Indonesian poet and painter Acep Zamzam Noor was born in Tasikmalaya, West Java, in 1960, and grew up in a traditional religious environment. Noor writes both in Indonesian, his national language, and Sundanese, his mother tongue. Read More As a poet, Noor is a proponent of what is known in modern Indonesian poetics as “silent songs” (nyanyi sunyi), which employ language that is distinct from the bureaucratized language of the mass media, but is also different from the language employed by numerous writers whose poems are frequently filled with socio-political messages. He most recent collection written in Indonesian is Bagian dari Kegembiraan (A Part of Joy). His 2011 collection of poetry written in Sundanese, Paguneman (Conversations), was the recipient of the Rancagé Literary Award, given to works written in the regional languages of Indonesia.