In December ETA Blake Lapin had the opportunity to travel around Indonesia. On a trip to Jogjakarta, he met with former ETA Daniel Owen. They sat in Dan’s sitting room and ate almonds and dried apricots while drinking hot tea. Dan was an ETA in 2008 and taught in South Kalimantan.
One reason why the meet up was so valuable to Blake was that he learned about ways to stay involved in Indonesia after the grant ends. Dan went back to the United States after his grant and years later returned to Indonesia where he writes and translates poetry in Jogjakarta.
After returning to Indonesia he has visited the school he taught at three times and even met up with a former student of his who got a master’s degree in Javanese. Daniel has recently published a collection of translations from the Indonesian poet Afrizal Malna. The publication’s cover is included here. Blake has also been to Indonesia before and decided to come back. Learning the language could be a stimulating way to continue his involvement with Indonesia. There are many literary works in Indonesian that could gain a much wider audience if translated into English.
As all the ETAs are learning, everyone has an intensely unique experience here depending on who one meets. Blake enjoyed learning from the experience of someone who did the grant years ago. He gathered many similarities— enjoying the extremely friendly and curious students and fellow teachers—and differences.
Both Blake and Daniel have many intertwining interests, which is how they originally met, like poetry and cross-cultural exchange. What seemed so prevalent in the conversation was the capacity poetry has to commune readers and writers despite cultural barriers. Poetry depends upon humanness, no matter the norms and expectations that cultural creates. Halfway through this grant and Blake affirms the wonder of this opportunity is to learn and be charmed by all of these human similarities. It’s uplifting to find that the grant has been creating that wonder for so long.
Blake Lapin is currently teaching at SMKN 1 Turen near Malang, East Java.
