Monsoon Diary
Joseph Woods
Dedalus Press: 2018
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Poetry might be the most common form of literature in Myanmar, but few collections in English have come out of the country. Monsoon Diary is distinct in this respect, and in many others. As the cover image suggests, Monsoon Diary contains poems born of the expat poet’s days in Myanmar: in downtown Yangon, a peeling mansion-palace is pictured amid deep-green trees, barefoot figures seen playing chinlone in the foreground. Behind the cover photograph, however, are forty-four poems that exist at a confluence between countries. Containing poems of Myanmar, and much more, Joseph Woods deftly carries the reader between Asia, his native Ireland, and in his words, “elsewheres of the mind and heart”. Together, the poems gloriously evoke life spread between continents and bring into view the complexity of ‘home’ itself.

In the days of censorship in Myanmar there was a joke that government television broadcasts contained just two colours: the greens of military uniforms and the yellows of the robed monks to whom the generals very publicly paid homage. Woods’ kaleidoscopic collection is green, and yellow, and many shades in between. His synesthetic images bring Yangon alive to the reader. Clicking geckos; trees tenanted with spirits; street dogs; the incessant noise of construction work, and the feeling that “Nothing will dry for months now”, all so familiar to anyone who has spent rainy season in Yangon. As is the joy of being: “drawn from bed to the drone of a monk reciting sutras/through a Tannoy all night …” Unromantic, Woods depicts the wet, the mould and the mania of the city. Despite this, tenderness seeps in, as he maps small details I’d forgotten that I missed:

• Tags: Amy Doffegnies, Issue 16, Joseph Woods, Myanmar