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Wolf Magazine
The Literary Desk · Feature · Issue 21

Contemporary Burmese Poetry: a survey by Htein Lin and Vicky Bowman

Min Thu Wun · Zaw Gyi · Zeyar Lin · Maung Tha Noe

This survey by Htein Lin and Vicky Bowman, dated May 2009, introduces Burmese poetry from the 1930s to the late 2000s. It opens with the Khit San movement, whose name means testing the times, which came out of the nationalist student scene in Rangoon after court patronage faded following the removal of the last king in 1885. Its poetry used four-syllable feet and a 'climbing rhyme' in a 4-3-2 pattern. Min Thu Wun and Zaw Gyi, author of the well-known series 'The Hyacinth Way', led it, writing about romance, philosophy and daily life rather than praise of rulers. The authors compare the movement with the Anglo-American Imagists, while noting that it drew on Burmese art such as pagoda inscriptions. The more openly patriotic and satirical Thakin Kodaw Hmaing is set beside them, and Tin Moe and Maung Swan Yi appear as later poets.

Poems are taught from primary school, the survey explains, and Khit San poets dominate the school syllabus, though some have been dropped as the military regime turned against them. A new group of kayan-meh, or rhymeless, poets emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, writing in the voice of ordinary people. The establishment poets disapproved and claimed the work was copied. Foreign influence was real: Maung Tha Noe's translations of Mayakovsky, Eliot, Plath and Hughes shaped later books, among them Thu Kamein Hlaing's June Shower. After the 1988 democracy movement this style dominated the monthly magazines. The authors name popular recent poets and single out Zeyar Lin, translator of Szymborska, Parra and Donald Justice, who brought postmodern and language poetry into Burmese and whose followers are called his 'gang'.

The practical sections cover how poets live. About seventy new poems appear each month, payment is only a few dollars, and poets teach English, write song lyrics or rely on family and friends. The state backs a few court-style poets, official prizes avoid experiment, and private prizes and magazine awards fill the gap. Poetry is closely tied to democracy activism, and some poets have written in prison. The survey ends with short portraits of poets chosen for the accompanying selection, among them Maung Aung Pwint ('At the Gate'), Maung Tin Thit ('It begins today'), Hmya Ein ('Submarine Island'), Nay Myo, whose collection is titled The Wolf Poet, and Manorhary, an editor of IDEA magazine.

Poems in this selection

  • Bayda Lan
  • At the Gate
  • It begins today
  • Submarine Island
  • The Son of Fallen Stars

Poetry is the most common form of literature in Burma, and also the most censored

Htein Lin and Vicky Bowman, The Wolf, issue 21
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