Poet

Maung Pyiyt Min

(Burma, 1953)

Biography

Maung Pyiyt Min was born in 1953 in Rangoon. He began writing at high school, but it was his poem ‘Snake’, published in a Rangoon University annual magazine, that got him noticed by the Burmese literary circle. Since Dream (1970), his first book, written in collaboration with poet and songwriter Maung Thit Min, he has contributed numerous poems to major Burmese magazines and has written several collections, usually in collaboration with a junior poet.

His major books include Two Men and a Poem (2000), with Khin Aung Aye, 21 Album (2004), with Maung Chaw Nwe and Thitsar Ni, Leap (2004), with Lu Hsan, and One-On-One (2008), with Aung Pyiyt Soun. Maung Pyiyt Min won the Myanmar E-book Award for ‘Shall I Plunge into a Big Bummer’ in 2005. He has happily travelled through all the major epochs of Burmese poetry, from the post-war four-syllable era to more recent modern and postmodern times. He believes that “poethood is the noblest of all human occupations.”