On what we store — physical, spiritual
New collection from El Cerrito poet fits at a time of rarely leaving our spaces
A life of solitude spent contemplating nature or holed up in a barebones, lamplit studio are but two images of a working poet, though neither existence fits the reality of Maw Shein Win. A musician, educator and serial collaborator, Win is also a collector of objects, thoughts and, of course, words — her poetry an illumination of the everyday beauty found in things both tangible and numinous.
“I was thinking about storage units, and it grew from there,” Win said of the genesis of her new collection of poems, “Storage Unit for the Spirit House,” available in October from Oakland’s Omnidawn Press. The book is scheduled to be showcased as part of a virtual launch event hosted by Booksmith, the Bindery and Omnidawn on Sunday, Oct. 25 at 2 p. m.
Win’s booklength meditation on containment — whether worldly goods or mind, body and spirit — was completed late last year, well before this moment of our collective, pandemicinduced confinement.
“I was thinking about different types of architecture — convention centers, prison cells, towers — and smaller containers like vases and bottles,” she said, her research leading her to consider all forms of vessels for holding. “I found out storage is one of the fastestgrowing businesses, a combination of people losing their homes and others unwilling to let go of their personal belongings.”
Partially informed by a period she spent moving from a house in Berkeley where she lived for years to several inbetween spaces and ultimately to the home in El Cerrito she shares with her husband, Thomas Scandura, “I got rid of almost everything in the house,” she said. The couple made a concerted effort to pare down their two storage spaces.
“We’re down to one,” Win confessed.
“I also realized there was something missing from the poems,” she said of how she came to write the collection’s titular spirit house pieces, numbered one through six. “Those little houses you see in Thailand and Cambodia, on stilts, hold offerings to appease the spirits.”
“I’m not saying every Buddhist believes this, but if you have a feeling the nats have come in your house already, you can have an altar in the house, with little offerings of flower petals, water and rice,” she explained. “And if you believe in animist deities, nats or spirits can possibly wreak havoc in your house, steal things and cause illness. Referencing my Burmese heritage, the spirit house poems ended up tying the book together for me and made me think about childhood.”
Win was born in Massachusetts to immigrant parents: “My father came first, and my mom followed later,” she said. Both parents were doctors, doing their residencies as the family moved from Massachusetts to New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada and finally to Long Beach. Two older sisters stayed in Burma.
“The plan was for the family to get settled, but they came later than planned: I didn’t meet them till I was 15,” Win said. She has two younger siblings, also born here, while “Storage Unit for the Spirit House” is dedicated to their mother, Ayya Gunasari. Upon leaving her profession, Gunasari retired to a monastery and became one of only a handful of
bhikkhunis, female Buddhist monks. “Typically in Burmese culture, one of the children will follow in the footsteps of one of the parents. None of us did that,” Win said.
As a teenager, she identified as “very shy, a secret rebel” until she discovered punk rock.
At Cal State Fullerton as a journalism major, she discovered what she really wanted to write was poetry. Transferring to Long Beach State, she fell in with the art punks while studying creative writing and performance art. Becoming a part of an underground of artists working against the grain, she was writing for the college paper and punk magazine Flipside when she and her housemates formed a band, Pearls Before Swine.
“I wasn’t a trained musician by any stretch,” said Win, but the lifelong relationships she formed with other artists remain part of her practice, as artworks by former bandmates Adrian de la Peña and Mark Dutcher adorn her book jackets and interiors.
By the late ’ 90s, Win arrived in the Bay Area and started attending poetry readings; she and a friend started
a zine, Comet, filled with contributions and interviews with their coterie of artist and musician friends.
For 20 years as a fulltime, collegelevel writing instructor, Win continues to publish broadsides and chapbooks and make music with Bay Area artists, performing as Pitta of the Mind with Amanda Chaudhary and as Vata & the Vine with Evan Karp. She’s also a frequent collaborator with visual artist Megan Wilson: Together with several other poets and the screen printing collective Poster Syndicate, they’re preparing the next phase of the live art performances “Wall + Response” with the Clarion Alley Mural Project.
But the break in facePoet toface activity has hardly left her idle, and sheltering in place has forged its own interesting outcomes: She and husband Tom Scandura, a drummer, will soon launch their first musical collaboration. (“Finally,” Win said.) With her longtime writing groups now meeting virtually, she finds it’s her fellow writers who hold her accountable to deadlines and creating new work.
“The Bay Area has changed in so many ways, but there are still creative people here,” she said. “I do feel like it’s home.”