Okka (Khairani Barokka; she/her/dia)

Online Writing Month (daytime): Writing the Body | Embodied Place Writing | Arvon To be able to connect with place, it is not possible to ignore the body that carries you there, that arrives and that journeys through, however that might happen. It is impossible to ignore the human ...

Newly announced, Arvon's programme of day time online retreats - a whole month worth of Thursday's in March will bring @mailbykite.bsky.social & I into your writing room - bringing support, guidance & workshops for your wip or something new @arvonfoundation.bsky.social www.arvon.org/writing-cour...

"All is lost" narratives are popular because people generally do not want to take action. Taking action is tiring so if all is lost, you are off the hook. Nothing is more seductive than not having to do anything.

An orange book with blue writing, on a grey duvet. The cover says ‘Koestler Voices: New Poetry from Prisons | Vol. 5 | Edited by Lady Unchained’.

A privilege to blurb KOESTLER VOICES: NEW POETRY FROM PRISONS VOL. 5, ed. Lady Unchained.

Poets are everywhere, unstoppable.

‘Britain was the first European ctry to introduce private, for-profit prisons & has since created the most privatised system in Europe.’ B Morris, Immigration Advice Service

Life-Giving, Imaginative and Underfunded: Small Press Publishers in Crisis A recent letter co-written and signed by small press publishers has highlighted the significant pressures they face, threatening them with closure and potentially damaging the literary ecosystem ir…

Excellent round-up of small press leaders on the current crisis, interviewed by @lucymercer.bsky.social @twoseriousladies.bsky.social in @literaryhub.bsky.social, including my publisher @tiltedaxispress.bsky.social

lithub.com/life-giving-...

WOOOOW @domkeykong.bsky.social! 😍

praise poem for these girls i was who rake the floor with want clawing wood with blunt nails asking for rest in bold italicised underlined, cursing subsequent void vomiting false diagnoses in each day, a new house of panic a prayer…

Beautiful to have a new poem in the PRECARIOUS Issue of Cordite Poetry Review: cordite.org.au/poetry/preca...

Tx to Editor Andy Jackson. From his editorial: ‘The poems needed to themselves be teetering, staggering, bedridden or exposed.’ #CripLit

It Starts With a Whisper A celebration of the strength, wisdom, beauty and humour of Native women; of Native culture and people, surviving and thriving.

A collection of environmental films made by Indigenous filmmakers that I've screened in Ecocinema over the years (shared today for obvious reasons):

1. It Starts with a Whisper (Shelley & Gronau Niro, 1993) vucavu.com/en/cfmdc/199...

Editing is an art, a craft, an intentional nurturing of relationships.

Sri Lanka and Indonesia deploy militaries as Asia floods death toll passes 1,100 Millions of people affected by torrential rainfall in Sri Lanka and large parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia

No mention of fossil fuels in the Cop30 deal... a week later and more than 1100 people dead across Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia after torrential rain and catastrophic floods. We are not all in this together #climateinjustice
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Annah, Infinite — Tilted Axis Press

For those of you who haven’t read ANNAH, INFINITE—the e-book version is now on sale on the @tiltedaxispress.bsky.social website:

www.tiltedaxispress.com/annah-infini...

Support small presses!

Don’t invest in AI, invest in the future of the book Why the publishing industry must back small presses, rather than LLMs.

Small Press Publishers are the *best* — but they need more support (and investment): www.thebookseller.com/comment/dont...
(Spotted in newsletter by the excellent @cacrampton.bsky.social )

Read, Resist, Rise Up: Read Palestine Week Nov 29-Dec 5

Make Reading & Learning about Palestine an act of solidarity. Nov 29-Dec 5. 2025

#ReadPalestineWeek begins today! We’ve made #ArabicBetweenLoveAndWar ebook free for download
tracepress.org/products/arabi…
Please read Palestinian poems out loud, in public, & in community…& visit publishersforpalestine.org for full list of free / fund-raising books for Gaza.

Read Palestinian Speculative Fiction Reading List The following is a growing reading list for the #ReadPalestinianSpecFic challenge. This is a work in progress to create a list of all available Palestinian speculative fiction. Novels: Novels by Na…

Some of you may know that I curate a huge reading list if Palestinian fantasy, science fiction, and horror. It is not up to date… Please comment if you identify as Palestinian, or if you know of something that should be in the list! Please share for visibility. soniasulaiman.com/readpalestin...

