My Academic CV as of Feb. 2007

KYI MAY KAUNG (Ph.D.)
Curriculum Vitae

Objective: Seeking an advocacy, senior research and/or writing position in an international organization.

Strengths: Very fast and efficient researcher – Lexus-Nexus etc. on line.
Fast and accurate boil down of important issues to easily understandable points.
Excellent oral and written presentations. Convincing, engaging and experienced public speaker. Fluent English.
Able to speak and write persuasively so people listen.
Extensive contacts in academia, politics and the arts.
Able to formulate and carry out P.R. Initiatives.
Ten years of non-profit experience in DC area.
Political Economy and S.E. Asia specialist.
Able to formulate strategy and analyze organizational structure and goals.
Able to travel internationally up to 25% of the year.
Work permission in the USA.



EDUCATION
Ph.D. City and Regional Planning and Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, May 1994.
M.A. City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania, 1987.
M.A. Economics, University of Rangoon, 1967.
B.A. Honors, Economics, University of Rangoon, 1964.

DISSERTATION
"Modernization, Breakdown and Structural Configurations: Retrogression in Burma (1962-1992)."
Chairman: Henry Teune, Political Science, University of Pennsylvania.
Members: Josef Silverstein, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University.
Donald E. Smith, Political Science, University of Pennsylvania.
Seymour Mandelbaum, City Planning, University of Pennsylvania.

LATEST PUBLICATIONS:

Foreign Policy in Focus. Debate on Sanctions in Burma. Jan. 2007

Wild River Review – Burmese Migrant Workers and Shrimp Shelling and Tuna Canning in Mahachai, Thailand – March14, 2007.

Also in Burma Economic Watch, on line.

OpenDemocracy articles. 2006-2007

Asian Survey

The Irrawaddy (Burmese dissident magazine – read by members of Congress)

Creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry) – Norton Anthology (upcoming), Poet Lore, Wild River Review, Northern Virginia Review, Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine (short story – 1997), Poet’s Attic, Meridian Anthology.

Extensive poetry readings in the United States and Canada.

AWARDS AND HONORS


Best short story – March 2007, The Northern Virginia Review.

William Carlos Williams Award, Academy of American Poets, 1995.

Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Award, for concept for play FLASHBACK (now titled Shaman.)

Pew Finalist, 1996 and 1994, for play SHAMAN and allegory She-Monkey respectively.

Fulbright Scholar, 1982-89. University of Pennsylvania.

Polish-Burma Exchange Scholar, 1969-70. Central School of Economics and Statistics, Warsaw, Poland. First place winner.

M.A. with distinction, first in class, Rangoon, 1967.

B.A. first division, first place winner, 1964.


VOLUNTEER POSITIONS

Supporter – U.S. Campaign for Burma.

Founder/facilitator: Dr. Kaung’s Salon, 963 Bonifant St. Silver Spring, MD.

Board member, Burma Refugee Project, (medical aid to refugees), Jan 2005- present

Board Member, Burma Economic Watch, An Electronic Magazine, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. 2004 to present.

Member, Technical Advisory Network, Burmese Government in Exile, 2000-present.


WORK
2004- Consultant and Free Lance Writer.
Senior Research Associate. The Burma Fund, Washington DC, Sept 2001-Dec 31, 2004
Senior Research Analyst. Radio Free Asia, Washington DC, May 1998-Sept 2001.
International Radio Broadcaster, RFA Burmese Service, Washington DC, March 1997-April 1998.
1982-1994. Ph.D. candidate, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
1978-1988. Assoc. Professor, Economics Department, University of Rangoon, Burma.

RESEARCH INTERESTS/WORK IN PROGRESS

Greater Mekong Region, environmental problems.

Yangtze Dams.

Environmental Laws and the United States.

Effects of Global Warming.


Dissertation to Book --- completed August 2004.

Economic Transitions in Burma: Strategies and Scenarios. Book length project, co-authored with Zaw Oo, 2002.

About possible scenarios should there be democratic change and the World Bank and IMF enter Burma. I intensively studied Joseph Stiglitz’ points of criticism.

Migration on Thai-Burma Border, Thai policies and SPDC Roadmap.

SPDC Roadmap and Problems.

2004 – Second Wholesale Sell Off of Natural Resources in Burma.

2004 – Sanctions vs. No Sanctions: United States’ Burma Policy.

Human rights, especially women's and children's rights.
Closed vs. open systems.
Command economies vs. open markets.
IMF and World Bank packages and shortcomings.
US policy and Burma, the Burmese democracy movement,
System change and democratic, market reforms in China and Russia etc.
Causes and effects of out-migration and search for humane solutions.
Burma and Asean, community of democracies.
Alternative models and their application to Burma.
Problems of transition in Burma, Vietnam, Russia, Poland.
Chinese Economic Reforms 1978-present, N and S Korea.
Exploring humane solutions to Thai-Burma refugee problem.

Economic History. J.S. Furnivall and Economic Planning, the Plural Society in Burma during the U Nu (democratic) period in Burma 1948-62.

Novel in Progress, about a Burmese dissident.

Collection of Short Stories.

Play development -- Shaman

Painting – abstracts and iconic figures – 3 one woman shows in greater DC area since 2001

SEMINARS/CONFERENCES, STRATEGIZING SESSIONS 2001 –

April 5, 2007, Northern Illinois University, Focus on Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi – I have been invited to be on the keynote panel.

November 2006, Refugee Conference – American University – one of invited speakers.

October- Dec., 2006. Refugee art exhibit, one of invited painters. Helped plan the exhibition, Gateway Heliport Gallery, Silver Spring, MD.

