Risalah Perempuan-Perempuan Tembikar

Author: I Gusti Ayu Putu Mahindu Dewi Purbarini
Release date: June 2026
ISBN: 9 786349 713108

Risalah Perempuan-Perempuan Tembikar reflects the choices, judgments, and perspective of the poet in addressing issues (risalah) as a female writer — a gender understood to represent the earth/mother, as soil, and its variations, types, blends, and derivatives in form, appearance, and character as “pottery”: a vessel made of clay, “created” by human hands into a container (holding space within time) through human intellect and ingenuity, with the aid of water, fire, other people, other elements of nature, and both simple tools and machines.

Pottery, as a product of human creation, can mean one, two, or many pieces — fragments of something whole, ranging from large to small, down to the smallest; from important, to very important, to unimportant, to utterly unimportant. For the poet (Mahindu), women’s issues — no matter how important or unimportant — must be recorded, and all of them deserve a place (borrowing a phrase from Chairil Anwar’s poem “Catatan Tahun 1946”).

The breadth of the subject matter led the author to divide her discussion into five major themes: Women and Water, Women and Air, Women and Ether, Women and Earth, and Women and Fire.