In Between / Di Antara (draft)

Saturday, December 20th 2025: In Between / Di Antara is

Woman with two skins, where do you belong?
Too pale for the Javanese,
too pale for the Dutch.
Your name scribbled on a pendaftaran
marked by Japanese cuts. (p. 29)

I bought in between / di antara (I'll stick to the English title going forward) at a book fair many months ago. It was only last week that I decided to read it thoroughly and sit with the poems instead of just skimming through it.

Dear reader, this book is much more mediocre that I thought it was at first glance. I felt like Block was simply masquerading around his 1/4th Indonesian identity to sell a book. The poems felt meandering, repetitive, exoticized. Nothing too profound is present in the writing, and the straightforward nature of many of the poems felt like it was dumbing everything down for the reader.

Quick recap: in between is a poetry collection by poets Robin Block and Angelina Enny. Their collaboration was in the form of sending poems back and forth, replying and referencing eachother, basically bouncing off eachothers in an ideation phase, only in poetry and it gets published.
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General Review

A couple of things right off the bat; this poetry collection flows like a conversation where, instead of the characters talking to eachother, it feels like they're merely talking at eachother. That is to say, the speech is directed at them, but none of what their interlocutor's words are being processed in their replies.

You have Block talking about his Indonesian grandmother, then Enny talks about her grandmother; Block talks about his childhood, Enny follows. This makes for a thematic collection, but poor storytelling. Nothing novel or revolutionary ever comes from these exchanges, the poets are merely picking a topic and writing about their experiences with said topic. They nod to whatever the other party has written and continue to spiel about their own experiences. There's no meaningful engagement let alone responses that are critical towards the other party. Perhaps they are being too polite to eachother, or perhaps they merely do not care about what the other party has to say.

A book of poems is published this month
In it, allegories you won't find / those that the heart wants
or language and literary worldplay that / play with your heart

Perhaps you'll find familiar tales / that are often forgotten because / your mind forgets
-like the subjects of history in school

Perhaps you'll find stories / in between
those that exist and those that do not
those that stretch, fold
float and find no spot

Perhaps as well, you'll find matras / in paragraphs aligned
that when spoken aloud, will bring the dead / back to life

This book of poems is published this month
and hence, the authors are dead.
(p. 1)

This is the first poem you read in the book/collection. Notice how it hedges its strongest imagery, "perhaps, perhaps, perhaps." The speaker is unsure of herself. "...often forgotten because/your mind forgets" is redundant, sloppy, and relies too much on telling the reader what to feel instead of showing. I felt like the underhanded line of "[you won't find] allegories, language and literary wordplay that play with your heart" is not selling this book to me. Instead I read it as the speaker lacking confidence in what few poetic devices she does use, hence setting your expectations low. Also notice how the line breaks aren't doing much heavy lifting, how very few, if any, enjambments are employed.

These are a few of my gripes with this book. Very straightforward "telling" type writing, uninteresting use of line breaks, underwhelming way of handling the subject matter, and overall not leaving much for the mind to do.
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Translation

Angelina Enny is working double shift for this book, since she serves as both Indonesian poet and EN-ID translator. The task for ID to EN translations were given to Dias Novita Wuri. For this section I'll compare and contrast the styles of EN-ID vs. ID-EN transations. ST denotes source text, TT denotes target text.
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ST (ID) TT (EN)

Sebuah buku puisi diterbitkan bulan A book of poems is published this ini\ month
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Di dalamnya kau tak akan menemukan In it, allegories you won't find
alegori\ those that the heart wants
yang membungakan hati\
\ or language and literary worldplay
atau kaidah-kaidah bahasa yang that play with your heart membuat kau\
kepincut pada sastra

There's a pattern in the english translation of wonky noun phrases, the first glaring example is "a book of poetry" instead of "poetry book." The ID text just says "buku puisi" (lit. book poetry), this change perplexes me, yet this isn't the only one.

Also notice the repetition in this string " (..) heart wants // or language and literary worldplay // that play with your heart." That's... pretty wonky. I understand repetition is the goal, however it comes off as clumsy and lacking a thesaurus.

The original Indonesian varies its word usage. Literary it goes "In it you won't fine allegories that flower the heart, or word use that makes you fall in love with literature." so it's odd that the translation says "heart" twice.

ST (ID) TT (EN)

Sate Babi\ Sate Babi
\
sudah kupilih kapsim kembang\ the shoulder part I've picked
dari yang termuda\ the youngest one
kusemat bada biting\ pierced on a stick
berbatang-batang\ many, many sticks
\
direndam minyak ikan yang ditaburi\ marinated in fish oil
ketumbar dan jahe\ mixed with coriander and ginger
kucuri sedikit dengan jeruk nipis\ then I poured a wee bit of lime \ juice,
garam, gula merah\
\ salt, brown sugar
kubakar di atas bara\
sampai gajih meleleh, tersirat grilled on hot fire
wangi serat\ 'till its fat has melted, dari daging legit yang kau gigit\ aromatic
\ desire
maafkan jika sedikit gosong\ this is the meat you eat
tapit kuyakin ia\
mampu menyendat perutmu yang kosong forgive me for it's burnt a bit
but surely it
will thrill your tummy to bits

First off, hat's off to Wuri for trying to pull off the rhyme scheme in the TL."kampsim/kembang/kusemat/biting/batang" becomes "picked/stick/sticks." I do think repeating stick and sticks is a clumsy way of translating it, but alas, translating poetry is no easy task.