July 2006, E-W Center DC sponsored a closed door conference on Conflict Resolution in Burma in Bangkok. I was one of a dozen invited commentators/rapporteurs.

July 2006, Burma Studies Group – Singapore.

October 2005, The Politics of Voices, House of World Culture, Berlin. Invited with 5 other S.E. Asian writers “who dare to confront.”

October 2004. Panel on Burma, “The Latest Purge in Burma,” Burma Studies Center, DeKalb IL. Keynote Panelist.

September 2004, Bank Information Center, Open Society Institute. Washington DC

Helped plan seminar on World Bank and IMF, Lessons from Bosnia.
March 2004. Closed door strategizing session on Burma, SAIS Johns Hopkins, Washington DC.

March 2004, Young Scholars Forum at American University, Washington DC. Paper proposals of Burma scholars in USA and discussions on research methodology

August-September 2003, Research on G.H. Luce and Furnivall Archives.

July 2003, helped formulate interview questions for Migrant Workers Survey on Thai-Burma Border (collaboration with Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.)

Jan 2003 International Association for Study of Forced Migration, paper on Burmese refugees, Thailand and SPDC “roadmap.”

March 2002 Technical Advisory Network, NCGUB, Bangkok, Thailand. Role of Advisors of Burmese Government in Exile.

Nov. 2002. SAIS, Johns Hopkins, Washington DC. Participant. Strategizing for Burmese democracy movement in exile.

Sept, 2002. Burma Studies Conference, Gottenberg, Sweden, co-chaired panel on Diplomacy and Dialog in Burma.

Jan 2003, Conference on Forced Migration and Burma, Chiengmai, Thailand.

July 2003, Canberra, Australia, Australian National University, Peer Reviewed book on Economic Transitions in Burma. Peers from Burmese Democratic Government in Exile,

July 2003, Sydney, Australia, Australia Burmese Students Conference.

March 2003, Globalization and Human Trafficking, Denver CO.

Aug. 2002, International IDEA Stockholm, Democratic Capacity Building for Burma.

August 2002, Asean People's Assembly, “Globalisation and ASEAN,” Bali, Indonesia.

April 2001 Conference on World Affairs, Boulder CO. “World without Borders.”


References: On request.

Color Coded on the 22nd of February, 2007

Chinese New Year -- the Year of the Boar (not bore:) has passed.

The anniversary of my father's death, after a car accident in Calcutta, has passed.

I was invited to a Conference on Burma and democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in Chicago on 5th April, on the basis of my articles in OpenDemocracy.

It is just like the House of World Culture inviting me and other S.E. Asian writers "who dare to confront" to Berlin in the fall of 2005. The invitations came in as email.

The power of web publishing and blogs, if one is judicious about it.

I helped my dissident friends resolve a mini-crisis.

I "pulled and dropped" a "friend" to my X-files -- because she was cavalier about my original audio material and lost them.

Elephants have long memories.

I baked a fruit cake and offered it on my Buddhist altar.

The Year of the Pig, will be a joyous Pig.

Copyright Kyi May Kaung

Mostly Burmese Mugs -- March 2007 Bio + Statement

Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.) Bio – 2007
Ms. Kaung is a multidisciplinary and multi-faceted writer and artist who does not fit neatly into any pre-conceived category. She has been called “a trained social scientist with the soul of a poet.” She has just won a best short story prize for her story Black Rice from the Northern Virginia Review (#21).
Originally from Burma, she has published two poetry chapbooks; poetry in Rattapallax, CrossConnect, Poet’s Attic, Mosaic, and Passport Magazines; read poetry with DC Poets Against War, Washington Musica Viva and in the U.S.A. and Canada. Her short stories have appeared in Wild River Review, Northern Virginia Review (upcoming), Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine and Shoptalk; foreign policy articles in Foreign Policy in Focus, OpenDemocracy, Asian Survey and Irrawaddy. Her play “Shaman” was praised by Edward Albee and others and she has been a Pew finalist in literature twice. She is also a winner of the William Carlos Williams Award of the Academy of American Poets.
Kyi has been painting professionally since 2001. Mostly Burmese Mugs is her third one-woman show. (Previous shows were Flux – at Foundry Gallery, DC 2002 and Blotches from Burma at Space 7-10, MD in 2005). Kyi paints abstracts in an action painting style that has been compared to Franz Kline and Jackson Pollak, and intuitive and haunting “portraits” generated from photographs of real people and/or her imagination.

Kyi May Kaung: Artist’s Statement – for Mostly Burmese Mugs and Trunk Show – Space 7-10, Kefa Café, Silver Spring, MD. March13 – April 7, 2007
In this show, I am exhibiting iconic portraits that I have painted in oils on canvas since 2005 in an intuitive process that I worked out for myself. Starting from a sketch or snapshot of a real person, I keep painting to a point where the picture starts to tell me what it wishes to be. At this point I put the reference shot away and pay attention to what is happening on the canvas. The subjects change gender or ethnicity, or become iconic figures such as Our Lady of Scorpions or Lady Vanda (an orchid species.) They develop personalities of their own and select the objects they wish to be surrounded by. They also dictate to me, their conduit, in which style they wish to be painted. Some are in lumpy paint straight from the tube, and some are smooth surfaced.
These are the mug shots in this show. The rest are my hand painted ceramics, some of them actual mugs you can drink from.
This is my first Trunk Show of wearable art. For a scheduled interview, I am thinking back to the genesis of this particular artistic activity of mine, and find I can trace it to two monologs on stage which I did in 1994 at Annenberg Center in Philadelphia. In one of these, “Head Turned Backwards,” based on one of my poems, I unpack a suitcase full of clothes that I had meant to take home with me, while talking about my grandmothers. I wore a jacket made of the cut up parts of my old Burmese clothes that no longer fit.
By 2005, women on the streets would swivel their heads to look at my clothes, and ask me where I bought them. As I am unable to sell some of the jackets made from collectible fabrics with long histories (for example, the longyi or sarong I wore at my wedding breakfast), I decided to make jackets out of the fabrics I have collected on my travels, mostly in S.E Asia.
It is important to remember that I am not a tailor or a dressmaker who makes finely tailored, fitted and highly constructed, padded clothes. I am a poet and artist who sometimes makes poetic and metaphorical clothes. Due to my aging, I no longer do fine stitching or embroidery. I don’t want to contract out and be an employer of sweatshop labor. So I make everything on my own, minimizing seams and leaving in minor defects, because as the Turkish carpet makers say, “Only God is perfect.”
I make the jackets to complement everyday clothes such as the little black dress and the blue jeans, because I think clothes should make the wearer feel secure, covered and more truly herself or himself. I make jackets to read my poetry in.
I am against anorexia and make clothes for the mature woman.
Feb. 14, 2007

