Our colleague Mark Bender has just published an article comparing ethnographic poetry from Southwest China and Northeast India, focusing on the treatment of cultural and environmental change.

Article Abstract

The area of the eastern Himalayas, now called "Zomia" by some geographers and historians, is the site of intense poetic production rooted in the land and traditions the local poets call home. Poets of North-East India such as Temsula Ao, Desmond Kharmawphlang, Mamang Dai, and Mona Zote draw heavily on imagery of vernacular culture, oral performance, folk ideas, places, and the environment to engage the dynamics of cultural change among ethnic groups that include the Naga, Khasi, Adi, and Mizo. In southwest China, poems and prose pieces by poets including Aku Wuwu, Jidi Majia, Lu Juan, and Burao Yilu engage similar aspects of tradition and the environment in relation to life experiences of Yi and Wa cultures. Employing folkloristic and eco-critical theory to discuss the "ethnographic" poetry of the two regions, the article examines poems embedded in the varied dynamics of change and the strategies poets have chosen, often as extensions of their respective groups, to express feelings over shifts in culture and the environment. These marginal regions of India and China are linked by geography, ancient migrations, and folklore although state politics have made interaction within the region difficult and though producing similar bodies of poetry, there is little awareness between poets of what is happening in just across the geographical and political borders. This article seeks to engage poems from the respective areas, realizing that one must be conversant in "local knowledge" in approaching and interpreting highly contextualized poems within transnational conversations of these border homelands.