Picking off new shoots will not stop the spring: Witness poems and essays from Burma/Myanmar (1988–2021)
Ko Ko Thett and Brian Haman
Ethos Books: 2022
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Picking off new shoots will not stop the spring is 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.

When Myanmar’s army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, seized power in the early hours of 1 February last year, it took less than a day for the protests to begin. A nationwide civil disobedience movement was declared, urging workers to boycott their jobs, and hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in a massive outpouring of anger. Min Aung Hlaing claimed his coup was justified due to fraud in the November 2020 election, which had reinstated the incumbent National League for Democracy government and its leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, but the protesters on the street were determined to tell him otherwise—voter turnout in that election had been registered at more than 70 per cent, despite concerns about Covid-19 and, while the NLD had clear advantages, there are few who would question the fact that the party won an unimpeachable victory.

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