Picnic
- Picnic
K Za Win (1982–2021) was killed by security forces in an anti-coup protest in Monywa on 3 March 2021. This is one of his final poems. k.k.t.
Let's go with the Lord Buddha.Let's go with Mr. President."Come along."Let's invite our poet friends.The spring picnic should have been fun,but it wasn't.The Lord Buddha has forsaken us.Mr. President has abandoned us.Some of our poet friendshave gone home.The wine bottle was knocked over.The face of the cakestraight out of the box was half eaten.My remaining friends and Istarted to screamEdvard Munch screams.The spring was bogus—only our screams were real. [End Page 212]
K Za Win was a Buddhist monk for much of his young adult life. In 2015, he marched for education reforms with students along the 350-mile route from Mandalay to Yangon, where the rally was shut down and he, along with most of the student leaders, were arrested and jailed. After spending a year in prison, he published his best-known work, My Reply to Ramon, a collection of long-form poems. In addition to being a poet and rights activist, he was also a Burmese-language teacher. In the aftermath of the 2021 military coup, he was on the frontlines of the protests and was killed by Myanmar security forces at a protest in Monywa.
ko ko thett is a bilingual poet and author of several collections of poetry and poetry translations in Burmese and English. He has been featured at literary events from Sharjah to Shanghai, and his poems and translations have appeared in literary journals and anthologies worldwide. He was the poetry editor for Mekong Review from 2017 to 2022. His most recent volume is Bamboophobia (Zephyr, 2022). He lives in Norwich, U.K.
