in which i hypnotise a tiger by Khairani Barokka
Rethinking and reclaiming tigers through a poem.
Published in the author’s poetry collection, Ultimatum Orangutan (2021), from Nine Arches Press.
From the author:
Computer records seem to indicate I wrote ‘in which i hypnotise a tiger’ on May 5, 2017. The poem-making process felt refractory—in the sense of taking the idea of a tiger, then going through all the many different images and usages of it, tiger tropes that I’ve encountered in daily life, or that have gone through my mind. And how so many of these usages are artificially divorced from, or actually contribute to in some way, tiger endangerment and extinction. For instance, tigers in The Hangover, or being used in atrocious dating profile photos, are tied to the exoticisation of tiger species, especially in the Western world; with that, the ill-treatment and endangerment of indigenous caretakers of rainforests and rainforest creatures.
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Khairani Barokka is a writer and artist from Jakarta, and Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation. Among her honours, she has been Modern Poetry in Translation’s Inaugural Poet-in-Residence, a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, an Artforum Must-See, UK Associate Artist at Delfina Foundation, and Associate Artist at the National Centre for Writing (UK). Okka’s work includes being author-illustrator of Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), author of Rope (Nine Arches), and co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches). Her latest book is Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize.
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