| I began my writing life as a poet of loss and grief. “Under the Tamarind Tree” is an early example of this. The poem is about a memory I had of my mother on her death bed. In Pol Pot’s times, religion was abolished, monks disrobed, and religious practices eradicated. But in this poem, I gave my mother a proper funeral rite. Poetry’s power, thus, lies in resistance and reclamation: here, an orphan brings justice to his dead mother.
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