Nik Setiadarma

crumbles of time

Blog

  • Making Room

    Making Room

    A will to write, to describe, to paint with words, to engage with art, to make one. Amina Cain’s Indelicacy is a projection of a woman and her impulse and desire to write. Her name is Vitória. She works as a janitor in a gallery, and making a close acquaintance with her working partner, Antoinette.… Read more

  • A Spared Life

    A Spared Life

    When suffering seems unbearable, a poet turns to poems and tales. And chants and prays. They are poems. Sometimes a demanding one. But many times a consolation. A few words doesn’t hurt; sometimes they save souls too. Hiromi Ito’s The Thorn Puller translated by Jeffrey Angles clings on the arrangements and chains of those words:… Read more

  • Piercing

    Piercing

    I first encountered Lee Seong-beok’s poem on BTS fandom twitter (*cough* I’m an ARMY myself *cough*) because Kim Namjoon shared a collection of Lee’s poems on his Instagram. Then, it led me to the English translation of “To Whom I Could Give This Pain” published in his collection Ah, Mouthless Things, translated by Eun-Gwi Chung,… Read more

  • On The Rush

    On The Rush

    Why a storyteller writes their story? One starts off writing with a certain zest, but a time comes when the pen merely grates in dusty ink, and not a drop of life flows, and life is all outside, outside the window, outside oneself, and it seems that never more can one escape into a page… Read more

  • dari meja pembaca

    dari meja pembaca

    Tahun ini hampir selesai, dan saya ingin merangkum beberapa buku yang saya baca setahun ini. Rangkuman ini sama pentingnya seperti usaha melanjutkan tidur siang yang terpotong. Dan sama tidak pentingnya seperti empat jam tidur siang yang membuat sakit kepala. Berterimakasihlah pada suara adzan maghrib yang akhirnya membangunkan dan mengingatkan untuk berdoa. Namanya juga rangkuman, jadi… Read more

  • Indonesia’s History, Annotated

    Indonesia’s History, Annotated

    I presented some parts of the essay at the 24th Cornell SEAP Graduate Student Conference (De)Constructing Southeast Asia under the title “Feeling Strange, Feeling Home: An Annotation of Indonesian History.” Along the way, I feel like to stress the subtitle more because it was through bibliographical annotation that I develop my way and form of… Read more