Picking off new shoots will not stop the spring: Witness poems and essays from Burma/Myanmar (1988-2021)
Picking off new shoots will not stop the spring is a multi-publisher, not-for-profit collaboration that aims to amplify the voices of the Burmese people alongside the ongoing Civil Disobedience Movement. If you are a publisher keen on supporting this initiative, please write to us at rights[at]pagesetters.com.sg. Limited physical copies are for sale, and the e-book is free to download for you to share the stories in this book as widely as possible.
About the Book
Fallen innocents on blood-stained streets. The defiant banging of pots and pans echoing in the darkness. The birth of a springtime revolution amidst the interrupted lives of a country and its people. On the morning of 1 February 2021, a coup d’état was initiated by the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, effectively overthrowing the democratically elected members of the country’s ruling party, the National League for Democracy, and casting Myanmar into chaos.
This volume collects the poetry and prose of the many writers, cultural figures, and everyday people on the ground in Myanmar’s urban centres, rural countryside and in the diaspora, as they document, memorialize, or merely try to come to grips with the violence and traumas unfolding before their eyes. Written in English or translated from the original Burmese the collection includes some of Myanmar’s most important contemporary authors and dissidents, such as Ma Thida, Nyipulay and K Za Win, as well as up and coming authors and poets from all over Myanmar, reflecting the country’s rich cultural and ethnic diversity.
In addition, poetry and essays that reflect socioeconomic life of the so-called transitional Myanmar (2010-2020), a period of relative freedom for writers when much of the censorship regime was lifted and the internet and social media were introduced in the country, as well as prominent protest poems and essays, by dissidents Min Ko Naing, U Win Tin and Min Lu, who lived through the hopes and horrors of the 1988 uprising of Myanmar are featured in this volume.
A feast for the literary imagination, an elegy to those who have fallen, and a courageous act of defiance by those that continue to fight, these firsthand accounts provide an important window into a crucial moment in Myanmar’s history.
This book will also be simultaneously released by Gaudy Boy and Balestier Press in the US and UK respectively.
Limited number of copies signed by ko ko thett are available for purchase now!
Picking off new shoots will not stop the spring: Witness poems and essays from Burma/Myanmar (1988-2021)
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Reviews
“WARNING: There’s blood everywhere in these pages. That’s as it should be. The book in your hands bears witness to the long, bloodstained struggle against military oppression by the people of Myanmar/Burma. Here is an anthology exceptional in impact and importance, not least because the poets and writers serving as witnesses have themselves fought and died at the frontlines of resistance. ‘Picking off new shoots will not stop the spring’ brings together for the first time in print, in translations both inspired and felicitous, poet-heros of the ’88 Uprising, new voices from within the Chin, Kachin and Rohingya minorities, young poet-warriors of the ongoing armed struggle, and early martyrs of the Spring Revolution, notably K Za Win and Khet Thi. Together they raise a cri de coeur of resistance, resilience, and, through their poetry, redemption." —Wendy Law-Yone, Author of Golden Parasol: A Daughter’s Memoir of Burma, The Road to Wanting, Irrawaddy Tango and The Coffin Tree
“From the Yoma foothills to the Chindwin river, Monywa to Cox’s Bazaar, the voices in this searing new collections map a rich wilderness of witness. Kachin, Nepal, Burmese, Rohingya, Shan, Sino-Burmese and other voices mourn the murdered, the disappeared, and light a pyre for a vanished future. Spanning more than forty years of resistance since the iconic student protests of 8 August 1988 to the nationwide protests and murderous mayhem that followed the military coup of February 2021, these writings offer more than witness. Through lullabies, battle-cries, memes, digital memorials, kitchen cacophonies, protective prayers, odes to flip flops, roadside burials and prison cells, they redefine poetic justice. An elegy to democracy, an artists’ manifesto and a rejection of the moral bankruptcy of a corrupt military, Ko Ko Thett and Brian Haman’s urgent new anthology demands our attention.” —Penny Edwards, Associate Professor, Southeast Asian Studies (UC Berkeley)
“With poems and essays ranging from optimistic zeal to righteous rage, Myanmar’s writers have responded to the death and destruction wrought by the 2021 coup with prose imbued with birth, rebirth, and revolution. The powerful voices in this inspiring anthology demands that we all keep fighting for a free and just Myanmar, and reminds us that ‘If we retreat this time, we will have to live in defeat forever’.” —Aye Min Thant, Features editor, Frontier Myanmar
Poetry
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womb song
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Patient History
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dragon.paper.wind. (龙卷风)
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The Orchid Folios
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parsetreeforestfire
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Intruder
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Giving Ground
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Floating Clouds Beyond The Elastic Limit
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A Flying Crystal
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A Walk With My Pig
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A Bad Girl's Book of Animals
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GAZE BACK
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(Imperfect) Unhomed
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Picking off new shoots will not stop the spring: Witness poems and essays from Burma/Myanmar (1988-2021)
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Some Say, A Tapir
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Farquhar
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Poetry Moves: An Anthology of Poetry
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Contour: A Lyric Cartography of Singapore
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To Gather Your Leaving: Asian Diaspora Poetry from America, Australia, UK and Europe
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A Gathering of Themes
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a tiny space
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Right of the Soil
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Common Life: Drawings and Poems
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UnFree Verse
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Lost Bodies: Poems between Portugal and Home
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This Is Not A Safety Barrier: An Anthology of Poetry & Photography
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I Found A Bone and Other Poems
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Me Migrant
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Phedra
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Spomenik
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Bitter Punch
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Singapore Notebook & Blessed Isle
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UNION : 15 Years of Drunken Boat, 50 Years of Writing From Singapore
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Ars Poetica for the Day
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Do You Live In?
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The Wrong/Wrung Side of Love
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Babel Via Negativa
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Teaching Poetry To Adolescents: A Teacher's Guide to Little Things
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Never Before—50 Essential Poems / 不可预期—诗精50首
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SG Poems 2017-2018
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Love at the Gallery
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SG Poems 2015-2016
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Pilgrimage
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Unhomed
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Crossing Universes
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一首诗的时间 2015
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Right of the Soil (Chapbook)
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Finding Francis: A Poetic Adventure
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Footfalls in the Rain
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Light is like water
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Attunement
Is life hustling you out of tune? As the week roars by, we invite you to a slice of attunement penned lovingly by our authors, friends, and yours truly. Freshly delivered weekly with care. Intimacy guaranteed. Read selected letters below.
Magical, luminous things
Feb 19, 2022
I have flown across an ocean this week. This still sounds surreal to say.
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No negotiation for blood debt
Feb 14, 2022
The Burmese language resistance poetry is deeply embedded in the country’s colonial past. When mo...
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Burning holes in the darkness
Feb 7, 2022
Poets killed in broad daylight, writers tortured and maimed. I wonder if their ghosts watch on fr...
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