BLOODLUST: Philippine Protest Poetry (From Marcos to Duterte) co-edited by Alfred A. Yuson and Gemino H. Abad
(Reyes Publishing, Philippines, 2017)
The idea for this
fresh anthology of Philippine protest poetry came early in 2017, when it became
increasingly evident that the president elected some eight months previous had
no intention to backtrack from his declared war on drugs that resulted in a
determined assault on human rights, indeed, on the lives of Filipinos.
As the reprehensible death toll from
extra-judicial killings (EJKs) drew condemnation from the rational sector of
Philippine society, artists and poets joined many other progressives in
expressing disgust over the government’s lethal obstinacy, as much as its
apparent acceptance by everyone else for whom the reputed end justified the
unconscionable means.
—from
Alfred A. Yuson’s Introduction to BLOODLUST
Galatea Resurrects is honored to present a sample of poems from this important anthology,
birthed to “protest the cavalier disregard of human rights and lives.”
The anthology spans protest
poetry from Martial Law Marcos to the current Duterte. The folio begins with Jose F. Lacaba’s historic poem “Prometheus
Unbound.” About this poem, editor Alfred A. Yuson notes in his Introduction:
Jose F. Lacaba’s classic “Prometheus
Unbound,” the 24 lines of which started with letters that formed an acrostic
spelling out “Marcos Hitler Diktador Tuta” (Marcos Hitler Dictator
Puppy) — a protest slogan chanted by activists well before Marcos declared his
Martial Law that lasted for nearly a decade. This poem was published,
innocently, by a national weekly magazine in 1973, a year after Martial Law was
declared, helping earn for the poet-journalist unjust time in a Marcos prison.
Before presenting the poems, we are pleased to present its Foreword, for
which we thank
poet-scholar-editor-critic Gémino H. Abad.
Enjoy your read. Or not. But do read.
Eileen R. Tabios
Editor, Galatea Resurrects (A
Poetry Engagement)
*
FOREWORD
The best lack all conviction, while the
worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
— William Butler Yeats, “The Second
Coming”
One’s country is how one
imagines her, as when we say, “Inang Bayan.” “Country” seems more poetic
than “nation” but both are abstractions, concepts, as all our words are.
“Nation” is a legal fiction enshrined in our Constitution as our people’s dream
or vision of an ideal homeland. A legal fiction and so, we need to imagine that
vision or dream. It is in our imagination where the words come alive and speak
true. “When the imagination sleeps,” says Albert Camus, “words are emptied of
their meaning.” If one’s country then is how one imagines her, then one’s
country is what one’s imagination owes her allegiance to.
Our country today is in crisis. The word “crisis” is from Greek krinein, meaning “to divide or discriminate
and judge.” A time of crisis then is a time of division and judgment. The Greek
word krinein also gives the English words “criticism” and “criterion.”
Our leaders must listen well, not play deaf, and be sensitive to, and not
resent, criticism; and there are criteria for a right judgment which
presupposes integrity of character and a sound mind.
Look and consider what has happened since our last national election. Our
troubled times over the whole world pose a severe challenge to our humanity, to
our mind’s power of abstraction and critical thinking in quest of truth at the
very heart of freedom and democracy. When we speak today of “human rights,”
what meaning or vision, what truth about our humanity, dwells in that phrase? Ubuntu,
says Nelson Mandela: “I am because we are.” What Mandela says is at the core of
human dignity. We need imagination to grasp the spirit of what he says.
When we speak of Martial Law, we need to know what the limits are to its
exercise by our country’s leaders. Read then our Constitution of 1987 which
enshrines our people’s imagination of an ideal democratic country where the
people are the sovereign and their leaders are their public servants. One with
imagination does not have to be a lawyer to grasp the abstract ideal of a just
and humane society.
Is there much to be desired about our sense of country from our day-to-day
experience among our own people? Here, dear readers, in Bloodlust our
writers speak up and stand their ground! Yes, these are poems, verbal
artifacts. Whatever “poem” is, it is work of language and work of
imagination, both. Some, perhaps, depending on the reader’s taste, are “the
achieve of,” a ringing cry of the moment, and others, “the mastery of the thing,”
the very perfection of the writer’s art. But the point is, it cannot be said
that our writers since Balagtas and La Solidaridad were ever mute.
Without the writer, the poor and oppressed among us have no voice else. Writers
— and most ceertainly, other artists and scholars — read us and interpret us to
ourselves upon our own ground: our culture and our history. They sharpen our
sense of country because they strengthen our power of abstraction and
imagination. In short, our literature wrought from whatever language, in
whatever genre, is our people’s memory. A country is only as strong as her
people’s memory!
— Gémino H. Abad
JOSE F. LACABA
Prometheus Unbound
I
shall never exchange my fetters for slavish servility.
’Tis
better to be chained to the rock than be bound to the service of Zeus.
