Voices of Belonging und Resistance

This programme invites writers to share their cartography of becoming, how their writing empowered identity evaluations, supported the discovery of new possibilities of participation and dissent. A collaboration of the The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre (JHGC) and the Sylt Foundation.

Di Lu Galay

Di Lu Galay (born 1986) is one of the young poets playing an important role in the latest generation of poets in Burma. In 2013, 2014, and 2015 he organized the poetry festival called “Midnight Poetry Festival” on Facebook – a quite remarkable event among the late poetry generation. And the recordings of the poems from 2013 Midnight Poetry Festival were published as a book. In 2014 he (and other four poets) published a poetry collection, “Jiva Faut Pyan Mhu.”

Di Lu Galay is amongst the contributors of the Burma-based electronic arts journal Be Untexed.
His poems, based on very revolutionary concepts of current social conditions of Burma, express the messages in very abstract ways, making Message-to-Message-Fertilization, which leads to another messages. And using expansion of images, very minimalistic words and a lot of imaginary layers, he makes his poetry get eternal depth and expedition. Some said that his work has a lot of neo-surrealistic reflections, and questions the origins of human value, too.

From international sources he also translates international poetry from English into Burmese. Plus he was a former editor of Hnin Si Phyu Literature journal. His poems and translations have appeared in several local periodicals and poetry anthologies.

Di Lu Galay has participated in our workshop "Violent Memories - Transformation and Trauma" in Yangon/Myanmar in April 2017 which is an collaboration of the Sylt Foundation and the Burma-based electronic arts journal Be Untexed. In 2021 Di Lu Galay will join the Sylt Foundation Virtual Writer's Retreat.
This new residency allows ten months of research and writing time and the sharing of experiences with other writers and the public in monthly zoom events on the theme of "memoir writing".