Books

Dream-weaving between worlds

Sarawak-born writer Kulleh Grasi's work is striking in his multilingual shape-shifting

Updated 3 years ago · Published on 07 Nov 2020 5:00PM

Dream-weaving between worlds
Kulleh Grasi bridges the abyss between oral tradition and contemporary expression. – Photo by Cheryl Hoffmann, courtesy of Pusaka, November 7, 2020

by Pauline Fan

"... these dreams we carry

seek poems from the jungle, 

rhythms from sebayan,

qasidahs from bunian."

– Kulleh Grasi 

THE hour of twilight falls and soon enfolds us, a pair of crepuscular creatures at play by the water.  

In the disappearing half-light, his ink-inscribed body becomes one with the dark. I watch his silhouette as he walks towards the lake bearing a glass of tuak — libation to the spirits of this world and the other. The ceremony is over quickly; we moisten our lips with the heady rice wine and gather the threads of our conversation. 

In that passage between waking and dreams, Kulleh Grasi and I sealed a bond wrought with passion and poetry. It was a year later that Kulleh first showed me his poems, furtively, as if entrusting me with secrets excavated from his innermost being. 

My deep regard for Kulleh’s artistry as a singer and songwriter did not prepare me for the unpredictable power and distinctive beauty of his poetry, which interweaves Malay with six indigenous languages of Sarawak. I am still struck today by these incantatory lines from ‘Ibun’, the first of Kulleh’s poems that I translated:

Tujuh dewa tansang kenyalang,

tujuh menantu Tuhan Sengalang,

Ketupong, Beragai, Pangkas,

Embuas, Kelabu Papau dan Burung Malam, serta Bejampung,

berkelana dari mana ke sana,

Bumbok, Pulau Pinang,

terus ke Belanda,

merentas Andaman,

lautan Baltic ke Amsterdam.

(Seven gods of tansang kenyalang,

Seven kin of the god Sengalang,

Ketupong, Beragai, Pangkas,

Embuas, Kelabu Papau, Burung Malam, and Bejampung;

wandering from where to there —

Bumbok, the island of Penang,

then to Holland,

across the Andaman,

the Baltic Sea to Amsterdam.)

Kulleh moves seamlessly from invocations of the warrior god, Sengalang Burong, and the seven omen birds of Iban folklore, to navigating flight paths from Sarawak to Peninsular Malaysia and to Europe. He instinctively bridges the abyss between oral tradition and contemporary expression, traversing realms of the mythological, local, and global. 

An existential condition of ‘in-betweenness’ in some ways encapsulates the contemporary indigenous experience in Malaysia. Caught between myths of eternal return and delusions of inevitable progress, indigenous communities vacillate between inexplicable longing for a severed past, unsettled belonging in a complex present, and deep anxiety towards an uncertain future. 

Intermediation between worlds is also an essential characteristic of Sarawak’s revered symbol, the Kenyalang, the majestic rhinoceros hornbill. Among the indigenous communities of Sarawak, the Kenyalang is believed to be a sacred messenger between our human world and the celestial realm. The Kenyalang’s call is said to hold utterances from the gods and spirits.

The translator, too, is an intermediary — deciphering and carrying messages across topographies of language and imagination. As I carried over Kulleh’s poems into English, the act of translation became a rite of dream-weaving, emulating through the art of language the pua kumbu dream-weavers of Kulleh’s lineage. Through late-night conversations with Kulleh, I entered the dreamscapes of his poems, which, like all dreams, are shaped by an experience of mundane reality, yet transfigured by the immanence of the subconscious and the sublime.  

Kulleh roots himself the power of orality to radically reimagine, even subvert, written text. Contemporary literary discourse often views oral traditions as anachronistic exoticisms, or disregards them altogether. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Oral traditions are at once timeless and original because they are constantly being renewed. Mutable by nature, oral traditions shift and transform according to who is telling them. Another aspect of oral traditions is the validity of multiple versions of the same story, song, or poem, challenging the very notions of literary authorship that most of us are accustomed to. 

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Kulleh’s work is his multilingual shape-shifting. By interweaving indigenous phrases into his poetry, Kulleh affirms Iban, Kayan, Kelabit, Kenyah, Penan and Bidayuh as languages of contemporary literary expression alongside Malay, his primary language of composition. But how does a literary translator render this dense layering of language, imagery and meaning?

Kulleh and I decided that we should leave certain indigenous phrases untranslated, to retain a sense of the strange in the familiar. These untranslated phrases are intimations of what is left unsaid, like the presence of the natural world — seen and heard but never completely understood. The aural quality of these phrases are paramount, while meaning is intuited. They invite readers to engage the text with the totality of their senses, to unearth meaning beyond what is encountered on the page.

My translations of Kulleh Grasi’s poetry were published, alongside his original poems, in the book, "Tell Me, Kenyalang" (Circumference Books, 2019). This year, "Tell Me, Kenyalang" was shortlisted for the prestigious National Translation Award in Poetry and longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. Such international recognition urges us to keep moving between worlds of experience and expression, as Kulleh’s writes in his poem ‘Pimoh di Tingkap Longit’ (‘Pimoh at the Sky’s Window’), evoking the evanescence of dreams:

...kuhulur tangan untuk mencapai debuan pimoh

berterbangan di sekitar minda

yang tumbuh jadi bunga,

yang mencambah jadi kejora

yang terkubur jadi nisan

yang melumpur jadi ingatan.

(...My hand reaches for the pimoh dream-dirt

floating through the mind

that grows into flowers, 

that swells into Venus,

that buries into stone,

that muddies into memory.) – The Vibes, November 7, 2020


 

*All poetry excerpts by Kulleh Grasi, translated by Pauline Fan. 

"Tell Me, Kenyalang" is available at Kinokuniya Malaysia, or through Circumference Books: https://circumferencebooks.com/book/grasi-tellmekenyalang

Spotlight

Events

UK alumni lauded for stellar achievements as British Council observes 75 years in Malaysia

Malaysia

Don’t let politicians, activists stir up hatred against KK Mart, PBK tells cops

By The Vibes Team

Malaysia

7.7 mil people registered in Padu, 2.5 mil cyberattacks, but not one success: Rafizi

By Stephen Then

Malaysia

Farewell Aunty Bersih, you will be missed

By Ian McIntyre

Malaysia

Couple make two trips to workshop to find trapped kitten in car

Malaysia

KK Mart founder, director charged with wounding religious feelings of others over 'Allah' socks

By The Vibes Team