In May 2002, with Aung San Suu Kyi temporarily released from house arrest, I was doing poetry workshops and readings in Mandalay and Rangoon. It was just before the monsoon, and the dawn air was like a sauna as I walked round the Golden Palace, destroyed by the Japanese and rebuilt with forced labour. Restored, it feels like an emptied concentration camp, aggressively regimented and dead: the way the junta would like to keep the whole country. Above is Mandalay Hill, from which, at dusk, the largest lit-up building you can see is Mandalay Correction Facility, the city’s jail.
In Rangoon the monsoon broke. The swirling streets were ankle-deep. I talked to writers about how British poetry had been revived in the 1970s by translations from eastern European poets struggling with censorship – which Borges called “the mother of metaphor”. They identified instantly. I wish I’d had more books with me. They have no access to other writing, and drew straws for the books I had to give.
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