page_title: Sitok Srengenge
section_title: Subsequent collections
hierarchical_section_title: Sitok Srengenge / Biography / Subsequent collections
caption_attribution_description: English: Indonesian poet Sitok Srengenge reading one of his poems at the slametan for his new poetry collection Ereignis dan Cinta yang Keras Kepala, 2015-08-22
context_page_description: Sitok Srengenge is an Indonesian poet, actor, and dramatist. Born Sitok Sunarto in Purwodadi, Central Java, he became interested in literature at a young age and was heavily influenced by his village's strong oral tradition. When he moved to Jakarta to complete his university studies, he became involved with the Bengkel Teater under Rendra. Sitok remained with the company for almost a decade, appearing in several plays as he refined his literary style. His first poetry collection, Persetubuhan Liar, was published in 1992.
  Sitok has since published multiple poetry collections, including a bilingual work titled On Nothing and a trilogy of revised editions known collectively as Tripitakata, as well as a novel and serial. He has presented his poetry in such countries as the Netherlands and Germany, and participated in writers workshops in Hong Kong and Iowa. His poems, noted for their "laconic, muscular, and musical" poetic phrase, have been adapted to music in a variety of genres. In 1999, Asiaweek described Sitok as "Indonesia's best young poet".
context_section_description: In 1999, Asiaweek wrote that Sitok "is considered Indonesia's best young poet [and] often thought ... as contributing to the 'reawakening' of Indonesian literature". The magazine selected him as "one of twenty leaders for the Millennium in society and culture in Asia". The translator and Indonesianist Harry Aveling, in his 2001 anthology Secrets Need Words, described Sitok as a "pioneer" leading poets out of "the fear that froze the poets of the eighties".
  In 2000, Sitok published Anak Jadah (Bastard), a collection of poems described by Yenni Kwok of the Sunday Morning Post as "a statement about the confusion of his generation". Explaining the title, Sitok stated that "Tradition and modernisation met in a careless encounter" producing "a generation of cultural bastards". A second poetry collection, Nonsens, was published later that year by the Kalam Foundation in collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Ford Foundation, and Adikarya IKAPI Foundation. The collection contained thirty-five works, as well as several illustrations by Agus Suwage.
  Sitok published his debut novel, Menggarami Burung Terbang (Salting a Flying Bird), in 2004. The work follows a group of common villagers (the Javanese wong cilik) in the period following the coup attempt of 1965. Pamela Allen, writing in Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, found the novel to have a "rich, dense blend of realist prose in Indonesian, Javanese mythology and Javanese language", making it unprecedented in works of Indonesian literature which deal with the subject matter. She argued that Sitok used local colour (warna lokal) not as a simple backdrop to a nationalist discourse, but rather to grant "real insight into local ways of thinking and interpreting the world".
  Sitok released a bilingual volume of his poetry, On Nothing, at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. The poems in this second collection ranged from "gentle and romantic" to "drenched in erotic images and metaphors". The edition, published by Sitok's own publishing house Kata Kita, contains Indonesian and English versions of poems from his first four poetry collections, translated by four writers: Nukila Amal, Hasif Amini, Margaret Glade-Agusta, and Lauren Bain. of The Jakarta Post found "both structured and unstructured poetry" and "themes connected to the human condition, such as love, motherhood, childbirth and racism" in the collection.
  A trilogy of poetry collections, titled Tripitakata, was released in 2013. Its first volume, Gembala Waktu dan Madah Pereda Rindu, contained poems written by Sitok while still in senior high school and university, up through 1989.  The second volume, Kelenjar Bekisar Jantan dan Stanza Hijau Muda, was expanded on the previous collections Persetubuhan Liar and Kelenjar Bekisar Jantan with poems written between 1986 and 1991. The third, Anak Badai dan Amsal Puisi Banal, contained the poems of Anak Jadah as well as other poems written between 1986 and 1991. In August 2015, Sitok released another poetry collection, Ereignis dan Cinta yang Keras Kepala, which contained fifty poems written between 2010 and 2014.
  Sitok has attended several writers workshops, including at the University of Iowa (2001) and Hong Kong Baptist University (2005). He has read his poems at the Indische Festival in the Hague, the Winternachten Festival in the Hague, the University of Leiden, and the University of Hamburg.
caption: Sitok reading a poem from his collection Ereignis dan Cinta yang Keras Kepala, August 2015
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