KyiMayKaung

Tin Moe’s poetry translated by Kyi May Kaung.
Copyright Tin Moe
Translation copyright Kyi May Kaung


Sobs (The Desert Years)

An intake of breath.
A sliver of glass.
Old decades of years
cannot consider.
In these years the bees cannot
make honey the mushrooms
cannot sprout.
All the fields are out of
crops -- Dry.

The mist is damp.
The storm is dim.
The dust rising in clouds,
Along the road where
the bullock cart
has traveled.

Encircled by thorns
The hta-naung tree its trunk
Cat’s claw scratched, is trying
To bloom.

It does not rain.

When it does – it’s not enough
To soak the earth.

In the monastery at
The edge of the village
Bells
Are not heard. If they are
they do not enter the ears
blissfully.

There are no novices
Saffron clad
Zilch sounds of young
Voices
Reciting the scriptures only the
Kappiya attendant
With his
shaved head falls between the
pillars and the columns of the building.

The earth doesn’t dare
To put forth fruit
It abandons all
And looks at me
At once feeling embarrassed
And frightened as if she
Cannot talk.

When will the sobs change
and the bells ring sweetly again?


New Pages

With one great sigh
So early in the morning
I heave myself out
Of bed

Among the skyscrapers that hit the clouds
The car horns going pipi pipie
The trains full of people ta sisie
The world that stays current with the age
With rapid rat feet
I have to find a place
Where
I can reside
And be safe.

Find my own cool pot
Of village water, on
A stand for strangers, by the roadside.
Ye kyan sin.

Only in old age
When infirmity is catching up with me
Do I have to undertake
This long journey
Of many steps.

On yesterday’s pages
I wrote out the history
So many instances of
So many mistakes
How bitter the taste
Of all those mistakes.

Here, the car engines cough
Into action, in an airplane I have arrived
At the edge of the continent of
North America.

Will I be able
Old and alone as I am
To change the course of history
To edit the past
How will I manage to do
All
This.

But old as I am
I still have the unrent flag
Of my heart’s spirit still
Waving undaunted.

I can raise up my spirits.

Holding in my hand
A lantern of light
Drinking a potion to keep me
Forever young, I go again to battle singing
A song
Of my own
Devising.

That sigh that is let out
It’s not
The sign of a deep depression
It is only
The swish of another page turning
Another page
Of my own and my country’s
Dark history.


To Thakin Kodaw Hmaing

With his topknot
On his head
His jacket lopsided
Frogged over
Half his chest, his cloth of
Unbleached
Cotton his yaw
Longyi of indigo
Blue, pundit
Hmaing is a true
Wise man.

With his brain
And his guts
He has risen up
In Revolution.


Miss Red with Little Umbrella.

Gracefully she comes
With her little umbrella.
Come on over, come on over
Teacher is calling.

With her head held up at an angle

Stridently she sings
Recites her lessons. In her
Excellent
Recitations
Miss Red
Is always
First.

Copyright Tin Moe
Translation copyright Kyi May Kaung

KyiMayKaung

Burmese Poet Tin Moe: In Memorium.
by Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.)