—
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Mars shall glow
tonight,
Artemis is out of
sight.
Rust in the twilight
sky
Colors a bloodshot
eye,
Or shall I say that
dust
Sunders the sleep of
the just?
Hold fast to the gift
of fire!
I am rage! I am
wrath! I am ire!
The vulture sits on
my rock,
Licks at the chains
that mock
Emancipation’s
breath,
Reeks of death,
death, death.
Death shall not
unclench me.
I am earth, wind, and
sea!
Kisses bestow on the
brave
That defy the damp of
the grave
And strike the chill
hand of
Death with the
flaming sword of love.
Orion stirs. The
vulture
Retreats from the
hard, pure
Thrust of the spark
that burns,
Unbinds, departs,
returns
To pluck out of
death’s fist
A god who dared to
resist.
(First
published in Focus magazine, July 14, 1973 (Vol. 1, No. 35), under the
pen name Ruben Cuevas.)
*
LUISA A. IGLORIA
Before the Hit, They
Removed my Leash
~ after
“Right Before The Hit, They Removed My Leash,” acrylic on paper by Ulysses
Duterte Jr.
(2016); especially for every child victim in Philippine
extrajudicial killings/the “drug war”
An ordinary sky is the
hypothesis
at the edge of a blue
window riddled
with holes. I am every
child that crawled
unassuming into a bandana
of light,
seeing only the smooth
beveled heel
of a slingshot, a
trampoline of mud
mixed with runoff from the
gutter.
I did not fear the mastiff
transfixed
on its leather halter, the
marble glaze
in its eyes. How should we
put the rest
of the equation together —
the M-16’s
watery shadow as though
affixed
to no hands, the tank
idling on the corner?
Still we rise to the
foreground, whom you
have the audacity to call
innocents.
Let me undo every
expectation of what’s meant
as a target. Watch me
explode again and again
through each scene’s
tearable fabric,
the milk around my mouth
not yet dry:
unseen forces tethering me
in the crosshairs,
taut as a laser pointed
directly at my heart.
*
ARVIN ABEJO MANGOHIG
Love in the Time
of Martial Law
I want you to save me
and be gentle, our feet
Bleeding with ink
from the newspapers they have shut down,
Our clothes tattered
because our mothers must leave.
Offshore, our feet
rot on black sand they will steal from us.
I want peace at
night, before the shaking starts.
Trauma at the tip of
my tongue passes from mine
To yours. Love me
lightly or the bruises will return.
Not that the teeth
they have pulled out might grow again.
To love you now means
to love all the broken body parts
That running away has
dealt us. Here I love you
In cul de sacs. Here
I love you trapped between the ribs
Of burning cars. Here
our nipples are crushed by steel.
There is no tomorrow
in loving you. Only today counts.
We count our present,
dazzling wounds. Our bodies
Are collections of
near-misses and escapes, and between them
The times we find no
barbed wire between our bloodied lips.
*
ISABELA BANZON
Night
We meet in a room
at this grim hour,
in a living room
meant for the living,
in a home
turned funeral home,
with a body
on a stiff white bed.
Our tears
flower like
offerings,
but who is there
left to receive them?
More
killings sound the
air.
The police are very
busy.
The hooded
night is upon us
again.
*
VICTOR PENARANDA
Bystander
While watching the
evening pass by
A bystander saw the
moon fall
Into an open manhole
but no one
Else seemed to have
noticed at all.
A few minutes later a
motorbike
With two masked
riders passed by
Slowly before the
quiet bystander.
The back rider pulled
out a gun
And shot him twice at
close range,
And a third time
while sprawled
On pavement burdened
by his blood.
The bystander died
with no one else
Knowing how the moon
really fell,
Why he was slain by
brazen assassins.
No one dared to
approach or help him
For fear of being hit
by a stray bullet.
The killing could
have been a mistake
In a place of
diminished opportunities
Where everyone is
worth saving.
He might have been
someone careless
In a community where
no one can recall
The songs to hush
children to sleep.
He might have been
part of a lost cause,
A fallen angel who
lost his fear to fail
By regaining his
faith at the corner store.
He strayed blameless
as a bystander
To witness what
others failed to see:
The moon falling into
a gaping manhole.
*
MIYAKO DOMINGUEZ IZABEL
Poor Poet’s Plea
When you see the sky blue and the calm of the ocean,
remember the grays in the slum, the black in daylight,
the falling trees, the decomposing, the gutter drying.
When you smell a scent of May, the hint of jasmines,
remember the stench of rotting, the decaying rodent,
the heap of garbage smoldering, the odor of its vapor.
When you taste sugar, juice, the tangerines of summer,
remember the salt of the drained tongue, the moment
tedious in the mouth, the convulsing lips, the
famines.
When you hear a mother sway at bedtime with singing,
remember the doldrums of the road, the quiet midnight,
the noises of running engines, the deadness of motion.
