Saving a Forgotten Poetry: How One Man is Reviving the Ancient Cham Culture

via Cambodianess, 16 August 2023: Leb Ke, a Cham culture advocate and expert, is working to preserve the Cham language and culture, particularly focusing on its poetry, with a call for government support and the view that conserving Cham culture contributes to Cambodian heritage.

However, because few people take an interest in Cham poems, Ke has focused a great deal on keeping Cham poetry alive by collecting and studying Cham works so they can be passed on to the next generations.

There are two poems—namely Tampor and Kok Vang—that he finds especially fascinating, and one of the reasons is that, in his opinion, writers and poets nowadays have not been able to write such beautiful poems. In addition to republishing them for the Cham public, he has translated them into Khmer. “I hope that Khmer audiences will also appreciate them,” Ke said.

It is not widely known that the Cham have poems written in Cham script, he said, adding, “[i]t is generally assumed that they only use Arabic script.”

Source: Preserving and Developing Cham Culture Is also Part of Developing Cambodia’s Culture, Says a Cham Culture Expert | Cambodianess