One of the most onerous things one has to do, is write an obituary when a fellow poet, artist, writer or dissident dies. I just opened my computer file where tributes to three other notable people who worked for Burma and freedom are still lying quietly, some published, some not.
I first met poet Tin Moe when he wrote to the radio station where I was working in Washington D.C. He wanted to leave Burma and work overseas. This was in 1997. No one at my former workplace did anything to help him, though I showed his letter to another writer and to the then manager, who was in a position to offer him a job.
Tin Moe was already a famous poet and had been in prison a few years. Time passed. I was offered the opportunity to write and produce a weekly program in air on Burmese and international dissident poetry. I started with a piece on the poet Naing Win Swe, who had died in the jungle with other freedom fighters. I thought naively that I would do one weekly column and the next week my material would run out and there would be nothing left to talk about. I did not yet know the extremely important role that poetry plays in oppressive systems like the Burmese one. Every week, I used to get poetry leads from friends and acquaintances and poetry fans. They sent me hand written or transcribed poems, remembered poems, rare editions from Burma and carefully hand copied pages of poems which had been inked out of Burmese magazines by the official censors. My poetry column went on and continued for over three years until my time at the radio ended.
Towards the end, I underwent a good deal of job harassment, resulting in my losing my job in February of 2001. About 1999, Tin Moe arrived in the United States on a visit. I understood that he had managed to emigrate with the help of his daughter, who then lived in Belgium. I did a program on his poetry and translated some of his poems into English. These were featured in an interview about him, based on the radio interview, which I sent to Burma Debate. It is still on line.
A mutual friend said she “would practice videography” by filming me interviewing Tin Moe in my Washington D.C. apartment, so we set up a date. My friend drove Tin Moe over and helped him get back to the house where he was staying.
Tin Moe was a short plump man who looked “typically Burmese” and seemed to be always smiling, despite the vicissitudes of his life. I was reminded of the late writer John Gardner’s words, that “whatever smiling faces they present to the world,” artists and writers always have trauma in their backgrounds. I learned that in addition to the years in prison, Tin Moe had also lost his wife. But he seemed to show none of this on the surface. He appeared even jolly, like a Burmese Santa Claus. He wrote bits of poetry good naturedly for my friend’s seven year old on small scraps of paper, sitting at the same level as the child.
In this interview I asked him when he first learned he was a poet (he said he still did not consider himself one) and what had been the predominant poetic influence in his life. He said, “I’m a very simple person. I yearn for the village where I was born, among the peanut fields.” He then told me that the primary motif of all his work, whether he mentioned it ostensibly or not, was the symbolism of the yay gyan zin, or water pot on a roofed stand, which is outside every village in Burma, to offer drinking water to thirsty travelers. I restrained myself from reminding Tin Moe that the earthen water pots weren’t so hygienic, because people had to drink from the one tin cup provided, and dunk the cup each time into the water pot. Nor did I say that all the tin cups I had seen were all chained to the pots, so as not to be stolen. But it was certainly a beautiful image. Visions of the round-bellied earthenware pots, unglazed and therefore “sweating water” and oh- so cool, and the mini-rice fields of sprouting bright green paddy plants around each pot danced before my eyes. This was indeed the pure and simple Burma we all wish to return to.
I also asked Tin Moe about the influence that two other great poets, Zawgyi (U Thein Han) and Minthuwun (U Wun) had had on his work.
He stopped and said: There is nothing so beautiful, so wonderful and SIMPLE, as the poems of Zawgyi and Minthuwun. So pure in their shining simplicity.
I could not agree more. He told me that the children’s nursery rhymes set to music which I learned as a child growing up in Rangoon, were not traditional, as I had thought, but had all been written by Minthuwun. Maung Lay Yay, Hta Par Tau (Dear younger brother, do get up, the dawn’s early light – or ta kyaw hna kyaw tay ko thee, hget kyar hnoke palee – stanza by stanza she threads her song, bird of the hnoke palee – which I find impossible to translate – Bird of the teasing beak? Bird with a playful mouth?
I learned also that it was Tin Moe who had written the first grade primer with which we all learn our three Rs in Burmese in Burma. An email from a Burmese dissident just pointed out how brilliant these are.
At the very beginning, when all we have learned are single alphabets, such as A, B, C, D and Ka Kha Gha Ga in Burmese, Tin Moe made poem sentences of single alphabets, such as:
Ma Ma Wa Wa Hta Ka, which I always loved and have put on one of my painted ceramics. Fat Older Sister Get Up and Dance! And when we have learned a bit more such as the vowel sounds -- Nga Ei Du Nar The -- My knee hurts!
I asked Tin Moe which was his favorite poem. He did not pause long before he replied, “Htee Kale Ne Ma Ni – surely, Miss Red with the Little Umbrella,” a nursery rhyme.
Tin Moe and Burmese democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s family friends gave me copies of the poem he had written for the funeral of Suu Kyi’s husband, the late Dr. Micheal Aris. I still have, somewhere under my piles of paper, because it is too painful to look at, a funeral program from 2005 for our late friend Daw Taw Myo Myint of Los Angeles, devoted wife, mother and committed dissident, whom Tin Moe also knew and admired. I remember he wrote that Taw was taw te, that is, kind, righteous, good, intelligent, smart, royal, proper, just like her name.
On another occasion, in the summer of 2001, famous student leader of the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations, Moe Thee Zun arrived in the United States. Moe Thee, I found, also had a deep interest in the arts and literature and at that time was working on his own memoirs. Moe Thee went and fetched U Tin Moe from Boston in his car (he had just got his driving license) and brought him to stay at his apartment for a while. Moe Thee then got the idea that he needed to put descriptions of political events between episodes in his own story, so why didn’t he interview me? I had been about 20 years old in 1967, when the anti-Chinese riots took place, when Moe Thee himself was just an infant.
When I arrived at Moe Thee’s apartment in Rockville, M.D., an impromptu soiree was in progress. The front door was propped open, and one of Moe Thee’s close friends was actually sitting slung across the threshold. It was 10 AM on a Saturday.
At the dining table, Tin Moe suddenly burst into a classical song. I told Moe Thee what I could remember of the disturbances of 1967. When it started getting close to lunchtime, I thought we should all chip in and get pizza. But Moe Thee took us all along with him to a neighbor’s house, where we all sat down to a magnificent home cooked meal. Tin Moe remembered all the names of my artsy relatives in Rangoon. On another occasion he read poetry at the Free Burma Coalition.
I don’t know how to honor one great poet, except with the words of another, --Welsh poet and nationalist, Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
*
R.I.P. – Which I realize now spells “rip.” A friend, writer/historian Bijan C. Bayne, says this is “Rooted Inspirational Poetry.”

