Khairani Barokka is a writer, artist, arts consultant, translator and editor from Jakarta. Okka’s work has been presented widely internationally, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis, environmental justice, and access as translation. She regularly teaches, mentors, and consults for arts organisations, and has a PhD by Practice in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London. Among her honours, she has been a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, a Delfina Foundation Associate Artist, an Artforum Must-See, and Associate Artist at the UK’s National Centre for Writing. She was the first Poet-in-Residence at Modern Poetry in Translation, and later became the magazine’s first non-British Editor. In 2023, Okka was shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Awards in the Arts and Culture Category. Her books include Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, as co-editor), Rope (Nine Arches), Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize, and 2024’s amuk (Nine Arches). Her nonfiction debut, Annah, Infinite, is forthcoming from Tilted Axis Press in 2025. http://www.khairanibarokka.com/

“Tsunami Pilgrims” was first published in the anthology Surabaya Beat (Afterhours Publishing, 2015) and is in her collection, Rope published by Nine Arches Press.

The cultures I belong to are Javanese and Minangkabau (also known as Minang), both part of the Indonesian archipelago. The shoreline and freshwaters of West Sumatra Province, where Minang people hail from, are very dear to me, constantly under threat from capitalist forces, as are Javanese waters. ‘Tsunami Pilgrims’ was written after I’d visited Lhok Nga, in Aceh Province, on the northernmost tip of Sumatra, a few years after it was grievously affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. At the time I was an aid worker, hoping fervently that my awkward presence would in a small way support rebuilding Acehnese communities. My words are an exploration of solidarity between Sumatrans, the limits and intents of pilgrimages, and the almighty power of the oceans.