Two disabled artists, a white woman with brown hair and glasses, and an Indonesian woman with black hair and glasses, hugging and smiling. ✨

Six people—three on each side of the stage—speaking in front of a screen with live captions, and a microphone in the middle.

Some pics from our amazing discussion this week with Birmingham School of Art about Languages of Intimacy, duo exhibition with Bella Milroy on sick-disabled intimacies.

We are publishing a book next yr abt this process-oriented crip project, and working on a post-show joint artwork, stay tuned ✨

Workshop: Sharing and Discussion for Indonesian People with Khairani Barokka - Grand Union Grand Union is an arts organisation based in Digbeth, Birmingham

If you’re Indonesian in Birmingham:

I’m holding a free workshop & discussion just for you around my short film series ‘KEROKAN POL’, on at Birmingham School of Art, curated by Grand Union 🙏🏼🤍

Birmingham School of Art
WED 26 November 2025
2–4:30pm

www.grand-union.org.uk/whats-on/wor...

Big navy blue tote bag, w pink TRANSLATOR on it.

#Xl8 This TRANSLATOR Mag tote deserves a close-up, will be in heavy rotation.

TRANSLATOR MAG tote bag, postcards, one copy of Issue 1 and two copies of Issue 2, on grey carpet.

Review of ANNAH, INFINITE in TRANSLATOR MAG, black text on yellow paper with a trim of black text on white paper.

!!! Terima kasih TRANSLATOR MAG for these gifts, inc a review of ANNAH, INFINITE by Fairuza Hanun—labelled ‘ULASAN’ and ‘REVIEW’.

‘Within each of us, a fragment of Annah lives on, reincarnating in the portraits of wmn, queer ppl, Indigenous ppls, & ppl of colour, those both oppressed & joyful.’ ❤️

YouTube video by APTN News Travelling exhibit with an Indigenous twist gets a welcome from northern Manitoba | APTN News

Gabrielle Swan is the exhibit coordinator of the patterns and parallels exhibition.

The exhibition was translated into three Indigenous languages spoken in northern Manitoba and shares how migratory patterns of birds relate to Indigenous teachings.

This is a really interesting article about a horrifying distortion of sign language happening in the UK, and which its creators are now trying to export to other countries and their sign languages

Learn actual sign languages from Deaf people, not from hearing people making their own weird versions!

Crips for eSims for Gaza Crips for eSims for Gaza is a collaboration between Jane Shi, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Alice Wong.

Exemplifying the "yes, you can just do things" approach @prisonculture.bsky.social encourages, @thellpsx.bsky.social, @pipagaopoetry.bsky.social and Alice Wong started Crips for Esims for Gaza. Unpaid, and w no formal organization, they've raised $3,000,000 US chuffed.org/project/crip...

Online tix to our in-convo abt tandem solo shows, my ‘Kerokan Pol’ + Bella Milroy’s ‘popcorn fur’, together known as Languages of Intimacy:

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/in-convers...

In-person tix:

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/in-convers...

Hosted by Art Activisms research cluster, Birmingham Schl of Art

Love this idea.

Ok fine.

'The Mouth of a Gash, Sing It Like a Scream': Alton Melvar M Dapanas interviews Khairani Barokka Khairani Barokka speaks to Alton Melvar M Dapanas on how her latest book Annah, Infinite reshapes speculative nonfiction, disrupts genre norms…

The Mouth of a Gash, Sing It Like a Scream': Alton Melvar M Dapanas interviews Khairani Barokka

🎨 《香山九老秋興圖》現代 華三川

Long before “lying flat” became a modern slogan, the Tang Dynasty’s Xiangshan Nine Elders, including the poet Bai Juyi, had already perfected the art of quiet resistance.
Retreating to Mount Xiang, they turned their backs on imperial ambition, choosing calm
1/3
#painting #folklore

Yes!

Think of the ‘island’ in ‘Epstein’s island’.

When the art world continues to give extreme monetary value to paintings of children in danger from the painter, under colonisation, it is a society that strips meaning from children’s rights and indigenous land rights simultaneously.

This is ambient.

🤍

Very well-said. I also think her unapologetically Aries fierceness (she was so proud of being Aries, and helped us fellow Aries feel less ashamed lol 🤍) was often a necessity bc of everything she chose to take on, as well as the hostility of everything we are up against.

ZERO ego. 🤍