Denny JA and the Shadows of Awards: Iksaka Banu, BRICS, and the Wounds in the Body of Indonesian Literature

A Poetic Essay on Dignity, Name, and the Illusion Sold at a High Price

By Rizal Tanjung

—

There was once a time when literature stood tall—
when a name grew from silent labor, not from applause at a press conference.
But we now live in another age—
an age where the word “award” sounds like the clinking of coins hitting the floor,
and poets’ names drift through the air like flyers for a supermarket sale.
Literature, once the dwelling of wisdom,
has become a hall of mirrors where ambition poses before the spotlight.

Amid such noise, the name Iksaka Banu suddenly ascended—
without his knowing where the light came from.
A strange link arrived, whispering:
he was longlisted for the BRICS Literature Award 2025,
alongside names from Russia, Brazil, India, China, Egypt—
and other distant lands.

An honor, he thought—
yet oddly, the honor arrived without a knock,
without invitation, without a process he ever recognized.
Like a man discovering a statue of himself in a public park,
though he never sat for the sculptor.

—

News from the Mirror Country

Banu, with the patience of a writer long acquainted with silence,
stared at the link without excitement.
He knew: the internet often turns into a carnival—
everything glitters, but not everything is true.

He opened the page:
https://bricsaward.org/tpost/2pe4irubx1-brics-literature-award-longlist-announce

There was his name, and Intan Paramaditha’s too.
But there was no explanation, no source, no credible narrative.
As if those names were written by an unseen hand—
a hand that loved sensation more than substance.

Meanwhile, the national media stayed silent.
No editorial response, no coverage—
as though the award was born in a vacuum,
in some laboratory of silence the writers never consented to.

—

Questions Falling Like Rain

Questions began to fall through his mind like dry leaves:
Who nominated us?
On what grounds?
Who selected?
And why this hush—
as if only shadows were at work?

For Banu, literature was always long labor:
writing, reading, remaining faithful to time,
accepting rejection without losing faith in words.
Hence he knew:
an award without foundation is a plastic flower
on the grave of honesty.

—

When a Name Becomes a Commodity

Days later, suspicion found form.
The name Denny JA appeared on the same list—
a figure known less for poetry
and more for his extraordinary talent in shaping narratives,
buying stages, and managing perception.

Bitterness replaced doubt:
Was this an old game replayed?
Has literature become a stock exchange of reputations,
where names are traded like bonds of pride?

Whispers spread among writers:
“Perhaps this is another play by the collector of false awards—
a theater with a prewritten script.”

And Banu knew—
those whispers, however soft,
speak truer than a thousand grand press releases.

—

Letters from the Jury and Shadows of Scandal

Then appeared the name Maman S. Mahayana—
a critic known for guarding literature’s dignity
with a pen both sharp and ethical.
He released a statement,
revealing altered name orders, procedural oddities,
and a foul scent behind the curtain.

For Banu, clarity dawned:
this was not an award; it was a performance.
And every performance, he mused,
requires actors, a script, and an audience.
Sadly, this time the audience was the poets themselves—
forced to watch their reflections used as props
in someone else’s play.

—

Voices from the BRICS Coordinator

Then came Sastri Bakry,
claiming to be Indonesia’s official BRICS Literature Network coordinator.
Her statement, long and measured,
spoke of mandate, coordination, diplomacy, and procedure—
language neat and formal, like minutes from a global meeting.

Yet between the formal lines
one could hear an older voice—
the trembling tone of moral uncertainty.

She said,

“We do not intend to sharpen divisions.”

But the sentence cut deeper than she knew.
For in literature,
no division hurts more
than the divide between word and meaning.

—

On Denny JA and the Mirror of Literature

The name Denny JA has become emblematic of something larger.
He is not merely a person,
but an architecture of power within the body of literature.
He built a world of “essay poetry”
surrounded by media, juries, and awards—
yet amid all that splendor,
many ask: where does the poetry itself stand?

Is literature still about contemplation and conscience,
or has it become a brand—
a communication project to be sponsored, marketed,
and engineered like political advertisement?

Banu watched from afar,
like an old farmer seeing his field seized by a sugar factory.
He did not rage—he simply grieved.
For he knew:
when money becomes the chief editor,
words lose their breath.

—

Literature, Name, and Honesty

“Literature,” Banu once wrote,
“is a long pilgrimage toward honesty.”
And in that journey, awards are but a resting bench—
never the destination.

Literature is not about how big your name looks on a banner,
but how deeply you dive into the human heart.
A name born of ambition will vanish with political winds,
but one born of truth will root in the soil of history.

—

Between Shadow and Light

The BRICS Literature Award affair, truly,
is not just about clarification or stage rivalry.
It is a mirror held to Indonesian literature:
how easily we are dazzled by foreign shine,
how readily our dignity is pawned
for certificates and a few rubles’ worth of fame.

Banu chose silence.
But his silence was not fear—
it was resistance.
For in a world drunk on noise,
sometimes silence is the last remaining word.

Literature does not need saving from lies;
it only needs protection from becoming one.
And perhaps, as Banu wrote in his final note:

“Name or recognition is earned and fought. Not bought.”

