Sergius Seeks Bacchus

To say it is hard to be queer in Indonesiais a gross understatement. LGBTQI Indonesians encounter violence on a regularbasis from those around them, and increasingly, from the state itself. Yetthis was the stage on which Norman Erikson Pasaribu's poetry collection Sergius Seeks Bacchus made its debut,breaking new ground to become, in the words of another Indonesian poet MikaelJohani, 'a queer pioneer' on 'an extremely heteronormative poetry scene'.

Sergius Seeks Bacchus is a heart-breaking yet humorous rumination on what it means to bein the minority on multiple levels - in terms of sexuality, but also, ethnicityand religion. Drawing on the experiences of fellow members of the queercommunity and especially on the poet's life as an openly gay writer ofBataknese descent and Christian background, the collection furnishes readerswith an alternative gospel, a book of bittersweet and tragicomic good newspieced together from the poet's encounters with ridicule, persecution,loneliness, and also, happiness. 

'The poems, though seeminglylight-hearted, provide the reader room to delve deeper into many matters, boththe tragic and comic aspects of humanity: sex, religion, and politics, evenpoetry itself. His greatest strength, however, lies in his sly humour his abilityto write poems without putting on poetic airs.' - EkaKurniawan

'His is a new and magical voiceemerging in literature, yet one almost preternaturally wise, profoundlycelebratory of the history and possibility of poetry.' - Christos Tsiolkas