Frontline Poets

Combining poems by contemporary Burmese poets along with their life stories. The book demonstrates the power of the written word and is both a parallel story of Burmese political turmoil and the life-affirming power of literature.

The history of Myanmar can be told through its poets, from the fight against colonialism to the modern day struggle for democracy. Much of this tradition is barely known in the west. Frontline Poets is an inspiring, revelatory and heart wrenching account of how several poets in Myanmar ditched their comfortable lives to join dangerous protests, form armed groups and to be on the front line of a revolution.

Aung Naing Soe is a Burmese filmmaker and journalist. As a Hubert H. Humphrey fellow at Arizona State University, he covered immigration, the coronavirus outbreak, and the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2020, he went home for the general election and witnessed the military coup. He now covers civil unrest in Myanmar from his base in Thailand. Joe Freeman is an American writer and researcher who has worked at the Phnom Penn Post newspaper and covered the democratic transition in Myanmar as a freelance journalist. In 2017 he came to Thailand as Southeast Asia correspondent for Agence France-presse. Since 2021 he has worked for Amnesty International’s regional office.