Insight Myanmar11 Joulu 2025

Poetic Justice

Episode #447: Maw Shein Win, a Burmese-American poet, teacher, and literary organizer based in the Bay Area, reflects on her creative path, heritage, and commitment to poetry as witness and connection.

Maw Shein Win turned to poetry while in college. She also immersed herself in the punk and experimental music scene of 1980s Los Angeles. This affected the arc of her career, as collaboration across disciplines— music, performance, and visual art— became central to her practice, and is a hallmark of her work.

Her published collections include Invisible Gifts (2018), Storage Unit for the Spirit House (2020), as well as smaller works like Tales of a Lonely Meat Eater and Scorned Bone. Storage Unit for the Spirit House emerged from time spent in storage spaces during a personal transition, merging that imagery with Burmese “spirit houses.” She says a major theme in her work is “containers”— whether memory, the body, or physical spaces— along with impermanence, healing, and family.

Deeply connected to Myanmar, she collaborates with Burmese writers to raise awareness and funds, emphasizing poetry’s role as witness. She stresses the importance of keeping the country’s struggles visible, given the decline in international media coverage. “Even if a reader has never been to Myanmar or knows nothing about it, a poem can be an entry point into understanding,”she explains.

To emerging poets, she advises “find your communities,” since no single circle can sustain a writer. For Maw Shein Win, poetry bridges cultures and art forms, opening doors for connection, empathy, and new ways of seeing.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(564)

The Architecture Of Exclusion

Episode #549: Mohammad Siraj, a Rohingya researcher, political analyst, educator, and aspiring legal scholar living in a refugee camp in Bangladesh, studies citizenship, constitutional reform, educati...

5 Kesä 1h 28min

An Officer and a Gentleman

Episode #548: Sunda Khin shares a remarkable family journey through contemporary Burmese history. She starts with her father, U Chan Htoon, who suggested that a young Indian businessman named S.N. Goe...

4 Kesä 2h 36min

No Man’s Land

Episode #547: Scott Leckie, an international human rights lawyer, and Jose Arraiza, a specialist in housing, land, and property rights and citizenship in conflict-affected settings, argue that land in...

2 Kesä 1h 42min

From the Other Shore

Episode #546: Recorded in Kuala Lumpur during Malaysia’s final stretch as ASEAN chair, this is the second episode in a three part series which looks less at policy language and more at political conse...

1 Kesä 1h 17min

The Long Fuse

Episode #545: The promise of justice for war crimes in Myanmar is far from perfect, says Dr. Stuart Casey-Maslen, a leading legal expert on disarmament and international humanitarian law. The military...

29 Touko 1h 19min

Acts of Translation

Episode #544: May Shine, a recent graduate of the Elliott School of International Affairs, approaches policy work from the position of someone shaped by displacement and minority identity within Myanm...

28 Touko 1h 17min

Through the Interregnum

Episode #543: “We believe in dialogs among people of different backgrounds,” says Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, a Thai professor at Chiang Mai University and director of the Regional Center for Social Science...

26 Touko 1h 8min

The Path Awakens

Episode #542: Max Ante, a former deeply committed practitioner of the Goenka Vipassana tradition, describes a spiritual journey shaped by a relentless desire to understand reality directly, regardless...

25 Touko 2h 30min