INTERROGATION RECORDS
Praise for Interrogation Records
In his poem “The Sinner’s Mantra” Jeddie quotes the adage from Karl Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Program”: “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” And if I may, I would say: Jeddie’s great and significant ability, in his book, matches our great and significant need to learn more about the Indonesian killings of 65-66. So, I receive his book as a gift and a redress of silence. And every time we learn history through poetry that intentionally unsilences the archives, we are unwriting a master-narrative, we are writing and reading as a prevention of erasure, we are writing and reading as a cure for amnesia.
—Divya Victor, winner of the 2022 PEN America Open Book Award
Interrogation Records is a stunning work by a keen poetic intellect. Writing at the intersection of history and remembrance, Sophronius contends with the multigenerational aftermath of state violence and the powerful forces of historical erasure. The ongoing inheritance Sophronius excavates in these lyrics is part-memory, part-burden, part-presence, part-silence. Each poem feels hard-won from the mysterious cultural machinery we call “archive,” lifted into astonishing, often heartbreaking, utterance. In its possession of the visual field of the page, in its formal rigor, and in its virtuosic expression, Interrogation Records invites us on a remarkable journey.
—Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia