Kulleh Grasi: Tell Me Kenyalang

Written by Kulleh Grasi and translated from Malay by Pauline Fan. Tell Me, Kenyalang is a multi-lingual collection of poems by Kulleh Grasi, a writer and musician from Borneo, Malaysia. This groundbreaking book is one of a handful of contemporary works written in Malay to be translated into English and the first in decades to include Malaysian indigenous languages. Translator Pauline Fan brings the work into a thrilling, living English. Kulleh Grasi’s poems are entirely new and yet intimate. They are entwined with myth and nature and yet are fully post-modern. They are outside the context of American poetry and also deeply inside the questions and experiences American poets are grappling with today: questions of identity in relation to nation and language and sexuality. Grasi, both a known poet and rock star in Malaysia, writes new rivers and islands into the landscape of identity. Tell Me, Kenyalang will change the way people think of contemporary poetry throughout the world and about the role of indigenous languages in global literature and in translation. The book is a powerhouse. Publication date: November 2019.