Poetic Imageries: Remembering through Poetry in Timor-Leste

Abstract This article examines how poetry intervenes in the visual politics of remembering trauma in postconflict societies. In Timor-Leste, much of the Indonesian occupation (1975–1999) remained unphotographable due to censorship, exile, and repression, making poetry a crucial medium of testimony and resistance. I conceptualize poetic imageries as verbal, mental, symbolic, and sensory forms that evoke sensations and emotions, enabling readers to “see” what cannot be photographed and to bear witness where other forms of testimony are silenced. Drawing on Jenny Edkins’ notion of trauma time, I show how the prison writings of Xanana Gusmão preserved rupture as living memory, resisting closure while shaping collective identity. Their poems condensed violence and endurance into images that traveled across audiences, mobilizing solidarity abroad and sustaining cultural memory at home. By situating Timorese poetry within debates on visual politics, this article argues that poetic imageries constitute political interventions in the struggle over visibility, memory, and justice.