Norman Erikson
Pasaribu

Norman Erikson Pasaribu finds a center in the in-between. Between languages—Indonesian, English, Toba Batak—they traverse the untranslatables and weave a poetics of estrangement and return. Between genres—poetry, fiction, essay, criticism—they use the speculative as a form of survival and invention. Between identities—queer, Christian, Toba Batak, working class, millennial—they write the tender logics of grief, desire, and kinship. Rich with affect, humor, and irony, their work is always curious, never settles; it seeks and questions what it means to live with the sometimes beautiful, oftentimes unknowable, always tenacious meaning of life.  

Born in Jakarta in 1990, Norman is one of the most original literary voices in contemporary international literature. Their first poetry collection, Sergius Mencari Bacchus (2016, translated as Sergius Seeks Bacchus by Tiffany Tsao in 2019), won first prize in the prestigious Jakarta Arts Council Poetry Manuscript Competition and was a finalist for the Khatulistiwa Literary Award for Poetry, while the English translation received a PEN Translates grant. Their short story collection Cerita-Cerita Bahagia, Hampir Seluruhnya (2021, translated as Happy Stories, Mostly by Tiffany Tsao, 2021) received the Republic of Consciousness Prize and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize. In 2024, they published My Dream Job, their first poetry collection written originally in English—a work which, according to poet Bhanu Kapil, “inverts then rotates the condition of memory to emanate carefree, surreal logics.” 

In Norman’s writing, speculation and imagination drive social and spiritual critique, animated by wry humor and devastating clarity. Ghosts of dead ancestors, parallel worlds with alternative endings, mythic archetypes of love and revenge outwit the impossibility of being; they offer you a transformative respite and companionship, a pause to ask what is real, what is imagined, and if it matters. Norman’s work mixes elements of sci-fi, prose poetry, postcolonial critique, pop culture, and romance, alongside classic literature, Indonesian history, and the Bible—to jar and to captivate. 

In their latest collection, My Dream Job, a particularly powerful moment occurs in a poem titled “Ode to Job.” Throughout the collection, a slantwise wordplay between the noun “job” and the name of the biblical figure from the Book of Job offers a playful, kaleidoscopic opening where our perception of reality as well as our emotional responses to the poems are refracted. 

“Yeah, I know my job is being ill.
No need to mail a prophet to make sure
I remember. (…)
I suck at being ill. My sugary tears kept jumping
into the measuring cups, therefore changing the recipe.
During the break, I took a drooly nap and dreamed of a narrative poem about a vacation to Greece. (What a poem. SO SAUCY.)
The doorbell went off, woke me up.
Handing a piece of the cake to the customer—me—
I decided to call the poem ‘Huibert’.
Naming our own excrement is our future after TikTok.
I was manifesting a summer romance with a special person named ‘Huibert’! 
Go budget the thrill. I’ll stunt all the kisses myself.”

Here, cake, prophecy, and excrement coexist, as do the longing for intimacy and the absurdity of labor and living conditions. It comes natural to Norman to make bold dreamscapes from contradictions and absurdities, to excavate lyric tenderness that connects the discrepancies. 

As a translator and editor, Norman has championed new Indonesian writing that gestures toward an optimistic future for feminist, queer, and indigenous literatures. They have been tirelessly advocating for the visibility of minority writers, especially in the Global South, including translating a rare short story by a Papuan writer, Topilus B. Tebai. Anyone who has had the pleasure of sharing a room with Norman immediately sees that their advocacy goes beyond an artistic vision; in their work and personal life, they know no other way of being than continuously building, with language and action, new geographies where everyone may live, create, and be afforded not only a fair, but also a thoroughly lovable life. 

Now based between Berlin and Bali, Norman Erikson Pasaribu continues to write, translate, teach, and share matcha lattes with friends. 

Text: Dasom Yang