Maw Shein Win: California Poets Part 2, Five Poems
Updated: 16 hours ago
Maw Shein Win
February 21st, 2021
California Poets: Part II
Maw Shein Win
Five Poems
All poems are from Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020)
Imaging Center
the pointer stick she grips
trails my twisting spine
she plots movement
with the exactness of a fingertip
slow as the motion of a snail in love
my naked back on treatment table
coolness hardening into memory
Hippodrome
a bag of lemons
& what she thought was a midnight cry
she longed to sing
think about lemons now
instead think about what
besides the lemons, there were scratching bats
only when she couldn’t hear him he would sing to her
try to remember how he died
nothing to do with skullcap
nor walnuts & golf clubs
she said she was Irish
she said she ate catfish
Reliquary
striped cat’s blazing eye
sleeping nerves
towering puppets
distant theater of Barcelona
rock vines
looping gaze
lavender husk
fruit nut
black madonna in glass case
wardrobe of ghosts
jagged edges
pilgrimage
stirred light
roots in dark
yanked from ground
eyelashes like miniature chains
Tomb
first version:
she lies still
the tomb is being filled
with a clear liquid
the liquid has a texture
not unlike gelatin
a poison or preservative
for the body that has not yet expired
second version:
her body rejects the liquid
they keep pouring it in
she keeps throwing it up
an attempt to live
as the hands move towards her
she is drawn deeper
into the tomb
third version:
a triangle of light
appears on stuccoed wall
she asks: what does this mean?
the figure
informs her that she
is the queen of New York
& her body is to be filled with pith
final version:
she puts on the silver
dress & silver shoes
kohl-rimmed eyes
she is on the dance
floor of a nightclub
the orb throws circles
of light on extended arms
Tower a flying fish in smoky air one woman in cerulean dress balances on tower silk scarf over head a burden to breathe below forest on fire fallow deer wild boar sloth bear fleeing flame tower leans to east pivots moving earth she coughs drop of blood burnt sienna a tower shakes
Interview
September 12th, 2026
California Poets Interview Series:
Maw Shein Win, Poet, Editor, Educator
interviewed by David Garyan
DG: You live, teach, and write in the San Francisco Bay Area. What are the challenges and rewards of working in a region as vast and diverse as that one?
MSW: I moved from Southern California to the SF Bay Area in the mid 90s. I didn’t have a job lined up and had about $500 in my account. Leaving behind longtime friends and family and a full-time teaching job was risky, but I always knew that somehow I would end up living here.
SF is definitely not the city it was: super veggie burritos at Taqueria Cancun for $3, a room in a two-bedroom Victorian flat in the Castro for $300 a month, starting an arts print magazine with little funding, and so on.
Unsurprisingly, the main challenge is trying to make a living. As an adjunct, I’ve been fortunate to teach at local universities, however, I along with so many folks I know are trying to cobble it together or have moved out of the area.
So, what keeps me here?
Longtime friendships, literary, music, and art communities, proximity to nature, and a BART station just a couple of blocks away.
DG: In 2016, you became the first poet laureate of El Cerrito and served for two years. What are things you did to support poetry during this time and how did those efforts influence your own writing?
MSW: As poet laureate of El Cerrito, I started a poetry series entitled Poetry & Place which featured intergenerational readers in different places in town, for example, Michelle Lin and Robert Hass at Arlington Park. During my term, I hosted a fundraiser event for Poetry Flash at the El Cerrito Community Center which hosted local publishers and literary orgs, an art and book raffle, and, of course, a reading and open mic. In addition to organizing events, I visited schools, nursing homes, and our library.
Naturally, certain aspects of El Cerrito made its way into my writing. I wrote a poem for the city’s Centennial celebration which was published as part of our California poet laureate Lee Herrick’s project and a profile on our town’s “secret” street artist for Alta magazine:
DG: Last year in June you received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Berkeley Poetry Festival. What do you love most about the festival, who are the key people behind it, and what did it mean to you, personally, to be the recipient of the award?
MSW: It was such an honor to receive this award, and I am especially grateful that it is a local honor with a rich history which you can read about here.
This year’s recipient is incredible poet devorah major. You can read about her and past awardees here.
The exciting news is that the organization is officially now a 501c-3 and the new name is Bay Area Poetry. We recently had a celebration and fundraiser with readings, prizes, and tarot readings which was lovely.
After receiving the award last year, I was invited to be on the board by co-directors (at the time) MK Chavez and Sharon Coleman. Along with Lourdes Figueroa, it’s a pleasure to be of service to the local community. What I particularly love about this festival is that it highlights local poets, and, as I naturally enjoy collaborating, it’s enjoyable to work together as a team.
DG: You’re an instructor in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco and also teach in the Low Residency MFA at Dominican University of California. To what extent does instruction differ in each setting and what are the upsides and downsides of each system?
MSW: I’ve enjoyed teaching at both universities, and I was also a Visiting Writer at Saint Mary’s College of California last semester.
What I appreciate about low residency programs is the opportunity for one-on-one work as well as small groups. What I love about teaching in person is the energy and dynamism that happens from being together in the classroom.
One of the challenges of being an adjunct, of course, is the uncertainty of having work from semester to semester.
I also teach for local writing communities such as The Writers Grotto, Left Margin LIT, and Maker, Mentor, Muse which I co-founded with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and Mary Volmer.
