Singapore Book Launch Update for INDONESIA AND NOT: POEMS AND OTHERWISE.

Singapore Writers Festival Book launch:  INDONESIA AND NOT: POEMS AND OTHERWISE: Anecdotes Scattered Author: Max Lane DATE / TIME: 6 Nov, Sun 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM VENUE:  The Arts House, Gallery II, Singapore This is a collection of poetry, prose pieces and short stories inspired by the experiences of Max Lane, translator of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Buru […]

Tentang masalah “nation”.

Tentang masalah “nation”. (Bagian 1 – disempurnakan October 21, 2016) Oleh Max Lane (Maaf atas kesalahan dan ketidakjelasan Bahasa. Saya menulis ini langsung dalam Bahasa Indonesia.) Dalam bahasa Indonesia kata “nation” biasanya diterjemahkan ‘bangsa’ atau ‘nasion’. Sebenarnya kata ini sulit dimaknai dalam situasi-situasi tertentu yang terjadi. Komunitas manusia yang namanya “nation” adalah produk berkembangnnya sistem […]

The slave Spartacus and reading Dalton Trumbo

Reading Dalton Trumbo (Spontaneous thoughts.) It was Hollywood that got me. In particular the film Spartacus, produced and starring Kirk Douglas, directed by Stanley Kubrick and screenplay by Dalton Trumbo. The other main roles were played by Jean Simmons, Laurence Olivier and Peter Ustinov. The film was inspired by Howard Fast’s wonderful novel, also called […]

TRUE STORY PIECE: The Sawangan Incident, 2001 by Max Lane

I never liked sitting in the room at seminars and conferences where I was the organiser. I had organised some very big conferences, with speakers who were not just boring academics, but national liberation leaders from East Timor, communist radicals from India, trade union militants from the United States, men and women who had been […]

POEM: Fried Rice (Nasi Goreng).

We were talking about food last night and a memory came back to me – for the umpteenth time. Narrow and dark and most of all hot. If I ended up at a back table, 3 or 4 metres inside, the sweat would pour from forehead and my hair would be wet enough to comb […]

SHORT COMMENT: On feminism and feminism

Over the course of the last twelve months, due to developments in the small Australian, British and Indonesian lefts, the issue of the Marxist orientation to feminism has become higher up in the current discussion agenda. Over the last 30 years, I have been part of a tradition that has tried to explain the origins […]

Article: The circus in late capitalist Australian politics. – by Max lane

In 1975, the then Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, urged people to vote for an Australia that would be ‘relaxed and comfortable” and where “sport would be back on the front page” of the newspapers.  The long post-war economic boom and pretty much zero unemployment (noting that participation still did not really count women) […]

ON BALI: four pieces (2 poems, 2 essays).

BALI, INDONESIA Green, deep green Chlorophyll blinds the eyes keen Black earth, brown aches Sticky mud between toes cakes. Tears irrigate the picture painted under the labouring harvest’s stricture Paddy, palms, coconuts, frangipanis Creations of peasant hands canny. Rice sold and eaten Suffices to keep deep want beaten But for the future there are no […]