Episode #113: Spring is Coming
“I often asked myself how people can really have the presence of mind to sit down and write amidst such extraordinarily difficult circumstances, to be able to reflect on the kinds of traumas that that they're experiencing,” Brian Haman tells us. “These are traumas that are still quite fresh, and to have that presence of mind, and to be able to sit down and to write that out, to be able to articulate… well, it's quite extraordinary.”
Along with ko ko thett Brian is the co-editor of “Picking Off New Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring: Witness poems and essays from Burma/Myanmar (1988-2021),” the first published literary work to come out of Myanmar since the military coup. It is a stunning collection of poetry and prose, bringing profound and heart-wrenching perspectives from a variety of Burmese people impacted by the ongoing conflict.
Brian, who works as an editor at the Shanghai Literary Review, had met ko ko thett several years previously, when Brian asked ko ko thett to review “Hidden Words, Hidden Worlds,” an anthology of ethnic poetry from Myanmar which was edited by Lucas Stewart. Brian reached out to him again in the weeks following the coup, and both expressed how moved they were by the outpouring of expression they were seeing on their computer screens. However, they felt the online space was too transitory in nature to hold this treasure, so they set about creating a more lasting work to keep the words alive. “One of the underlying ideas behind the anthology was to preserve so much of what had been written,” Brian says, “because as it was being disseminated online, the thinking was that it might actually disappear into this kind of ephemeral digital abyss.”
As the project evolved in real time, it began to trace the arc of feelings of the Burmese as the coup unfolded. Much of the first batch of collected pieces was quite hopeful, reflecting the optimism of activists in those early days. However, once the military cracked down, they noticed “a certain tone tonal shift in the writing.”
They also made the decision not to limit the book to the present moment alone, but to include pieces from earlier periods of unrest, going back to 1988. They observed a familiar cycle in the current violence which harkened back to those earlier times. “So we were drawing on that history, in order to illustrate the point that actually this was a tremendous regression within Myanmar, that was likely to set the country back decades, if not generations.”
Connecting the contemporary pieces to those earlier works doesn’t just provide a logical story-line, however; it also highlights the real, psychological impact of generations forced to live under a brutal dictatorship for so many decades. “This kind of violence is being passed down inter-generationally throughout Myanmar, and throughout Burmese society, and really throughout so much of the country and its people. And really, that's something that I sort of wonder about the effects of.”
Therefore, many of their selections for the anthology unflinchingly present the harsh reality of that violence, fear, despair, loss, and grief. What readers experience is a rawness of emotion and expression that overwhelms the many aspects of the coup and its aftermath that have been somewhat clinically reported on in the past year and a half in the mainstream media. This direct access to the voices of the people and communities under siege cuts through the reportage, facts and figures. It brings the reader face-to-face with the humanity they share with those simply trying to survive through such dark times, even if read in places of safety, and far removed in place and time. Some of the selections also bring home the blunt reminder that the death of a loved one is not simply a number on a page or the headline of an article, but a loss that marks one’s life forever.
For Brian and ko ko thett, this was not unintentional. “The focus was allowing the people and their voices to emerge and to speak for themselves,” Brian recalls. “And to really be the sort of the eyes and the ears and the mouths for what's going on, and not to have it filtered through, for example, The New York Times and The Guardian, or whatever other media was reporting on it. But rather to allow the people there to bear witness to all of these horrific things that they were experiencing and seeing on a daily basis.”
Despite the extreme forms of violence being waged on innocent civilians, Brian was in awe of the power they displayed when they fought back with their voice. This was a force that the regime was equally aware of, and in fact anxious about, as they went to great lengths to go after those creative leaders whose art, music, poetry, or words were motivating the resistance movement. “I think it really speaks to the power of the written word and the extent to which, even in our digital age, that these poems and short prose pieces can mobilize people,” he reflects.
This is something Brian sees as being a kind of universal human trait, going far beyond the current crisis. “Throughout history, it doesn't matter whether it's in Europe or Southeast Asia, or whatever the case may be. This seems to be something archetypal in terms of human beings, and how they react to, in this case, state-sponsored violence and terrorism, to military occupation, and so on.
And even amid all the brutality and suffering, Brian still senses an underlying spirit that the Burmese people, that they believe they will eventually triumph. “For all the suffering and for all of the loss and trauma from the death and torture and things like that, nevertheless there is a spirit of optimism… There are these paths forward. People continue to resist, people continue to fight, people continue to write, and there is this kind of indomitable spring that that just doesn't seem to be able to be suppressed or repressed.”