Interrogation Records: Poems by Jeddie Sophronius

To this day, there exists a black hole of silence in Indonesia's socio-political climate in acknowledging the 1965 Indonesian mass killings as what they were-tragedy. Jeddie Sophronius’ Interrogation Records is a rare docupoetry collection that explores and calls into question the 'official' narratives revolving around the 1965 massacre.

Also known as “The Communist Purge,” the massacre resulted in the slaughter of members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and anyone accused of affiliations to it-many of whom were civilians-by the Indonesian army. Throughout the collection, the voice of Sophronius’ speaker/researcher is quiet but always present, contending with the aftermath of state violence and silencing, in a masterful blend of personal and collective history, memory, and remembering. Sophronius presents both authoritative and artistic language in the same plane, urging us to consider how documents, archives, and testimony may hold affective power and excavate a different truth.

Within a climate of silence and erasure, Interrogation Records is a remedy of collective amnesia.

Jeddie Sophronius is the author of the poetry collections Happy Poems & Other Lies (Codhill Press, 2024), Love & Sambal (The Word Works, 2024), and the chapbook Blood·Letting (Quarterly West, 2023), a runner-up for Quarterly West’s 2022 Chapbook Contest. A Chinese-Indonesian writer, educator, and translator originally from Jakarta, he received his BA in English: Creative Writing from Western Michigan University and his MFA from the University of Virginia, where he served as the editor of Meridian. Their poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere, while their prose is forthcoming in The Third Coast and The Arkansas International. They currently live and teach in Charlottesville, VA. They divide their time between Indonesia and the United States. Read more of their work at nakedcentaur.com