“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Protest”
Interrogation Records, by Jeddie Sophronius, responds powerfully to the challenge and need to redress silence and amplify attention addressed toward past harms. The documentary poetry collection offers insights into the 1965-1966 mass killings of members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and individuals suspected of affiliations with it in original and authentically compelling ways. The collection both engages with history and offers fodder and reason to revisit long-overlooked (sometimes locked) archives. The work documents a past heavy of heartbreak and offers a present, now, more complete of memory. A successful effort to maintain the memory of conflict in our collective consciousness, the work signals in significant form.
While the work opens with a signpost heavy of physical imagery—
Take nothing from the mountain Take nothing from the river —in reality, the work moves across far more than physical spaces. Indeed, the collection transcends time and pens readers on a journey to historical events otherwise silenced and underreported. Sophronius breathes new life into dusty documents while documenting in poetic form. Storyteller, journalist, historian, and poet, Sophronius pours through mountains of data, stories, and narratives and tells of traumas in ways that blend gravitas and humanity while leaving nothing to the imagination. From “Origin of a Disaster”: Once in a lifetime, a massacre. climb from closed pits or writhe from pilesM to “Research Process”: I wave to the person inside. He lets to “Reports on the Land”: We receive reports of A missionary, who returned, said to “September 30, 2020”: Not all of the dead are heroes. Sophronius’ journey is one of remembrance, history, and the power of poetic verse to respond to silence. The author writes life into previously locked archives with rich, emotive text to produce a work that teaches as it transforms. Alongside data, historical first-person accounts, annotations, and artifacts, the collection speaks to silence as it tells the story of Indonesia’s 1965 “Communist Purge.” It simultaneously highlights the horrors of silence as it demonstrates the power of poetry to offer light—not of levity but of visibility, on dark days. Winner of the 2023 Gaudy Boy Poetry Prize, the 98-page collection is divided into five parts along with detailed elaborative notes. In each of the five parts, Sophronius demonstrates the power of the pen as they re-pen, reconstruct, and re-present flat archives and, in doing so, give long-overdue space to the multi-dimensional stories deserving of air and voice. The collection is a testament to both poetry as historian and history as rich material for poetic inspiration. Offering delayed and, admittedly, continuously denied honor in the face of historical erasure, the work is a testament to poetry as a tool of piercing poignancy. Sophronius leaves nothing—not mountain, not river, not recollection, to the imagination. The work is more than a signpost, it’s a substantial gift to humanity and to memory. Archival data lives, breathes, and cries throughout the collection’s pages. The work embraces the wisdom of Toni Morrison, who said, in the article “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear”: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” Sophronius writes with a healer’s pen and Interrogation Records offers space, community, and opportunity for further learning. Indeed, there is no better time than the present to engage with Interrogation Records—to revisit history, including the atrocities of genocide, war, state violence, and political incarcerations that are part and parcel of our collective history and lived realities. This work is ideal for students of history and those who wish to learn from it. Interrogation Records serves as a reminder, too, of the power of poetry to connect, curate, and caution in ways both prescient and reminiscent. The work offers both accountability and space for realistic accounts. To read Interrogation Records is to engage with history in ways no archival records can sign or post. The docu-poetry collection is as share-worthy as it is teachable. Grab a copy, then reserve time for extended reading. Enjoy the perfect blend of interrogation and reflective inquiry. Then, continue the collective conversation. Interrogation Records, by Jeddie Sophronius. New York, New York: Gaudy Boy, LLC; April 2024. 120 pages. $16.00, paper. Jen Schneider is a community college educator who lives, works, and writes in small spaces in and around Philadelphia. Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
Leave nothing in the mountain
Leave nothing in the river
Every three massacres or so,
a migration of ghosts. The dead
of limbs. Their children, the ones they
left years ago, wake up sweating
me in but says he left the archive’s key
back home. I’m the first to visit since
he took his position, some time ago.
PKI chickens
being slaughtered in many areas.
she had seen 25 bodies chickens in the river;
We commemorate seven names,
but a million others fell like
ill chickens, dying unremembered.
Heavy Feather Review 