DG: Collaboration is a huge part of your repertoire, and I’d like to start with Literary Cherry, which is described as “a collaborative repository by adrian jesus de la peña & maw shein win.” Could you say a bit more about how the project began and what the collaborative process looks like?
MSW: In 2022, I reached out to my longtime friend artist Adrian de la Peña who lives in Southern California. As we have a history of different collaborations involving writing, art, and music, I thought it would be awesome to write together over zoom in a limited period of time one day a week, take turns coming up with a constraint or two to respond to, choose a snap from our phones, and post our collaboration within an hour. The process has been freeing and fun.
From there, Literary Cherry has slowly grown, and now we have a section for featured poets entitled Two Cherries as well as artists entitled Three Cherries along with an archive section. We recently released our first printed publication WEEDS, a limited-edition chapbook by PD Quin which Adrian and I are absolutely thrilled about.
DG: Your latest book, Percussing the Thinking Jar, released in the fall of 2024 and shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award in 2025 is likewise a collaborative effort. With visual artist Mark Dutcher, you take the reader on a journey through the mind—with all the chaos, beauty, and confusion which that entails. To what extent was the selection of images a difficult endeavor during the writing process? In other words, were you torn, at times, about what image would best complement which poem?
MSW: As mentioned earlier, I love the process of collaboration. Longtime friend and artist, Mark Dutcher also created the cover art for my full-length poetry collection Invisible Gifts, Poems (Manic D Press) as well as the drawings in Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn).
During the process of writing Percussing, I would send him poems in progress, and he would send me his drawings in response. I think the challenging part was deciding which pieces to choose. Mark made a large number of sumi-ink drawings, and the challenge was to narrow them down to 16 for the book. Why 16? One of the constraints for the Thought Logs was that each log has 16 lines.
Overall, I thought the process was organic, and Omnidawn’s co-publishers, Rusty Morrison, and Laura Joakimson, were supportive and enthusiastic when I asked if I could include Mark’s artwork in the book.
DG: You’ve talked about the importance that dreams have had in relation to your work. Percussing the Thinking Jar explores this concept, among others, through “thought logs,” which are meditations on different topics constructed with images mirroring dreams. The beauty of the collection lies in how it’s able to describe personal elements in such a universal way, making them unique but also relatable. Would it be right to say that there was a great deal of revision here to get the poems just right and to what extent did the composition of this book differ from your other collections?
MSW: Thank you for this question. I have a very active dream life, and I try to record them in a notebook when I remember. My notebook practice was essential to writing the Thought Logs, a bulk of which I wrote during the first two years of the pandemic. Through the process of writing the pieces, I eventually came up with a list of “rules” for them. If you’d like to check them out, they’re included in this process note.
And yes, I spent much time on revising Percussing. Thankfully, I enjoy the revision process! I think the composition differed from previous books in regard to form as this was my first time where many of the poems are based on invented forms (Thought Logs, Log Thoughts, and Thinking Jars).
DG: In addition to collaborating with artists, you also have a collaborative music project called Vata & the Vine, which combines poetry with electronic music. How active is the project these days and to what extent do your performances differ from a traditional poetry reading?
MSW: Vata & the Vine is a collaborative duo with musician and poet Evan Karp who is dreamy to work with. Together we made an album of the earlier version of the Thought Logs and in 2019 we collaborated on The Ping Pong Revival based on earlier versions of poems from Storage Unit for the Spirit House.
I’ve also collaborated with musician Amanda Chaudhary as Pitta of the Mind, and we played a lot of shows. Here is one of them.
Collaborating with musicians is a joy. I believe it’s another way to experience poetry and spoken word outside of readings and adds another layer of associations and resonances.
DG: In previous interviews you’ve stated that you listen to music when you work. Is there a particular genre that works particularly well for writing poetry?
MSW: I am definitely a listener of ambient, dark ambient, drone, and atmospheric music when writing or teaching writing.
And just for fun, I thought I’d make a playlist for you all:
DG: What are you reading or working on these days?
MSW: I’ve been working on a new hybrid full-length collection for Omnidawn. A Space for Air in the Eightness is a book of poems and essays and will be published in 2027. The poems are eight lines each and are entitled Octavias. I started writing them as a project with author Lenore Weiss where we wrote back and forth through a shared doc over a year. Lenore wrote 200-word prose pieces, I would write the Octavias, and together we called them Quiltings. You can check out her book Half-Quiltings recently published by Bottlecap Press.
In addition to the poems, Eightness includes a series of eight essays which could fall under the categories of lyric or narrative.
Mark Dutcher will be making the cover art which I’m happy to share.
Thank you for your excellent questions, David!
Author Bio:
Maw Shein Win's most recent full-length poetry collection is Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn, 2024) which was shortlisted for the 2025 Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Her previous full-length collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020) was longlisted for the PEN America 2021 Open Book Award, shortlisted for the Golden Poppy Award for Poetry, and nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA, the recipient of the 2026 AWP George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature, the 2025 Berkeley Poetry Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2025 Nomadic/SF Foundation Literary Award for Non-fiction. She teaches or has taught in the MFA Programs at the University of San Francisco, Dominican University, and Saint Mary’s College of California. mawsheinwin.com
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