ko ko thett

ko ko thett describes himself as ‘a poet by choice and a Burmese by chance’, yet The Burden of Being Burmese is predominantly characterised by a Burmese subjectivity. This does not mean that the work functions in an isolation akin to that of the Burmese state; the fact that thett writes in English shows a sensibility drawn to the universality of language, an openness to the world. In The Burden of Being Burmese, this sensibility is expressed explicitly, for instance, in ‘a walk with history’ and the way it raises questions of the translatability of both subjective and collective experience: “how do you write history / in a language that has no / past tense?” Implicitly, the recurring theme of culinary culture proffers a universal language spoken through taste buds, as in the poem ‘monosodium glutamate’, in which the fifth taste, umami, triggered through the food additive MSG, is described as ‘the non-essential you can’t live without’. Food, in general, is posited as a transubstantiative device, a means to dissolve the boundary between internal and external world, simultaneously connoting issues of poverty, survival, consumerism, tourism, and cultural identity. Characteristic is the recurrence of the durian, that distinctively South-East Asian, foul-smelling fruit. For thett, the durian becomes a metaphor for militaristic oppression: ‘you despise both its shape and soldier-sock stench / you will wait until you can’t wait any longer / eat or die . . . shove the flesh down your throat / you will get used to it’.

thett describes the Burmese situation as a ‘no-progression draw . . . [n]o one can eliminate the other so the country cannot progress’. The Burden of Being Burmese aptly expresses the predicament of this static Burmese dialectic, and it does so through an oscillation between the personal and the political, resorting to a paratactical stylistics invoking the work of Buddhist poets such as Chögyam Trungpa. It is often also reminiscent of the Zen koan, a paradoxical question that knows no answer. However, thett’s paratactic writing style might just as well be an attempt to translate the tonal, syllable-timed nature of the Burmese language into English. In any case, one could say that, like the parable of the blind men and the elephant in ‘blindfolded brahmins’, The Burden of Being Burmese constantly aspires to reach middle ground, to touch upon boundaries – between subjects, languages, localities – in hope of dissolution, but, most importantly, in resistance against totalitarianism.  Bibliography

ENGLISH
Poetry
Four Poems, a craft book of ko ko thett’s poetry in Burmese and English, The Green Violin, Canada, forthcoming (winter 2018)
The Burden of Being Burmese, Zephyr Press, US/Hong Kong 2015

Selected anthologies
Supplement (Issue 2), curated by Ariel Resnikoff and Orchid Tierney, Creative Writing Program & Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, 2018
CAPITALS: A Poetry Anthology, edited by Abhay K, Bloomsbury India, 2017
Best American Experimental Writing 2016 [BAX 2016], edited by Seth Abramson, Jesse Damiani, Tracie Morris & Charles Bernstein, Wesleyan University Press, 2017
The Borderlands of Asia: Culture, Place, Poetry, edited by Mark Bender, Cambria Press, NY, 2017

Translation and editing
Nobody Represents Me, a pamphlet of Zeyar Lynn poems, Clinic Publications, UK, 2018
A Little Vase of Light Verses by K Zaw (The Eras Books, Yangon), 2016
21 Poems by Khin Zaw Myint (The Eras Books, Yangon), 2015
Bones will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets co-edited with James Byrne, ARC, UK 2012 & Northern Illinois University Press, US 2013

BURMESE
Poetry collections
(Titles translated into English by the author)
ACCENT, Seikku Cho Cho Books, Yangon, 2018
 Foo Foo Thett’s Page on an Internet Dating Site, Sour Dry Bitter Books, Yangon,
2016

Translation
True Love, Selected Poems by Wislawa Szymborska, based on the English translations by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak, (The Eras Books,Yangon), 2018

[Since 2012, ko ko thett’s work has been routinely featured in contemporary Burmese poetry anthologies published inside Myanmar.]

Links
Author's website
From the Archive of Censored Materials at PEN Samples on English PEN
The Guardian’s Review of Bones Will Crow
The Guardian's top 10 books on Burma
Zephyr Press
PODCAST: The burden of being Burmese - an interview with ko ko thett