keeps you writing? Sometimes for your book, you just know the beginning and the end. You don’t have a middle. You don’t like to be in the middle. And you ended up abandoning your book because of that. Quoted from the book by Ted Hughes and proven by my own experience:

There is one correct way to write a novel: make it interesting by writing something that genuinely interest you. You can’t write about something in which you have no feeling. First simply writing, let your imagination go. Second, practise your observation. Hopefully photographic observation begins to come naturally. Once you got it going, it will invent itself and begin think for you. Characters will push their way into it. You only need to let it grow. Don’t be frightened to follow wherever the story leads, and keep your eyes and ears open. See and hear everything.

I must add the practical way to do it: have a map. Write a summary or outlines of your book. I usually use mind map to do this. You must know the big picture and you can work on the details later. That ‘map’ will help you when you’re ‘lost’ in your own story.

About poetry. My first ‘obsession’ with poetry came after I’m back from Dublin last year. I saw a lot of poetry book in their bookstore and I couldn’t find it in Indonesia. Poetry can moves me better than anything in the world. That’s why I started to write and self-published my own poetry book in NulisBuku.com >> Thinking of You. I’m preparing one more, a collection of poetry and instagram photos by my friend @Kreshna, hopefully will launched soon.

I bought Lisa a notebook with a snippet of Hamlet in the cover and a pen from Shakespeare Globe Theatre and I told her to fill that with poetry. She said, she couldn’t write poetry. I said, everybody can write poetry.

Poetic experience is the hour by hour effect on us of the weather; that’s why all of us can write poetry -Ted Hughes

These are the poetry I made while staying in Ubud and while waiting for my delayed flight up to 1am in the Ngurah Rai airport. Enjoy.

I Need You Like This, in My Life

I need you like this, in my life

Heart to heart

Comfort

Against the hardship and storm

Soothing

Like nothing’s going on

Paint our own imagination

Talk our own topics

Walk our own destinations

A place to rest

Be still and be okay

Flow

Just the way life is

I need you like this, in my life

Distance

Teach me how to be patient with distance

When it means your good mornings will be delayed

And good nights are said on the daylight

You think I want the complicated

Those kind of unity

Where we started to blend and forget ourselves

Yet the truth is, my heart want the simplest

I only need

A cup of tea

And your smile

Right in front of me

Desire

I climb your nose

With my fingers

Felt the curve of your lips

Read it like a lost braille poem

Word by word spelled: desire

I lean on your broad shoulder

You spark an abstract form of passion

As I move silently

Channeling the love, my love, our love

I’ll be Back

Not that I forgot my way home

I just want to sit here and enjoy

The swivel dance of the birds

The unseen little insects made harmonious sound

The stain of colors of red, purple, orange on the green

The flowing water on nearby pond

With lotus and lily pads

Resting on the delicate surface

Not that I ignore you and the problem we had

I just want to sit here for a while

Just be and embrace

The other beauty God created for me

Just wait for me

I’ll be back

Imaginary Lover

We exchange smile

Thru our eyes

And you look away

Your soft lashes

Wink to the empty air

Left a little trace of your shiny attitude

That never fails to pull me

Toward you

I want to know the story

You’ve been keeping in the distance

Of our skin

And I want you to conclude

The thing we had

All these years

She walked closer

And take your hand away from me

You said unspoken good bye

And I freeze in the land that carry my feet

Try to keep my balance off the shattering pieces

Of my heart

The rain pour to my cheek

Making its way to my chin

And that’s the very moment I knew;

The thing I thought we had

Has silently died

The Thought of You

Does your heart send a signal?

I read your name carved

In the airport tiles

While I’m waiting and my eyes wander

Trying to walk again the path we had

In my head

By London canals where I can’t see the rocky way

I tripped

And your hand and your eyes

Catch me

Heaven

If you can describe heaven

Better than this rice field view

With coconut trees and summer breeze

You might as well fascinate me

I have some other intrepretation of heaven

That you can or not, accept

Maybe still the same blue sky and the green yellowish field

But in my mind, I can see little purple roses in rainbow river

Streaming down on

The cheerful valley

You see, all the crazy images in me

Floating out, only

When I remember thee

One Afternoon in Piccadilly

One afternoon in Piccadilly

We got lost without admitting we were lost

Walking and pointing at a Thai Massage parlor

Distracted by a group of street musician

Agreed to stop and grab a pizza before we continue the journey

Your eyes locked to mine

We even ignored the waiter

And they brought us two cups of peppermint tea

It’s cold outside and the warmth that we sip

Race thru our blood

Your cheek blushed

As I kissed your cold hands

And lay them in my heart

We enjoy the time in total silence

And waiting

‘Til one of us get enough

Of each other

I know we never will
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