December 23, 2014

HIATUS

This one was definitely not a break, though. (Pun sadly intended.)

It’s funny how things work out sometimes. I left my job as a staff writer/editor to go solo without knowing where or how to begin. I guess I had a vague idea of what I could do with my hitherto suppressed ambitions, but I couldn’t settle on an idea for a project. Panic naturally ensued. The thing I wanted to avoid most—even more than that terrifying thing called writer’s block—was a hiatus. I wanted to avoid it because unlike writer’s block, a hiatus is actually avoidable; all you need to do is work.

It was at the suggestion of Max Suriaganda, a friend and former colleague, that I started to put together a collection of my own poemsWriting poems was not new to me, but it had, up until two days ago, been a private hobby. So yes, the whole process was pretty nerve-racking.

By the time I decided to begin the project, I had already set aside a number of older poems I wanted to include in the collection. Taking a mission-oriented approach in poetry proved to be more difficult than I’d imagined, but my goal was to release my first book before I had to get myself a new calendar. The mission went on for several months. In October, I sent my final draft to Max, who then came up with a sleek design concept for the book.

Hiatus is not divided into strict themes even though there were certain topics (faith, love, etc.) that I kept coming back to—personal obsessions, I suppose—so I put the poems in chronological order instead (the first poem was written in December 2013, the last in September 2014). On December 21, 2014, Hiatus was finally launched at the Studio1212 & Whiteboard Journal Headquarters in Kemang, Jakarta.

During the process of writing this book, I learned that it's possible to avoid a hiatus, but it's hard to avoid your own thoughts.


Hiatus: 30 Poems
By Dwiputri Pertiwi
Paperback (with sleeve); 63 pages
Published in 2014 by Nowherelandian
Designed by Max Suriaganda
Printed in Indonesia