Issue Nine
This issue of Portside Review is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Australian Government and Creative Australia (formerly Australia Council for the Arts).
Myanmar Issue
Editorial #9
Ko Ko Thett and Christopher Lin
A darkness befell Myanmar in February 2021. The military coup d’état that year was met with fierce and widespread resistance that cut across the country’s cultural, ethnic and religious lines. Since then, Myanmar keeps tumbling down an abyss of, what the Burmese Buddhists call, dukkha. For a few months in 2021, Myanmar was in the global media limelight — for all the wrong reasons.
We would prefer Myanmar to be in the limelight for the right reasons, for the diversity of her cultures and literatures. As such, it is such a privilege to be guest-editing this issue of Portside Review: Myanmar. We are grateful to Robert Wood, Logan Griffiths and the team at Portside Review for their initiative and support. We also acknowledge the support of the Cultural Diplomacy Grants Program from the Australian Government whose funding made this project possible.
This volume is home to a suite of 29 poems, short stories and essays, most of which were written in Burmese, translated especially for this edition, by authors and translators living in the country and from a global diaspora that reaches across Southeast Asia, the US, Europe, the UK, and to the shores of Australia. In curating this edition, we have tried our best to feature a variety of voices that are representative of the social and cultural lives of Myanmar, before and after the 2021 bloodshed. While February 2021 continues to be a watershed moment in Myanmar’s plight for democracy and political reform—something that many writers in this edition are conscientious of—we were also led by a belief that this issue should not be defined purely by a political imperative and the military regime’s brutality.
In this spirit, where better to start than to peruse through the memoir by Burmese film director, Ni Ko Ye, detailing his memories of cult singer, Htoo Eain Thin. The singer’s musings on poetry as an art form that is deeply personal attest to the unique form and value of art. In his words, ‘poetry by nature is free, individual. An evening in a poem becomes your own evening – the poem, and the evening, are what you make of it.’
The suite of tiny verses by K Zaw weaves together stories of navigation, of being unanchored in the world and seeking coordinates, of ambivalence, and of survival. In doing so, they speak to both personal narratives of the everyday and to the broader political moment.
Rohingya poet, Thida Shania’s, poems meditate on the condition of being women in Myanmar, their sparseness of language lending them a raw power, defiance and anger.
Wai Yan Hpone’s essay about the ascetic life of an enlightened veterinarian sheds light on the teachings of Burmese Buddhism, lending insight into a country where, traditionally, Buddhism informs every facet of religious, cultural, political and social life.
We have tried our best to highlight the resilience of the people of Myanmar. The photo essay by Linn Let Arkar stirred our emotions, telling the story of a Karenni resistance fighter who joined an ethnic resistance against Myanmar’s military in the wake of the 1988 revolution. Arkar’s photography documents the man’s careful cultivation of banana plantations to earn a living after his life as a freedom fighter, carrying on with dignity.
The testimony by Pyae Phyo Kyaw offers an illuminating and under-reported account of the systemic discrimination facing LGBTQ communities in Myanmar, the deep-rootedness of such stigmas in Myanmar’s broader society, and the struggle of LGBTQ communities in the current post-coup reform agenda.
Kenneth Wong’s short story offers a window into both the fragility and endurance of young people’s aspirations in the aftermath of the coup and of how quotidian pursuits—such as job interviews—are never straightforward in the present climate of fear, surveillance and civil disruption.
Kyae Mone Aye’s essay reflects on the economic realities of many remote villages in Myanmar which, like most of the country, has become much dependent on a remittance economy.
Among others, you will also catch glimpses of poet San Nyein Oo’s political life in Sann Kyawswa Winn’s poem, ‘Mandalay through a Peephole’, and of another Mandalay poet, K Zaw (aka Maung Thein Zaw), in the essay by Pandora.
These are just some glimpses into what is a textured, provocative and deeply moving ensemble of works that span, and play with the conventions of, multiple literary forms.
While we don’t want conflict to define Myanmar, or the pages of this edition, it is important for us to acknowledge the resilience, subversiveness, courage and creative rigor that pulses through the many writers and translators who have contributed here, and to whom we are indebted.
Above all these are stories from Myanmar by the people of Myanmar, and the Myanmar diaspora.
