Aung Cheimt Myanmar

Aung Cheimt (b. 1948) was educated at four or five different schools as a child. In 1970, when his books of poems To Victories on Mekong River Banks and Too Afraid to Receive a Letter Asking Me Out for a Date were published, he became one of the guardians of 'Moewei Movement', named after the legendary Moewei magazine that promoted what was considered to be the avant-garde poetry of the time, at one stage even serving as 'volunteer editor'. After he had edited and published a few collections together with his friends from Rangoon Institute of Technology in the post-Moewei era, he did not write any new poems for a few years, only to re-emerge in the second Moewei era in the mid-1970s. He has published at least a dozen collections, and two long poems, 'Hellenic Ma Ma' (1979) and 'Journey through Jungle' (2010). Aged sixty-four, and still a prolific writer, he somehow survives solely on the income from his poetry, publishing regularly in weekly journals in Rangoon.

(2012)