January 23, 2007
---------

KyiMayKaung

U.S. Midterms -- Nov 9, 2006.
When my niece, of mixed parentage, was seven, she drew herself as ET, with the caption, “Yumi, where the hell are you from?” After 20+ years in the United States, I still feel an outsider. American politics as gleaned from sound bites is not easy to understand. Until about a week ago, when I saw a documentary on how midterm elections are run, I had no idea that they are run at the local level, mostly by volunteers, who are mostly aging baby boomers. On Monday, I was sick from my annual flu shot. On Tuesday I went for my morning walk with my senior friends, in our neighborhood in Maryland, which is the most educated in the United States, has the highest percentage of postgraduate degree-holders. As we walked among the immaculate, at least 3 m. dollar homes, two of my friends carefully gave me a rundown on the candidates based on their research. I had been too busy to do my own. One woman, in her mid-70s, spoke of how “Now I understand how Hitler came to power in Germany.” She said with G.W. Bush it was all “oil and papa.”
Buoyed up by the conversation, assured by my friends that I did not need any form of identification, I rushed to the Village Center, which was the polling center for the day. Two people who were on the Democratic ballot, including a woman named Susan C. Lee, running for House of Delegates, greeted us smiling at the entrance. “Please vote for the Democratic Party,” she said. “I intend to,” I said purposefully. I was so happy I was going to vote in a few minutes for the first time in my life.
It was not to be. Despite spelling my name for them twice, they could not find me on the list. It turned out I had not registered to vote 21 days earlier as I was supposed to. “Don’t worry,” someone said, “we’ll get you set up so you can vote in 2 years.”
Dejected, I walked out of the center. At the door, a reporter came up to me and asked me if I had voted. He said, “Even if you didn’t get to vote, would you like to talk to us? Do you like the direction in which the Republicans are taking us?”
Would I like to talk! “The war in Iraq,” I started out, “they should have been better prepared. It isn’t so easy to go in there ‘to set up democracy’ without knowing the culture or anything. The Democrats have been traditionally for the underclass. I think they will see to raising the minimum wage. We’ll get to a solution of the war situation, talk about things we need to, like the environment.”
Two days later, with Republican Sen. George Allen conceding defeat to Jim Webb in Virginia, just a little southwest, across the Potomac from us in Maryland, the Democrats are now in control of both houses of Congress by a 51-49 majority. Yesterday Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned, Democrat Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House. All my friends are beaming, passing around chocolates, saying they don’t need to move to Canada or Australia after all.
Oddly, The Independent and the BBC have given us the best analyses of the changes. That’s nothing new. A lot of us gave up on the American media some time ago.
I like Nancy Pelosi. Saw her once in the Rayburn Building in D.C. when she came to give a speech on Burmese democracy leader Suu Kyi’s birthday. Pelosi is brainy, tough and beautiful. She doesn’t mince words, has called President Bush an emperor without clothes. She gets right to the point, never stops smiling, but is firm. During Chinese New Year in San Francisco, she knew to wear red. Hopefully, as Bush and Pelosi both talk of bi-partisan solutions (to Iraq) I look forward to a time when I won’t need to turn my TV off when Jim Lehrer on the McNeil Lehrer News Hour says every evening – in reference to the daily war dead – “And here in silence are the names of – more.”
We all know more Iraquis have died and are barely counted, let alone named. According to journalist Judith Coburn, the number in 2005 as counted by IBC (Iraq Body Count) was between nearly 23,000 and 26,000.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0718-21.htm
That’s an enormous number. Now (Jan 2007) it is reported at 34,000, more than ten times the number of the more than 3000 reported American dead.
The Democratic Party should not let down its guard. President Bush apparently still has some tricks up his sleeve. On Thursday he submitted the nomination of the unpopular and controversial John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.; he’s pushing legislation to pass the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program. Donald Rumsfeld might have been just a convenient fall guy.
__________________

KyiMayKaung

KyiMayKaung

Working elephants on the Mae Rim Road.
The famous writer Ludu Daw Ah Mar said:
Where the great elephants go
roads
appear.
Convinced she was right, she started writing –
in the vernacular
not in stilted flowery
traditional prose.
She threw away in full view of everyone, a ball pen, given to her
by the supposedly moderate general, now deposed
since 2004. He’s now himself
under house arrest.
An internal power struggle, in the junta
the permanent purge.

On the Mae Rim Road
the elephants
no longer do
real work, lifting, pulling
pushing teak logs, worth $10,000 each
in 1982.
But now I no longer know the price --
as am considering divorce and no longer
talking
to the teak man.
Since 1988, Thailand has had
a teak export ban. The Thai general immediately
made
an agreement, to exploit, neighboring Burma’s
teak forests. Suited everyone fine
except the Burmese people; the students who fled
to Thailand after the army clampdown of 1988; the ethnic peoples
on the border.

On the Mae Rim Road
the elephants entertain tourists
going around clumsily in circles, holding each other’s
tails, gingerly in their trunks.
The mahouts are all Karen[1]
have given each elephant
a Karen name.

The younger mahouts are
kinder. An old mahout
has so struck at his elephant
with his chun probe, the edges
of the elephant’s ears, are in tatters
storm tossed
banana leaves. Maybe only I
see this.

Everyone else is too busy
rushing around taking photos
and clapping.

I’ve read, before captive elephants
were taught, to paint
they were so bored
in a western zoo
they masturbated and tried
to fornicate
with the red fire hydrant.

On the Mae Rim Road
the elephants no longer
do real work, but it’s not bad
my tourist guide says:
Easier than hauling logs. Is painting.
My guide Tang who speaks
English.

Simultaneously
I am exploring
retiring in Thailand
but it might get
too sleepy, too boring
too political and
too dangerous.

