U Wun, 96; Poet Wrote of Village Life in Native Myanmar

U Wun, 96, one of Myanmar’s most respected and well-known poets, died Sunday at his home in Yangon, state media reported Monday.

Better known by his pen name, Min Thuwun, U Wun earned his undergraduate degree in literature at Oxford University and his master’s in Burmese language from Rangoon University.

He was a professor of Burmese at Rangoon University, now called Yangon University, and visiting lecturer at Japan’s Osaka Foreign Language Institute from 1975 to 1979. He also taught at Yale.

He won wide acclaim in his country for his poems on love, nationalism and the hardships of village life.

He also translated his native language into Braille and produced what is widely believed to be the first Burmese/Japanese dictionary.

A foe of Myanmar’s military regime, he aligned himself with Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party and won a seat in parliament during the 1990 elections, but was not allowed to take office after the junta refused to recognize the balloting.