Nirat

Nirat is a lyrical genre of Thai poetry, its name translating roughly as farewell poetry, built around a description of a journey that the poet repeatedly interrupts to express longing for an absent lover left behind. Nirat probably originated among the Northern Thai people, with the 1637 Nirat Hariphunchai traditionally regarded as its earliest example, and during the Ayutthaya period poets favored the khlong and kap verse forms for composing it. The genre later spread beyond Thailand, reaching Myanmar in the late eighteenth century and Cambodia by the mid-nineteenth century, influencing the literary traditions of both.