The elephants on the Mae Rim
Road, no longer do real work.
They entertain.
Maybe some have been extras
in the film
Suryothai.[2]

Copyright Kyi May Kaung
Chiangmai, Thailand.
12-19-2006







[1] An ethnic group living in Burma and Thailand called Kayin or Karen.
[2] A popular film, sponsored by the Thai royal family, edited by Francis Ford Coppola and allegedly very anti-Burmese, but I did not find it so objectionable. To me it appeared to focus more on the court intrigues of the Ayuthia royal family and to blame them for the Burmese invasion. Suryothai was a Thai queen who went to war on an elephant to help her husband and was killed.

KyiMayKaung

KyiMayKaung

Surreal in Northern Thailand.

Yesterday went on a guided tour.

Doi Inthanon National Park.

King's Project.

Guide says -- "And King, he changed opium into flowers."

Shuttle vans with open sides, packed full of people.

Foreign (farang) tourists refuse to ride. But walking may not be safer.

Scenes run through my head of busted brakes, me with my Mini-Minor

in Rangoon, if brakes go hope steering remains, will be no fun, if shuttle van loses brakes now,

plows into pilgrims to King's Stupa and Queen's Stupa.

Invisible people: The Three Karen Women in ethnic handwoven sarongs and electric pink plastic boots.

Doing the squatting gardening.

I like best -- the summit of Doi Inthanon, small white shrine set in undisturbed jungle, rest of it highly

disturbed.

Can't walk in there, beyond the wooden boardwalk. Undergrowth chest high, vines and mosses. Ferns.

I am fascinated, can't stop looking at the tangles of the vines.

First real jungle I've ever seen.

King Inthanon's ashes

in shrine.

Monk in hermit's bark colored robes

walks slowly in meditation, around

shrine.

Good place for my own ashes

in good time.

Copyright Kyi May Kaung

KyiMayKaung

KyiMayKaung

A Funny Thing Happened

At the Kefa Café.

I arrived as usual, 6 PM or a little after.

However early I arrive, Lene and Ababe, the owners

have already arranged the chairs for my Salon

This evening Sarah Browning of D.C. Poets Against War is to read.

I get my coffee and Sarah gets a bottle of water.

Ababe at the counter, says “Two people called

They wanted to know if someone named Baldwin is reading.”

Bemusement.

The only Baldwin I know is James.

And maybe the piano.

Sarah runs to where Ababe and Lene stack The City Paper

and sure enough the listing says, “James Baldwin will read with Sarah Browning.”


When I watch James Baldwin on TV on American Masters, I wish,

I had arrived in America soon enough to see him, in person,

As I saw Allen Ginsburg once and Robert Creeley

in Philadelphia.


So we intended to invoke the ghost of James Baldwin at the Kefa Café,

this Christmas, but in the end we forgot.

Sarah said she edited out the most painful of her Iraq poems

because she saw the lady in the audience, who said she came because her friend’s

Son had just died in Iraq, was crying.

I didn’t see her crying because I was watching Sarah read.

But I thought the lady’s face did look very red and blotchy.

And rather swollen.

I cry too at poetry readings, at the movies and at weddings.

And I do not even yet have, someone I know who knows someone

who died in Iraq,

but the taxi driver says, he has driven, many amputees and their

families

from Walter Reed on Georgia Avenue (Route 29)

“Even had a meal with one family at McDonald’s

once.”

Copyright Kyi May Kaung

KyiMayKaung

KyiMayKaung

Paintings, Poetry and Refugees.

I’ve had a busy week.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I was at The American University Refugee Conference, where I showed the more political of my art works, small pieces that can be displayed on a table. One is a simplified portrait of Burmese human rights defender Daw Su Su Nway, who sued the Burmese government and was imprisoned for it. She looks like a naive teenager. I painted the oil on canvas with as few colors and lines as I could manage.

As Paul Klee wrote in Berlin as the Nazis came into power "The paintings look back at you." Su Su Nway looks back at us with clear, open eyes. I imagine her saying "I did this and was punished for this. But you can do what your own conscience tells you to."

In a private email exchange a few days ago, another Burmese woman charmingly calls her conscience, her "conscious." There is not much difference between the 2 words.

People who don't have a conscience are hardly conscious.

At A.U., Hatim Eltayeb Mohamed Ali Elmaki also showed his paintings, naïve and colorful, and a friend of mine, Khin May Zaw showed her slides taken at a Burmese refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border.

My art work featured collages, some made from old business cards “woven” into irregular edged pieces that remind me of the split bamboo matting used as thin walls in poor people’s huts and houses in Burma. I flung acrylic paint in a betel nut red onto the pieces. (When I made them in my studio, not at the Conference). It looks like the betel spit which is ubiquitous on Burmese roads, maybe not in Rangoon now, where there are fines for spitting.

I found betel nut paraphernalia – such as small scissors to shave the small hard betel nuts into chewable wafer thin slices, fan-shaped receptacles for betel leaves (which come from a different plant, a vine) and small lidded tubes for holding the quick lime which is dabbed on a betel leaf, before the leaf is folded up and chewed, in markets in S.E. Asia – such as the Chiangmai Night Bazaar. Some are made of finely wrought silver or neillo ware, inlaid with black. I've put a betel chewing set into my short story The Rider of Crocodiles, written in July after a visit to Thailand.

There is really much that is similar in Burmese and Thai culture.

A video/DVD called “Tongues Don’t Have Bones” which uses my poetry illustrated by images – and made by Lisa DiLillo, was shown both on the 27th and the 28th of November at A.U. The title is from a line in one of my poems and is based on a old Burmese saying.

I am surprised and gratified that this piece has had such a long shelf life. Using footage that any tourist could have shot, DiLillo made this enduring piece of art. She has a wonderful sense of the movements in the film, and the cadences of Burmese speech and gesture. I told my A.U audience that the durability of this testifies to the staying power of truth. Lisa DiLillo and I were only its vehicles, working separately before we even met each other.

