Confronting the junta with words and the realities of a war they started.

Joe Freeman is an American writer and researcher who has worked across Southeast Asia for more than a decade, reporting from Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines and in Myanmar during the mid-2010s when the country was experiencing a rare era of democracy.

It was then that he covered the defamation trial of poet Maung Saungkha, who would eventually fight on the frontlines of Myanmar’s civil war, after it erupted in 2021 when an elected government was ousted by the military.

Freeman was determined to find Saungkha and the result was the book "Frontline Poets: The Literary Rebels Taking on Myanmar's Military," which includes a collection of gritty poems by five poets from all walks of life.

Intermixed with the poems are illustrations and photographs chronicling their lives from early writings to the dramatic upheavals that followed the – and how they responded to the events that are tearing Myanmar apart.

"Frontline Poets" was co-authored with Aung Naing Soe, a prominent Burmese filmmaker and journalist who has reported on Myanmar for several international news outlets, and features poetry published in original English translations for the first time.

Freeman also says "Frontline Poets" continues a grand tradition in Burmese poetry, inspired by the country's long history of uprisings and revolutions dating back more than a century, when poems were used as an expression of opposition to the British colonialists.

In this podcast, he talks with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt about his latest work, published by River Books, and how "Frontline Poets" seeks to shine a light on that rich historical legacy.