To Those Who Are Dancing
Three politically inspired poets
Ogaga Ifowodo, the young Nigerian poet, lawyer, and human rights-activist, was the first poet to whom the Free Word Award of the foundation Poets of All Nations (PAN) was presented, in June 1998. The award is is more or less a continuation of the Poetry International Award, founded in 1979 and terminated in 1996. The aim is to give some support to poets who have encountered severe political difficulties because of their literary work. In Rotterdam on 25 February the special programme To Those Who Are Dancing was dedicated to Ogaga Ifowodo. The poets Duo Duo (from China) and Rendra (from Indonesia) were also present.
By Martin Mooij
Ogaga Ifowodo could not attend at the award in 1998; he was not able to leave his country. He had participated in Poetry International 1996, in the Young Poets Workshop, where his work clearly revealed he engaged in what was going on in his country. The Dutch poetess Ilse Starkenburg had some talks with him and she wrote: 'His poems are strongly interwoven with the culture and politics in his homeland, the country of the Ogonis in the delta of the Niger. Ogoniland is rich in oil and looks like a gigantic industrial area: petrochemical plants, an artificial fertilizers factory, eight refineries, and a forest of drilling-frames. Thousands of pipelines are littering the environment.'The poet and lawyer Ogaga Ifowodo has been active in the human rights movement. On returning to Nigeria from Scotland November 1997 he was arrested and kept in gaol until May 1998. The Writers in Prison Committee of International, PEN, and other organizations organized a campaign on his behalf and that of other prisoners. Individuals, like the Flemish poet Jo Govaerts and her Dutch colleague, Ilse Starkenburg also tried to win support for his case.
Ogaga Ifowodo was released and in September 1998 he went to Germany for about half a year as a writer-in-residence at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Bremen and in Stuttgart. Then at last he was able to visit Rotterdam. At the poetry programme, To Those Who Are Dancing, he read some of his poems himself. Several other poets also took part in the programme: the poetesses Jo Govaerts, Gerry van der Linden, and Ilse Starkenburg from the Netherlands and from Flanders, and two other poets, who had encountered political difficulties in their home countries: the Indonesian Rendra, and the Chinese Duoduo.
Indonesian prophet
For three months, until April 1999, Rendra was a guest of the Ludo Pieters Guest Writer Fund and the IIAS. Rendra has participated in poets' festivals and writers' meetings in the Netherlands several times since 1970. He is not only a poet, but has also proved his worth as a playwright and actor. In Indonesia he founded the Bengkel Teater, a theatre workshop which caused a great stir because it staged plays which had hardly any dialogue.
Rendra published his first collection of poetry in 1957: Balada Orang-Orang Tercinta (Ballad of the Beloved People). The theme that has imbued his entire poetic and dramatic oeuvre was already present in it. Rendra has always remained aware of the victims of human society; he is filled with compassion for the loneliness of old people and for the poverty and misery of the poor and the oppressed. He has developed into the Indonesian prophet of humanity. He is a rebel who constantly tries to throw back the limitations of the human condition by stimulating the responsibility and creativity of the individual man through all manner of unconventional campaigns. It has repeatedly set him on a collision course with the authorities and he has been gaoled on several occasions.
Rendra places his poetry in the tradition of Indonesian oral culture; he considers poetry to be a performing art, his poems are written in directly aimed language, meant to be heard. His fine voice and acting talent guarantee a penetrating delivery. He and his wife, Ken Zuraida, usually live in Depok, where his Bengkel Teater is also situated. Until recently, the theatre was not allowed to perform. Rendra's poetry has been banned many times and it was very difficult for him to have his work published in his country. During the last few years he has written various articles for newspapers and given lectures at meetings, including in Malaysia and other countries in the Far East, giving his commentary on the present situation in Indonesia.
For several decades now, Rendra has been recognized in Indonesia and abroad as his nation's most important living poet. From the very beginning of his work, he has protested corruption, the abuse of power, and the exploitation of people. He did not protest as a politician, but as a human being and an artist. Sometimes he has read his poetry in soccer stadiums, because it makes sense to everybody, even illiterates. He has always been much in the public eye. The themes of his poetry are immediately recognizable to his audience, everywhere in the world.
Exile
Duoduo (pseudonym of Li Shizeng / Beijing, 1951) was, like many of his contemporaries, unable to finish his secondary education and was put to work in the countryside in 1969, during the Cultural Revolution. In 1975 he returned to his native town. Duoduo wrote his first poetry in 1972 and three years later he also started to write prose. Since then, his poems and short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies. In 1988 he was awarded First Prize at the Beijing University Art and Literature Festival.
On June 4, 1989, when the student rising in Beijing was crushed, Duoduo left China for the first time, at the invitation of Poetry International. After his participation in the festival it became clear that he could not return to his country and since then he, along with many other Chinese artists, has been living in exile in the West. Duo Duo stayed in Leiden, where he still lives, as a guest of the Institute for Sinology and the Ludo Pieters Fund.
At the invitation of the newspaper NRC Handelsblad Duoduo wrote columns for some years, which also were published in the collection Bang dat ik verloren raak (Afraid of getting lost). In these, he observes the West and compares it to China. Other publications have followed. His work has been published in Dutch, English, German, and Italian translations. Duo Duo has become a Dutch citizen and with his Dutch passport he has even been able to visit his native country. His citizenship may be Dutch, but he is a Chinese and as confirmed by Chinese colleagues and other experts, he can be counted among the most important poets of his language and generation.
Martin Mooij is a publicist and a translator. He lives in Capelle a/d IJssel, in the Netherlands.