It shows that truth is the same, whoever is called to witness it, just by turning his or her eyes towards what is happening, and not away.

Some of the poetry I wrote myself, several were translated from poetry, hard to find, by other Burmese poets. One, Naing Win Swe, was a well known communist who converted to democracy and died in the jungle fighting for freedom. His poem depicts "the drowning punishment" used in the jungle. Sometimes the freedom fighters and groups ape the heirarchical structure and harsh extra-legal methods of the military junta.

I reflect on how poetry has a visceral meaning in Burma – as it has in Chile and Russia. There you don’t go to classes to write poetry, in fact you cannot.

You live life and a lot of poetry is written by the oppressed and disposed, some of them in the Burmese gulag.

I want poetry to have the strength and meaning it has over there, where often your life depends on it, literally.

This same week, Sarah Browning of D.C. Poets Against War, read poetry both at A.U at the beginning of the week, and at my salon, Dr. Kaung’s Salon, in Silver Spring, MD, where she also spoke about how D.C. Poets Against War was revived, in the period close to the start of the second Iraq War in 2003.

I had a nice dinner afterwards with Sarah and another poet, Judith McComb.

In this week of activism, poetry and friendship, I feel like a plant that has found the right pot to live in, has just been watered.

Thanks to Michelle Quinteros and Tim Renner, at American University and other student volunteers for the Refugee Conference. My apologies to David Fogel, and the high school students I was scheduled to meet on Tuesday at Gateway Heliport Gallery where the art of 4 refugee artists (including mine and Hatim's has been displayed in the show Freedom since October: I overschedule myself and was unable to make the open mike reading.

I hope this update in some way makes up for my not being able to get there.

Kyi May Kaung

KyiMayKaung

copyright
KyiMayKaung

Burma and Iraq: for DC Poets Against War – Reading, 11-8-2006. Shepherd Library, Washington, DC.

Believe it or not – Burma and Iraq are
connected. If you stretch far enough, Everything is
connected to Everything. These days you
don’t have to
stretch
very far.

As there has been, much more than the first
Burmese deaths from AIDS, in the early 1980s, now
there has been, the first
Burmese-American death
in Iraq.

It was the grandson
of a famous professor
of Physics.

The professor was Rector
of Rangoon University.
When the junta – decided
there would be no more
“student disturbances”—if
“the student body was all
relocated” and distance learning
set up – this professor made
correspondence courses, a success.
But the government-run university pulled
the courses back
under
its
central control. It could not
allow that.

An architect was drawing a house
design for a client. To save money the client
took off the verandas – the architect put them
back on.

Another architect had a modern design, for a new
hotel, in Bagan, ancient city.

He took off the tiered roofs – to have low modern lines
unobstructed views.
The general put – the pyathats back on.
On/off on/off
so it goes. When he won, an international
design prize, they gave the prize,
to someone with, the same
name. He left shortly after.

To learn how dictators behave
I read about Saddam Hussein, c. 1993.

At a Burmese dissidents’ meeting
December 2002, before the second Iraq War
I put on a free button, that said
“Don’t go to war, in Iraq.”

A Burmese man, looked at me
sideways, said
“Be careful with that!”

A Burmese poet – supported publicly
the war in Iraq –
but I think that is because he does not
read much in English and doesn’t know
about modern warfare
daisy cutter bombs just
used in Afghanistan
blanket bombing
cluster bombs
smart bombs
and such.

A hit man does a cleaner faster job.

What I can’t figure out
is how U.S. officials expect
someone to stay put in one building
for hours – while a bomber is called
in. Seems a moving target, by force of habit
will keep moving.

The man who draped
the U.S. flag over the face
of the statue of Saddam Hussein – just before
it was toppled
was Burmese.

The Burmese expert last Friday
said – the Burmese people expect/
want? A U.S. invasion. They say
“After the diamond, the gold.” “Sein”
in
Saddam
“hu-sein” means “diamond”
“Shwe” in General Than Shwe, the present dictator,
means -- “gold.”

At one time Saddam Hussein and the Burmese junta
Used the same P.R. firm
in Washington, DC.

If you stretch far enough, Everything is
connected
to Everything.
_______________

My visual art bio for Friendship Heights Village Center Group Show- Nov-Dec 2006

Kyi May Kaung has had 3 one woman shows and several group shows in the DC area since 2001—FLUX at Foundry Gallery, March 2002, BLOTCHES FROM BURMA at Space 7-10, Silver Spring MD, Oct-Nov. 2006 and currently FREEDOM, with 3 other asylee and refugee artists at Gateway Heliport Gallery, Silver Spring (on till the first week of Dec.) A new show MOSTLY BURMESE MUGS -- of anonymous or fictional “portraits,” painted porcelains and wearable art is planned for Space 7-10, March-April 2007. Kyi has a doctorate in Political Economy from the Univ. of Pennsylvania (1994) – is a prize winning poet and also writes fiction and plays.

11-1-2006

My Poetry bio for Nov 8, 2006 reading with DC Poets Against War

Kyi May Kaung Ph.D. has been writing poetry and fiction since she was a teenager, and intensively since the early 1990s. She is winner of the William Carlos Williams Prize of the Academy of American Poets (1993), a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Award (1996), and a Fulbright (1982-1988) and has been a Pew finalist twice. Her play Shaman was praised by Edward Albee. Tina Chang of Columbia Univ. has chosen 3 of her poems for the upcoming Norton Anthology. Another poem in honor of Pablo Neruda was chosen by Marilyn Hacker and Ram Devenini for Rattapallax's special (CD) edition.

