“Reading Loop” is a close reading or discussion by an invited contributor.
Critiquing and Clinging to Poetry: A Disabled Myanmar Feminist Poet’s Oxymoron
by Yema Yang
acoustics of the myanmar tea house (twang)
Editor’s Note: This poem is best viewed on a desktop computer or using landscape mode on mobile devices.
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
twang
twang my heart
acoustic guitar strings
strummed softly
by fingertips calloused
crooning sadly unheard
empty chairs dimming light
half-live music dead silence
cold လက်ဖက်ရည် burning cheeks
suspended ache
quiet melody ghost tears
dusky outsides wailing
opaque glass heaving
my time collapsing
my reflection searching
my eyes grasping for
sunken fabled hope
but rhythmic heart persists
seconds tick desperate wish
i strum unflowered
love songs still bouqueted
for us still alive
twang
Let’s start with the truth: I have a bone to pick with poetry.
Maybe that’s confusing, because I myself am a poet and write poetry as if my body can’t help but spill out of itself. I’ve written poems for over half my life, but my feelings toward poetry are still mixed and contradictory. The truth is that I am clinging onto poetry for dear life—and am deeply critical of it at the same time.
As I’ve defied the odds of being a second-generation, queer, disabled Myanmar woman living in the so-called United States, I’ve also noticed how Western frameworks define what and whose knowledge is valuable. Specifically, in poetry, this has looked like most revered, classic poets being English-speaking writers from the West—William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost. Not only are the faces of poetry frequently white and Western, but the art form itself can also be exclusive and elitist. Whether it’s older classical poems or modern writing, I’ve seen how elusive the verses can be due to excessive use of advanced English words or hard-to-understand formatting. Even as someone who is a poet, I have been puzzled and lost when reading poetry that has been widely praised and deemed ground-breaking.
I’m no representative of all people, but if someone with some academic background and years of experience in writing poetry still cannot grasp this work, then who is the audience of said work? Who exactly is that poetry meant to serve? And beyond that, whose poetry is deemed valuable, worth sharing, and timelessly relatable to begin with? Who is in a position to learn and execute Western-based poetic techniques in the first place?
This is why, sometimes, I’m hesitant to claim the title of poet. It’s the connotation of loftiness, but it’s also because I know how, in many ways, poetry was not meant for someone like me. I have scoured countless poetry sections in bookstores, automatically scanning every title to catch a glimpse of a Myanmar name, just some part of me on the shelf. From San Francisco to Bangkok, in my whole lifetime, I’ve only found it maybe once or twice. I do not find myself all the other times.
But I guess if there’s anything I’ve learned in my multiply marginalized body, it’s how to make my own space in a place that wasn’t made for me.
Audre Lorde said it best: “Poetry is not a luxury.” In her essay titled with that very assertion, Lorde details how—contrary to popular belief—poetry is far from superfluous. She rejects the notion that poetry is simply romantic or frivolous, and insists on poetry’s necessity. She outlines how poetry is vital for oppressed communities to unearth their unspoken experiences and imagine beyond the bounds of what we’re told is possible. And, in that way, poetry is a crucial part of our collective fight for liberation.
This is what poetry is to me. Survival. And a path to liberation.
When I talk about my poetry, I’m not talking about replicating Shakespeare or becoming the next Dickinson. I’m not talking simply as an individual, but as a person housing the prismatic worlds of my kin. I’m talking about me and my people—all the things we go through, the things we can’t say, the realities we have to face, and the ways we intertwine to live another day. I’m talking about the collective experiences of Myanmar women whose stories are buried and passed over. I’m talking about disability from structural violence, beyond medical conditions and individual experiences. I’m talking about disability as individual, biological experiences created and exacerbated by systemic oppression. I’m talking about how we take refuge in a world that leaves Myanmar to the side, how we love in the quiet of the everyday, how we breathe liberation in the most oppressive atmospheres. I’m talking about truths that are messy. Unbelievable. But above all: real, with the right to be in the world.
My disabled Myanmar feminist poetry is my ever-evolving attempt to capture all of this through poetic world creation and immersion. One of the many other bones I have to pick is that Western disability scholarship frequently discusses disability experiences and ideas via academic prose. While that’s important in its own right, I also find myself asking similar questions that I did toward poetry: who is meant to read and benefit from that academic writing? Who is left out? How could that work ever touch the ground in the realities of Myanmar people?
