Mae Yway

Mae Yway’s poems are characterized by charisma and enigma. On the one hand there is an irresistible appeal to her playfulness with language and her calculated use of Burmese idioms. On the other, readers don’t really know where the poet is taking them. Her work exhibits both global millennial feminist ferocity and the stereotypical vulnerability and defensiveness of a young Burmese woman struggling in the patriarchal backwaters of Myanmar. Her poem, ‘In the Ballpark’, for instance, is an outstanding assemblage of gender-biased Myanmar expressions placed between common slashes instead of usual line breaks:

… /you are just a slave on his path to the Buddhahood/ your whole life is cooking in the kitchen/ you are busy fancying a reliable man/ a man shouldn’t grimace like a woman/ a wife has to dog her husband/ . . .

The poem builds up to the last line, "this poem writes this poet". Or is that “this poet writes this poem"?

For Mae Yway, poetry begins with a capital P. In her own words: "What I love is that Poetry is Making. Poetry is a worry between consciousness and unconsciousness. Poetry is a journey to discover yourself. In fact, Poetry is you."
Bibliography

Courier, Eras Press, Yangon 2013
You & I, Eras Press, Yangon, 2016