Bones will crow

By ko ko thett & james byrne

Recommended by: Thomas F. James, curator of the 2024 exhibition, “Scorched Petals to Pages: Investigating Narratives at the Intersection of Image Making and Literature”.

Book Description: This is the first anthology of contemporary Burmese poets published in the United States and it includes the work of Burmese poets who have been in exile and in prison. The poems include global references from a culture in which foreign books and the Internet are regarded with suspicion and where censorship is an industry. The poets have been ingenious in their use of metaphor to escape surveillance and censorship, writing post-modern, avant-garde, performance, and online poetries. The anthology reveals the transition of Burmese poetry from traditionalism to modernism, as well as the development of Burmese poetry over the second half of the twentieth century, as Myanmar has changed. Through their wildly diverse styles, these poems delight in the freedom to experiment with poetic tradition.