—

The Cracked Mirror in the Hall of Awards

There are moments frozen between applause and microphone echoes—
when Indonesian literature finds itself in paradox:
a man who calls himself a poet-warrior
but whose steps stir tempests in the lake of silence.
Denny JA stands upon the stage of modern literacy history
like a sun that never sets—
and yet, perhaps,
a false sun reflecting off a blurred mirror
hung inside an award hall called BRICS Literature Award.

Literature, once a forest where word-spirits rested,
has turned into a marketplace.
Value and name traded like counterfeit gems in peddlers’ hands.
Poetry no longer measured by the depth of its wound,
but by how fast it trends online
and how golden the certificate looks.

And amid this clamor, Denny JA stands
as a symbol of contradiction—
between proclaimed idealism and hidden control.
He writes poetry, yes—
but more than that, he writes the history of how poetry can be commodified.

He writes the new complication of Indonesian letters—
not of the body, but of meaning:
when awards become masks,
and literature a cabaret stage.

—

The Wounded Literature, the Shadowless Poem

In the once-sacred spaces of writers’ communities,
where poets once spoke beneath dim café lamps,
now float bitter whispers:
“Is literature still pure—or sterilized by money and prestige?”

Young writers who once wrote with blood and solitude
now write with calendars of competitions,
aiming for “trending topics.”
Literature becomes algorithm, not conscience.

And thus the complication begins—
not from one man alone,
but from a system designed by those
who wish to be gods in a godless world.

The name Denny JA has become a metaphor of our era:
an age where awards are designed before the works exist,
where image precedes essence.
He is not the sole cause,
but the brightest symptom of the disease—
the illness that turns art into a certificate of legitimacy.

Hence critics whisper of the literary complication of Indonesia—
where spasms and wounds occur
not in the writer’s body,
but in our collective consciousness.

—

The Award that Became a Shadow

An award, ideally, is a mirror
where art reflects honesty.
But now the mirror is cracked—
its fragments reflecting the same faces again and again.
Those who sit as jurors, sign letters, and give speeches
are often the same shadows,
cast by one light.

Behind every applause, there is a faint hiss—
the hiss of conscience refusing to join the feast.

Once, awards were born from reverence:
Chairil Anwar, Sutardji, Sapardi, Toeti Heraty—
they sought no medals;
they only sought time to write in silence.
Today, awards come with press conferences and sponsorship banners.
Literature has turned from spiritual journey
into strategic project.

And amid it all, Denny JA seems the architect
of a marble city of literature—
yet one built upon soft earth,
where the foundations of honesty and solitude
have long been forgotten.

—

The Poem That Wants to Go Home

Perhaps Indonesian literature is running a fever.
Its body burns with rivalry, numbers, and names
competing in the algorithmic marketplace.
But beneath that fever,
it still dreams of healing—
of a time when poems once again flow from the heart,
not from calculation.

Maybe one day,
a new generation will write again
with trembling hands, not marketing plans.

Denny JA has become part of this history—
as both pioneer and warning.
He is the source of the complication
that makes our literary body shiver;
yet from that very pain,
awareness may rise.

For sometimes, literature must fall ill
to remember it has a soul.

—

At the Edge of Awareness: Literature After the Wound

Every literary civilization faces its moment
when mirrors crack and language gasps for air.
We have crossed that line.
We live in an era when poems no longer tremble in readers’ chests
but shiver between sponsor banners and media hype.

Yet from the ruins, something always grows—
like wildflowers sprouting from burnt earth.
Perhaps from this complication,
Indonesian literature is relearning its own reflection:
to distinguish between recognition and pretense,
between art born of soul and art born of calculation.

And in that journey, Denny JA—
however controversial—
will be remembered not as hero or villain,
but as a symptom,
a social mirror of literacy trapped in false modernity.

Indonesian literature today is like a body waking from surgery:
dizzy, aching, but slowly opening its eyes.
It sees its wound not as curse,
but as a gate to consciousness.

That poetry framed too often will lose
the street dust that gives it breath;
that true literature grows not from promotion,
but from reflection.

And perhaps, there—
in that rediscovered silence—
our hope will begin to bloom again.

—

When Literature Becomes a Prayer

Someday, in a humble cultural park,
a young poet will stand before an old microphone
and read without sponsors, medals, or banners.
And the small audience will feel a trembling truth—
like the first time Chairil wrote “Aku”
with shaking hands on a scrap of paper.

On that day, Indonesian literature will be healed.

For literature was never about
who receives the award—
but who can hear the faintest echo of a word’s soul.

Denny JA—with all the noise and wounds he leaves—
will remain a chapter that cannot be erased.
He is the shadow in the mirror
that forces us to examine our own face.
He is the complication that teaches us
to understand pain before we understand healing.

And in the end,
when all awards have faded
and the stage dismantled,
only a sheet of paper will remain,
a single line of poetry,
and a small awareness whispering:

“Literature is a prayer that never ends.”

A prayer from those who write with blood and conscience,
not with titles and envelopes.
A prayer from the generation that still believes
that words are not tools—
but homes for souls longing to return.

—

West Sumatra, Indonesia — 2025.