The craft of poetry can draw upon the power of age-old incantation—language that strikes at the essence of where we come from, who we are, and who we want to become.
My relationship with poetry has always been mercurial, fluctuating, and ambivalent. I don’t indulge in poetry as religiously as I do in essays, personal stories, and any other form of literary non-fiction. Poetry finds me occasionally, most of the time by chance. I first encountered the works of Romanian poet, Paul Celan when I was offered to edit a collection of his poems that were being translated into Malay. It required persuasion and a long, intense reading with the translator for me to be able to appreciate the depth of the imagery and language of the great holocaust poet.
It could be the tenor of the contemporary poetry I’ve encountered so far that fails to capture me—they tend to be somewhat superficial, riddled with cliches, and at times didactic. They come and go without leaving a significant impression. It could also be that I was trained as a social scientist, where the world was presented to me as a rational, logical, and objective entity. In the hands of both worlds, I found that language has lost its magic. What, then, does poetry have to offer in a disenchanted world?
As part of my work as a writer looking at the political dynamic and power relations between the state and art and cultural communities in rural Southeast Asia, I embarked on a research project in Kelantan, composing stories on Kelantanese traditional performing arts—mak yong, wayang kulit, menora, dikir barat, and the age-old healing ritual of main puteri. For more than five years, I found myself enmeshed in both the private and public life of a community who refers to themselves as orang mene/permainan or those who are involved in the traditional Kelantanese performance scene.
For the most part, it was an act of balik kampung (returning home), paying homage to my lineage, and understanding the land from the perspective of a writer who had distanced himself from his home state for almost two decades. Looking at the less visible margin of Kelantan, I was interested to understand how traditional music and ritual performances that trace their roots to various civilisations such as Islam and Hindu-Buddhism, have evolved as part of Kelantanese life. What makes these traditions so resilient amidst the growing religious conservatism in the state of Kelantan?
Encountering Jampi
Throughout my research, the traditional performing arts offered more than just music, dance, intricate costumes, and kenduri (ritual offerings) but also poetry or rather “spoken poetry” manifesting itself in the form of doa, mantra, incantations, and jampi. They are recited in archaic Kelantanese Malay language at the start and end of ceremonies such as coming of age, graduation, as well as healing ritual and passed down orally through generations with many modifications. It wasn’t until I met a tok puteri (shaman) that I understood how language and storytelling have been integral to the people in the Southeast Asian region, not only for entertainment, but also to heal psychological illness.
Before the arrival of modern medicine, people relied on shamans and traditional healers. They were not only medicine men and women, but also someone who is respected or feared in the community. Apart from poisons, antidotes, and cures from the plant and animal kingdoms, an intangible aspect of these traditions is storytelling, words, and language. In Malay, this traditional medicine man or woman is known as bomoh, dukun, or pawang. In Kelantan, they are known with specific names such as tok puteri, tok minduk, bomoh berbageh, corresponding to specific forms of healing. Villagers would often seek out bomoh, and even the king consulted the royal bomoh, to cast spells and charms of pengasih (love charm), pendinding (protection), penunduk (to instil fear).
In some of my articles about arts, language, and musical healing in Kelantan, I attempted to inscribe incantations that were narrated to me by some of the tok puteris I interviewed. Although they are difficult to understand, some terms, names, and imagery of both pre-Islamic and Islamic origins resonated with me. Consider an example of incantation from the book Malay Poisons and Charm Cures by John D. Gimlette, a medical officer who served at the Kota Bharu hospital in 1920s. The incantation to chase away pelesit or vampire reads:
Hai Pelesit aku tahu-kan asal-mu,
Keluar dari-pada Sak Uri Temuni Ketuban Bata,
Mu keluar dari-pada darah sambang.
Kemang nama-mu,
Jikalau mu longgak ka-langit muntah darah,
Tundok ka-bumi muntahkan tahi;
Demi Allah demi Rasul’llah,
Berkat la-ilaha ila’llah; Muhammad rasulu’llah.
