And words fell from stars
at the Makassar International Writers Festival
2 July 2015
The fifth edition of the Makassar International Writers Festival 2015, a four day affair of panels, workshops and performances, was held in the port city of Makassar, in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The theme for this year‘s festival was ‘Knowledge and the Universe.’
While most of the workshops were held in Bahasa Indonesia, there were also a healthy spread of English-based workshops led by writers from Australia, Germany, Malta and other places. I was privileged to be part of two panels; one to discuss the value of translation and the second to talk about literary endeavours in our own countries of origin.
While it seems that reading is dying out all over the world, nevertheless all the visiting writers were impressed by the droves of young people who attended the workshops and thronged the inside of Fort Rotterdam during the marathon evening performances, which featured everything from a Jack Johnson singalong style with Yana and Nina, to poetry from Adrian Grima and Bryan Whalen, loads of bands and traditional dances by international students from the 2015 Indonesian Art And Culture Scholarship Programme.
Writers were also brought to Lae Lae Island, to perform stories and poems for local schoolchildren. It was refreshing to be amidst a real community on the island, and not be subjected to a typical tourist experience. Another welcome sight on the island were the numerous recycling bins for organic and non-organic waste. There was even a house given over to a ‘Recycling Bank,’ where islanders were paid for the recyclable items they brought there.
