my dream job
by norman erikson Pasaribu
my life is the afterlife
From the author of Happy Stories, Mostly and Sergius Seeks Bacchus. Their first work originally written in English.
My Dream Job is a tender playground of intellect and wit where entire worlds collide: the English and Toba Batak languages; Christian and Batak mythology; colonial violence past and present. In a voice playful, daring and not pursuing legibility above all else, Pasaribu writes the ultimate eulogy for a postcolonial dream.
praise
‘In this shimmering and uncanny poetry collection, Norman Erikson Pasaribu skillfully wields religious imagery and multilingualism as a means of estranging us from the familiar alienation of a hyper- capitalist, queerphobic and racist society.This is a book which simmers with a defiant rage, all the while offering the reader palpable moments of tenderness, or something akin to hope.’ —Mary Jean Chan, author of Flèche
‘... Norman viết và những bài thơ hài hước và đầy bóng tối này đang đòi ta một cử chỉ, một hành động, một bận tâm, để nuôi dưỡng những cơn mơ như một phần thiết yếu tốt lành của đời thường.’ —Nhã Thuyên
‘Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s collection inverts then rotates the condition of memory to emanate carefree, surreal logics.’ —Bhanu Kapil
‘Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s My Dream Job is a masterclass in the lyric poem. Funny, cutting, intelligent, queer — it has everything I want from contemporary poetry. Its subtle and thoughtful experiments in form kept me in awe. My Dream Job reminded me that it is my job and my joy to attend to poems like the beautiful array of them in this book.’ —Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of Coexistence and A Minor Chorus
‘My Dream Job is a timely and unflinching book of powerful lyric that unravels post-colonial, religious, and personal entanglements. In a “linguistic polyamory,” Norman Erikson Pasaribu creates an opulent presence of the splintered self, enraged by queerphobia, racism, inequality, and cultural alienation. There is screaming across our helpless sky; there is hard love “everlastingly longed” for. This is a soulful poetry that beckons solidarity.’ —Dong Li, author of The Orange Tree
‘In their latest poetry collection, My Dream Job, Norman Erikson Pasaribu painstakingly threads ink strokes connecting seminal points in their life, the ethereal tone of their intelligent poeticism gleaming through the smog of our third world reality.’ — Fairuza Hanun, shado-mag
contributor’s details
Norman Erikson Pasaribu is a Toba Batak poet and writer. Their first poetry collection, Sergius Mencari Bacchus, won the first prize in the 2015 Jakarta Arts Council Poetry Manuscript Competition, and led them to win the 2017 Sastrawan Muda from the Southeast Asia Literary Council (Mastera). Their book of fiction, Happy Stories, Mostly (tr. Tiffany Tsao), gained international critical acclaim. It won the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, and was listed for the 2022 International Booker Prize, the 2023 National Book Critics Circle's Barrios Book in Translation, the 2023 National Translation Award for Prose and the 2023 Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation. Norman was the inaugural recipient of the Patricia Kailis International Writing Fellowship, and was a Harvard University Asia Center's artist in residence for 2023–2024. They are a sixteenth-generation descendant of Siraja Bondar of the indigenous Toba Batak, North Sumatra.
MORE INFORMATION
Publication date: 29 August 2024
Format: Demi-format paperback (216mm x 135mm)
Extent: pp. 102
Rights held: English UK & Commonwealth
ISBNs: 978-1-917126-00-7 (paperback)/978-1-917126-01-4 (ebook)
Price: £12.99 (paperback); £7.99 (ebook)
