"WARNING: There's blood everywhere in these pages. That's as it should be. The book in your hands bears witness to the long, bloodstained struggle against military oppression by the people of Myanmar/Burma. Here is an anthology exceptional in impact and importance, not least because the poets and writers serving as witnesses have themselves fought and died at the frontlines of resistance. Picking off new shoots will not stop the spring brings together for the first time in print-in translations both inspired and felicitous-poet-heros of the '88 Uprising, new voices from within the Chin, Kachin and Rohingya minorities, young poet-warriors of the ongoing armed struggle, and early martyrs of the Spring Revolution, notably K Za Win and Khet Thi. Together they raise a cri de coeur of resistance, resilience, and-through their poetry-redemption."
-Wendy Law-Yone, author of Golden Parasol: A Daughter's Memoir of Burma, The Road to Wanting, Irrawaddy Tango and The Coffin Tree
"With poems and essays ranging from optimistic zeal to righteous rage, Myanmar's writers have responded to the death and destruction wrought by the 2021 coup with prose imbued with birth, rebirth, and revolution. The powerful voices in this inspiring anthology demands that we all keep fighting for a free and just Myanmar, and reminds us that 'If we retreat this time, we will have to live in defeat forever'."
-Aye Min Thant, features editor, Frontier Myanmar
"From the Yoma foothills to the Chindwin river, Monywa to Cox's Bazaar, the voices in this searing new collections map a rich wilderness of witness. Kachin, Nepal, Burmese, Rohingya, Shan, Sino-Burmese and other voices mourn the murdered, the disappeared, and light a pyre for a vanished future. Spanning more than forty years of resistance since the iconic student protests of 18 August 1988 to the nationwide protests and murderous mayhem that followed the military coup of February 2021, these writings offer more than witness. Through lullabies, battle-cries, memes, digital memorials, kitchen cacophonies, protective prayers, odes to flip flops, roadside burials and prison cells, they redefine poetic justice. An elegy to democracy, an artists' manifesto and a rejection of the moral bankruptcy of a corrupt military, Ko Ko Thett and Brian Haman's urgent new anthology demands our attention."
-Penny Edwards, associate professor, Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
"A stunning and heartbreaking anthology of what its editors call 'witness poems and essays'. There will, no doubt, be numerous books written about the 2021 coup in Myanmar and its aftermath, but there will be few that are as inclusive, immersive and visceral as this one.
-Emma Larkin, Mekong Review
"There is a palpable sense of being left behind, failed by the world's broken promises. . . . There is pain, of course . . . But there is also something like hope."
-Theophilus Kwek, Asian Books Blog