Kyi has published 2 chapbooks, Pelted with Petals: The Burmese Poems and Tibetan Tanka, both from Intertext AK. Her poetry has appeared in Poets' Attic, Meridian Anthology, Mosaic and Passport magazines. In international radio 1997-2001 she wrote and produced a well-regarded weekly on dissident poetry -- and now runs a literary salon in MD.

Kyi has read in universities and colleges all over N. America and with Burmese dissident groups. This is her first appearance with DC PAW.
11-1-2006

Lisa Null's Ballad Sing at Kefa Cafe a Great Success!

Although a damp and rainy evening, Kefa Cafe was PACKED with folk singers, professional folklorists and just singers :) last Friday.

There was hardly time for a Q and A because -- as Lisa Null, Silver Spring resident who planned and hosted the show said, "Everyone wants to sing, not talk."

Thank you Lisa, Amy, Tom, Lene and Ababe and everyone who worked many months to make this a success.

It just shows the great power of music. Lisa Null sang many songs in a deep rich voice, as did several guest singers.

My favorite was a traditional ballad with the refrain "Don't go down to the broom again." I understand "broom" is a small yellow flowered plant. The ballad is about incest -- the princess in the ballad is pregnant by her brother!

Copyright Kyi May Kaung
Founder and Facilitator -- Dr. Kaung's Salon at Space 7-10, Kefa Cafe, Silver Spring MD.

The play Cabaret at Arena Stage in DC -- & Burma.

Being originally from Rangoon, Burma, sometimes I have an advantage over others who were born and brought up in the free world -- I'm not so jaded. As the human equivalent of ET, I can look at things in a fresh new way. This was the case on Thursday, when I received tickets to see a matinee production of Joe Masteroff's Cabaret, at the Arena Stage in Washington DC.

I asked three or four close friends if they could accompany me. But they were all busy. One or two of them mumured "Joel Grey" as soon as I said "Cabaret." I thought the expression on their faces might be saying -- "This is just a musical about being gay, in pre-World War II Berlin." Indeed, all I could recall myself was seeing short clips on TV of Joel Grey singing and dancing bizarrely in the cabaret sequence. So it must be a play about the cabaret.

In fact, I don't see why everyone's emphasis seems so much on the emcee (Master of Ceremonies, M.C.) character in Cabaret. He's important, and there's a surprise ending where he's concerned. But he is "only" the equivalent of the Greek chorus. In the end, the master manipulator also cannot control the story and he becomes a victim too. (Sorry if this is a "spoiler.")

The musical is based on the play by John Van Druten, which in turn is based on a collection of short stories by Christopher Isherwood. The naive young man who arrives by train in Berlin in 1931, with a Remington typewriter, on which he has yet to start writing his novel, seems modeled on Isherwood himself, who came from a rich family.

Sally Bowles, the cabaret's star, gets ejected by one of her lovers, and moves in with the young man. I was wondering about this "Bowles" and just today, read in a book about Paul and Jane Bowles that Isherwood named his main female character Sally Bowles after famous short story writer and composer Paul Bowles. Ah!

How much this adds to our appreciation of Sally Bowles, who's American but "loves Berlin" and -- well -- I will avoid another spoiler and not tell you what she decides to do, at the end of the second act.

I've known of Paul Bowles and his rivetting short stories ever since James Rahn, a writing mentor and the leader of the Rittenhouse Writers Group handed out The Delicate Prey in class in the mid 1990s in Philadelphia. Since then, I've found an old copy of Bowles' collected short stories in the Olsen's Book Store in Bethesda, MD., that has now been torn down to make way for an high end condominium building.

And yet, no one, and I really mean no one, of my American-born group members/aspiring writers who were in my writing groups last year had heard of Bowles before I mentioned him. Isn't that appalling? About as appalling as writers who wish to write without reading.

In any case, I found the Arena Stage production of Cabaret excellent.

I thought the writing excellent, the casting, directing, acting and singing -- superb.

I am a great fan of Broadway musicals, especially the ones with a political context. Being from Burma, I found the frenetic money making and other activity of the first act realistic as well as the suddeness of the oppression once the Nazis came into power.

I really liked the actors who played the older couple -- the song, So What, the gift of the pineapple etc. Their diction was excellent -- beautiful voice control. I liked the exquisite clothes -- especially the violet colored crushed velvet dress Fraulein Schneider wore at her wedding party.

And Sally Bowle's flashy fur coat, that plays such an important role in the end.

About the only thing critical I have to say is, the women's rest rooms at the Arena Stage were crowded and difficult, with narrow, steep stairs -- while the matinee audience is mostly physically challenged seniors. The men had a rest room on the ground floor, with no steps.

Copyright -- Kyi May Kaung.

KyiMayKaung

KyiMayKaung

Oct 23rd. 2006.

Now I try to see how easy or difficult it is to post new "blogs." The self portrait I posted is still not there.

It took some time to figure this out. How to write a new blog and post it.

Meanwhile there are riots in Budapest.

Everyone I know now seems to watch BBC rather than U.S. news. "News here too local!" the Korean grocer who has BBC on tells me.

Meanwhile I have discovered MHz.

Kyi May

Why I set up this Blog.

I am originally from Rangoon, Burma.

I am a poet/fiction writer and visual artist, a professional "Burma Watcher."

The reason I set up this Blog is because so much of what I write goes unpublished.

This is not good for material which is copyrighted at the moment I create it, but which I would like others to read.

This is especially true of political commentary. (I have a doctorate in Political Economy from the University of Pennsylvania and have worked 3 years in international radio).

I want my work of this nature to be available to web browsers internationally and to spark debate.

Kyi May
Oct 21- 2006