Vampire, well do I know thy origin,
Begotten of the after-birth,
Engendered of the discharge of unproductive blood,
Kemang thy name!
Gazing skyward thy vomit be blood,
Bending earthward thy vomit be ordure.
In the name of Allah and in the name of His Apostle!
With the blessings of Allah and the Prophet!
(Translated by John D. Gimlette in Malay Poisons and Charm Cures)
In these incantations, I found a reciprocal relationship between human beings and nature, the living and the dead, the seen and the unseen. They are among the earliest forms of poetry that connect us to the divine and speak to the human subconscious, using a language that invokes the unfamiliar. After the arrival of Islam in the Malay World, local healing traditions incorporated Islamic belief and vocabulary. The tok puteri, when consecrating the ritual, utters incantations— paying respects to ancestral and guardian spirits, declaring intention, asking for blessings and protection—that open with bismillah. The incantations of the tok puteri are distinct from casting jampi (spells and charms), and are known by specific names such as Baca Kenduri, Nasi Guru, Bertabib.
The Oral and Inscribed
My exploration with incantation and poetry transcends the cultural borders of Kelantan. In 2020, as Curator of the George Town Literary Festival (GTLF), I put together a conversation with Borneo writers entitled “Antara Kissa dan Ensera: Alam, Kata-Kata, dan Jati Diri” (Between Kissa and Ensera: World, Words, and Identity). It was from this conversation I learned that many contemporary Borneo writers and poets consciously incorporate oral traditions, myths, folklore, storytelling, songs, and incantations into their fiction, retellings, and poetry. Some writers draw inspiration from the images, motifs, and metaphors of oral literature, others emulate the form and structure of oral narratives in their own work and adapt to the present-day sensibilities.
From the Iban ensera to the Suluk kissa, local knowledge and oral literature that are spoken, narrated, or sung by various communities in Sabah and Sarawak, especially indigenous communities, lies at the heart of collective memory and identity of the peoples of Borneo. In one way or another, writers and poets of Borneo are now telling their own stories in a kind of written self-portraiture, directly and indirectly countering European or Western centric images of the island. Encountering ensera and kissa led me to many other forms of oral traditions, including incantations in other cultural contexts. It also enriches my understanding of my own tradition, and more importantly deepens my perception of what language and poetry really mean, and the possibilities that language and poetry hold.
It was for this reason that, in early 2023, I embarked on a book project titled Ink-Cantations to understanding the complexity of Borneo, appreciating the cultural richness that many of us have taken for granted, and learning about how they perceive and recast their oral traditions. Ink-Cantations, as this book is titled, aims at linking the realms of ancient oral traditions and contemporary inscribed text. Through this book, I gather works by contemporary writers, storytellers, and poets of Sabah and Sarawak who are in conversation—directly or indirectly—with the oral tradition. Featuring poems, short stories, personal essays, and excerpts of oral literature in local languages, Ink-Cantations looks at how contemporary writers and poets of Borneo respond to, reinterpret, or reject their inherited oral traditions.
One of the threads that binds the poets and writers in this anthology is the act of grappling with their mother tongue—reconnecting with their roots through borrowing, incorporating, and eventually inventing their own literary language and poetic sensibilities. They experiment with their own languages such as Iban, Kadazan-Dusun, Suluk, and Kayan, fully aware of its fragility and the imperfection of their understanding.
To me, the possibilities of oral traditions to reinvigorate the contemporary written word are vast and still unmined. There’s no single definition of poetry, but I believe that the craft of poetry can draw upon the power of age-old incantation—language that strikes at the essence of where we come from, who we are, and who we want to become.
*This article is an expansion of the Editor’s Note from the book Ink-Cantations published by Goethe-Institut Malaysia and Inisiatif Buku Darul Ehsan (IBDE). First published in Penang Monthly, December 2023 issue.
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