Remembering Place, Writing Loss: Cultural Memory in Kim Young Soo’s Poetry on Indonesia and Its Curriculum Implications
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Abstract
This study examines how Indonesian places are represented through cultural memory, personal recollection, and experiences of loss in Kim Young Soo's poetry, while exploring their implications for university literature curricula. Employing a qualitative textual analysis and close-reading approach, the study analyzes 20 Indonesian-language poems from the bilingual anthology Merangkul Dua Takdir yang Saling Berpapasan (2024). The analysis integrates cultural memory theory with ecocritical perspectives to interpret relationships among geographical landscapes, cultural symbols, environmental representations, social inequalities, and intercultural encounters. The findings identify six interconnected thematic patterns: personal memory and landscape, cultural heritage and historical transformation, social inequality and invisible labor, environmental deterioration and ecological loss, religious sound and cultural estrangement, and transnational longing and imaginative connection. These patterns demonstrate that places function not merely as geographical settings but as dynamic literary spaces where personal experiences intersect with culturally mediated meanings and perceived social and environmental changes. Loss emerges as a multidimensional experience encompassing personal, cultural, ecological, social, and intercultural dimensions. Nevertheless, the poems also reveal possibilities for imaginative connection and cultural negotiation beyond geographical distance and estrangement. The study contributes to literary scholarship by integrating cultural memory and ecocritical approaches to explain the complex relationships between place, remembrance, and loss within a Korean–Indonesian poetic corpus. The findings further offer theoretically grounded recommendations for developing critical, ecological, and intercultural reading activities in higher education, although their pedagogical effectiveness remains to be empirically examined.
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