Then we have "kubakar-bara, tersirat/serat, daging/legit/gigit" becomes "fire/desire, meat/eat." You could sense Enny's style of poetry here, coupled with the fact that the layout of this poem is that of a menu, with stanzas being short descriptions of the dishes. Although, slight nitpick; "hot fire" is redundant when the original is "grilled over coal." My take would be something like

over coal, grilled // gushing fat and its scents // instills // the thrill of tender meat between your teeth

Also, sorry to be nitpicky again, but "gula merah" is palm sugar. Not brown sugar. The latter is cane sugar. Indonesian cuisine does not use brown sugar. This is a common translation mistake.

ST (ID) TT (EN)

Ketika waktu semakin akrab\ When time becomes closer, Menggerogoti tubuh sampai tak lagi friendlier
lengkap\ Eating up your body
\
Dekat\ Solid
Dekap\ Rigid
\
Maut kini menjadi sabahat Death becomes our friend

This one irked me quite a bit. here we have the poor translation of "menggerogoti" into "eat" when its meaning is closer to "gnaw." Then we have the insertion of a pronoun that adds nothing to the poem, "tubuh" in the SL does not have any pronoun attatched to it, translated into "your body," while "menjadi sahabat" (passive "befriended") suddenly turns into "becomes our friend." I feel like this frustrated me more than anything because Wuri almost strips away so much of what makes Enny's work hers. From using simpler terms and confusing noun phrase translations, I feel like she wasn't performing her best when translating these poems.

ST (EN) TT (ID)

Fate's messages\ Pesan nasib
engraves\ menggurat
grandfather's stubborn back.\ punggung pembangkang kakek.
Godbeast kaligraphy\ Kaligrafi siluman
steers the grinding wheel.\ menyetir roda gerinda.
I plough through his curses. Aku meluku di atas laknat leluhur.

Here's some praise for a change. Enny's translation efforts doesn't go unnoticed. Although she does beef up the diction sometimes, it serves to match Robin's style of poetry with hers in Indonesian. You can sense this in the alliteration, rhymes, and assonance are used. "punggung pembangkang kakek" and "aku meluku di atas laknat leluhur" is some stellar work. Shall I say it levels up Robin's otherwise plain diction into something more rythmical and interesting to read.

Block's Orientalism

Woof, a bit harsh for a section title don't you think? Nevertheless, I felt like this is an important point to stress. Though, if you were being pedantic and remembering the authors are dead, this is not a judgement on his character.

There are a few issues haunting Block's work. One of which is the characterization of his grandparents, "forefathers," or (specifically) his Indonesian ancestors. To put it short, he writes in a way that otherizes their existence and constantly uses cliche to signal his heritage. This wouldn't be a problem if Block had written about his earnest attempts at connecting with his heritage and the tensions that builds naturally from being mostly Dutch. However, his exposure to his grandparents always circles back around to The War and his mysterious grandmother's origin story.

Quick aside, if I were to make a stronger case for this I would quote Block's other book, "A Handbook for the Displaced," but in the interest of time and not having the Gramedia subscription I used to read it, I will skip this sub-section

Block has a habit of borrowing Indonesian words and terms in places that don't justify them. Take an excerpt of Grandfather Landscape (p. 17).

(...) Which hand then?
Both of them, storing smells
of jahe, bawang putih, terasi.
Smooth cutting hands:
motherland never left his skin. (...)

in Kerokan (p. 21)

(...) Red lines follow his ribs
drawing vascular wings.

Keluar tanah air, masuk angin*

I'm rubbing Dutch winter
out of his brown skin

and Serindai: remnants for my lover (p.79)

(...) What has become of us, Kekasih? Did we drift so easily, beyond the vanishing point? Forgetting is shedding your skin, unwillingly. I parted with my body, I parted with yours. I flattened and folded back the hours we spent. I slept with coins on my eyes. Then I crossed, while you gave birth.

A lot of things are happening in these quotes; loaning Indonesian words, use of general cliche, and the motif of skin as identity.

I find it a bit odd to list ginger, garlic, and shrimp paste randomly in Indonesian. These don't feel specific to any one recipe. They feel too general. It's as if it's less of a personal memory and more of a cliche Block is employing to signal his (or his great grandparents') Indonesian identity.

The second quote is translated into "exit birthground, enter cold." Quite literally described by the speaker as "rubbing Dutch winter out of his brown skin."

Lastly is his use of "kekasih" in place of lover, perhaps to signal his lover is of Indonesian descent, or to mirror Enny's previous poem.