I always love how much space Tilted Axis Press gives to their translators for afterwords and notes on processes. Tiffany Tsao’s afterword about how she and Norman Pasaribu worked so closely together on the English translations of these poems was utterly fascinating. They transcended the boundary of author and translator, both becoming author-translator as Pasaribu rewrote some of their own poems in English for Tsao to edit, and encouraged Tsao to be more playful in her translations, as well as open minded when it came to gender - she admits she initially was constrained by a heteronormative view of these intrinsically queer poems. I think it’s safe to say I actually enjoyed this section of the book more than the poems themselves 👀 I did enjoy some of them, but more than a few went over my head. My favourite was probably the extended speculative fiction piece near the end, which was just fun! Others exploring the risks involved with living queerly in Indonesia were beautiful but sad. I say this every time I read a poetry collection, but I must read more.