As such, one reason I hang onto poetry is because of its artistic capacity to conjure worlds and immerse people in them. While I have no doubt that there are some Myanmar people who could wade through academic jargon, I want to create work that does not conditionalize its access that way. Poetry is not only more accessible in that right, but it also better mirrors Myanmar sense-making and knowledge-sharing. Especially among Myanmar women, there’s a culture of story-telling to communicate information, deepen relationships, and navigate problems. Those listening to and engaging with the stories are not simply receiving facts about what has happened—they are immersed in what the storyteller has experienced. And it’s through that immersion and vicarious accompaniment that the listeners understand through empathy and feeling, rather than solely logic or facts.
In the same way, my poetry is meant to animate the multifaceted worlds of me, Myanmar women, and the wider Myanmar community, leading others to understand beyond Western disability jargon or concepts. Instead of relying on the Western language of English to define and categorize our collective experiences, my poetry leans into Myanmar emotions, navigations of oppression, and small/big liberations as-is. In other words, rather than simply name our experiences with English, I focus on poetically contorting English to illustrate my/our lived experiences around disability outside of Western frameworks and capturing the nuance and ineffability of those worlds. Then, from there, my poetry invites readers to explore those worlds at their own pace and glean their own meanings without compromising the truths of (disabled) Myanmar (women) community. Simultaneously, I forge an earnest and embracing space that mirrors Myanmar experiences so (disabled) Myanmar (women) readers find themselves there, becoming connected and held in their entireties. This is how I try to showcase, firsthand, an artistic and critical methodology of decolonizing disability and poetry.
That said, decolonizing disability and poetry is no small feat, and that endeavor doesn’t sit within a simple, straightforward vacuum. My motherland of Myanmar is a politically volatile geographic area, with a history of military rule and civil war. The lines of talking about it run criss-crossed, untraceable, entangled, more than you might think. So many loose threads. Knotted understandings. I wish I could unravel it all in front of your eyes right this second, but if I could, I would’ve. There are stakes I’m not sure how to navigate, and I can’t afford to be careless when untangling it all. And unfortunately, that makes my poetry that much harder to write—and thus that much more challenging to realize a method of decolonizing disability and poetry in the way I envision.
In short: it’s complicated.
This is all to say that I have a bone to pick with poetry because of how, as it stands, it’s a fight to claw through its mainstreamed white and Western supremacy (in general and in the field). As much as I breathe poetry, it also simultaneously feels like I’ve got to get a glass up to my nose to show that my poetry is legitimate proof of life—proof of Myanmar (women) lives that are otherwise so frequently overlooked. But my poetry is not here to prove to you, nor anyone else, that our lives are real and worthy and resonant. My poetry is here to invite you to come with us into our worlds and see for yourself all the devastation, tenderness, and warmth we hold. It’s here to act in solidarity with the worlds of other marginalized communities against all systems of oppression and structural violence because our worlds are yours, and vice versa. But most of all, my poetry is here for us—Myanmar women, Myanmar diaspora, (disabled) Myanmar community—to be part of the collective refuge, love, and liberation we tend to alongside others on the periphery every single day.
Reference
Lorde, A. (1977). Poetry is not a luxury. Chrysalis: A Magazine of Female Culture, 3, 36–39.
Read the other poetry published in this issue of Wordgathering.
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Our ongoing, special features—Reading Loop and Gatherer’s Blog—are by invitation only. Reading Loop is a close reading or discussion by a contributor; Gatherer’s Blog provides emergent as well as seasoned writers with opportunities to reflect upon aspects of their own writing processes.
About the Author
Yema Yang (she/they) is a critical Myanmar disability justice and feminist scholar-activist-poet dedicated to manifesting collective refuge, love, and liberation, particularly for (disabled) Myanmar women. Yema is a manifestation of communal love, which allows her to live as a disabled, AuDHD, mentally ill, and queer Burmese-Chinese Buddhist woman and child of immigrants. Because of the communities that have brought her up, Yema has created an independent major of Critical Mental Health Studies at Brown University; become the first Myanmar M.A. graduate of Critical Disability Studies at York University; and pioneered the establishment of multiple disability justice-oriented organizations at Brown University.