Water, Tongue, Land, Touch

Pulau Pulau is a place where islands of writers swim in deep ocean. One calls to another, and many begin calling to one another. We cannot understand what the others say. We resort to English only to find and lose understanding. In the ocean, no language is sufficient. Swimming together, words fail. We are forced to pay attention to the water. Time is something else as we kick our legs so we do not sink. We follow one another in movement and sign. Sometimes we draw closer, in other places the water between us appears impassable.

As writers, we are used to swimming alone. For the inaugural Pulau, we brought together 80 writers who speak over 47 languages and fashioned seas and tides where writers can swim together. We arrived with our traditions, cultures, histories, and shared lives from distinct places. Each of us was a swarm, and we asked each other, 'How can we write together?' Writers were matched into pairs and tasked with creating a piece that transcends the individual capabilities of each writer, spanning language and place.

In this issue of Portside Review, we share two responses to this experience. Marsha Habib and Sayasi Ghosh expand the detective noir genre in the letters between two old friends, who, after decades of silence, have cause to write to each other. In the intimate and secret space of their letters, we become entangled in the practice of care between friends against domestic violence. Conversing in poems, Maria A Perdomo and Pramudith D Rupasinghe explore the ecological and human attempts to grow after birth in the grey of war.

We swim in the waves of the sea and try to relate to one another from moving points on different islands. This is the work of our collective, the archipelago, to form relationships between writers and artists in their fight to reimagine their communities. In this, Centre for Stories and Robert Wood have been our longtime friends—from the stories of life in Jakarta in Issue Four to the Makassar International Writers Festival, and the shores of new islands this year. We give thanks to Robert, Camila Egusquiza Santa Cruz, and all their team for swimming with us from the Indian Ocean to far off seas.

We continue our work to write together and form community. In our imagination:

From island to island, tide and current diverge, crash. Water, tongue, land, touch.