When you feel a grazing blanket, the pulling of a
hand,
remember the shivering, the body lifeless on the sand.
PADMAPANI L. PEREZ
An EJK Nursery
Rhyme,
Or: Children at
Play on the Street at Dusk
Mama, mama, look at
me!
Bang bang! Bang bang!
Hee hee hee!
Mama, mama, peys da
wall,
tangina, I kill dem all!
Papa, addict, pusher,
dad!
Bang bang! Bang bang!
Beri bad!
Papa, papa, nanlaban,
shoot him, shoot him,
grab da son!
Mama, mama, look at
me!
When I grow up will I
be,
Bato-Digong-Big
Hitman-
Addict-Pusher, bang
bang bang!
*
MARNE KILATES
Vers Macabre
(Or: The Song of
Impunity)
They tick them off,
Names from a secret
list,
And they fall
nameless — half
A pair of flip-flops
on the asphalt,
At the edge of the
oval of spotlight,
Or once, a blond
Barbie smeared
By black grease and
dried blood.
They are all the
same:
You never see their
faces, which are
Either wrapped in
masking tape
Or always averted;
Or the pictures from
the Night Shift
Show only the pale,
dirty soles
Of feet, the denim
trousers,
Torn or rolled up to
the knees.
They tick them off:
In the fandango of
dark alleys,
They’re coming down
fast,
From the first
hundred
To the latest
thousand,
As if completing a
target,
Or chasing a
deadline.
They tick them off.
From the stories,
One can never draw a
pattern —
With neither rhyme
nor reason,
They go as if a la
suerte —
Except to trace where
all the beat
Comes from: the name
of the blame,
The rhythm of the
saints, Duterte —
Distinct reverb of La
Muerte —
Which, by coercing
the vowels,
Echo the loss of all
sense: insanity,
Or the obscenities
bouncing
Between walls: impunity.
*
LOURD ERNEST DE VEYRA
The Precinct
Janitor’s Breakfast
The one who has to
clean up after last night’s mess?
He has to go home.
Sometime. Somewhere.
At the little plastic
table in the morning,
what stories does he
tell his son?
That this bowl of
sardines reminds him
of the blood he had
just mopped up in the jail cell?
You know, that kind
of deep redness
human cruelty often
leaves on silent walls?
Soap? Brushes? What’s
the best detergent brand?
How many pails of
water does it take
to make them spotless
as memory?
When his wife chops
up
cheap, tiny cuts of
pork in the kitchen,
does he think of the
bits of bone
he had to pick off
the floor just a few hours ago?
And just how loud was
the gunshot inside
the windowless
chamber?
Just before that, did
he hear a scream?
Or a voice pleading?
Begging?
And was it louder
than the neighbor’s
early-morning karaoke
?
These questions — how
they smear six o’clock.
Better the narcota of
neighborly chatter
than the discomfort
of absolute silence.
Is it better to fix
his gaze elsewhere?
For instance, the sky
the color
of used gauze, framed
by the window,
its cardboard panes
and wooden frames
held together by
silver duct tape
sticky and strong
enough
to silence a mouth.
*
FIDELITO C. CORTES
Elegy to the
Bookcase
At least 11 people have been found in a tiny dark room hidden
behind a bookcase in a
Philippine police station. — BBC News, April 27, 2017
The cheap ones, those
whose shelves bent
Or cracked in the
middle under the weight
Of their books, we
had a lot of those. Got rid
With a clean
conscience when they’d outlived
Their use, but still
we mourned, not as much
As if they had been
the books themselves,
We’d have been
inconsolable otherwise,
But they’re related,
books and the bookcases
They’re in,
practically twinned by DNA
Of pulp, fiberboard,
cellulose — one cheap,
The other priceless,
but never mind this gulf
In value: When we
take an old battered bookcase
Down to the dumpster,
we feel a pang.
Goodbye to a cousin
of better cousins.
Pine bookcases, once
we could afford wood,
Never bend and are so
pretty. Make smart books
Look even smarter.
But they get scarred
And scratched, burned
by a careless votive candle,
And after one
extremely wet summer, turn moldy.
But dump them? We
couldn’t. So take the books out
One by one, scrub the
shelves, bleach out the mold,
Sand down the scars,
finish with Murphy’s Oil
Till they’re pretty
again. But we sort of miss
The funeral march to
the dumpster. Cheap
Is so easy to trash,
and the expensive stuff
Too much trouble to
keep, but that’s how we roll.
If you’re of little
value, you’re expendable;
If you’re solid and
shiny and smart, you’re safe.
The bookcase that’s
supposed to open to
Imagined worlds just
opened up to a prison cell,
And the human rights
inspector expecting
Harry Potter books
found Azkaban instead.
Eleven poor suspects
who couldn’t afford bail
Crammed into a
dungeon that couldn’t fit all
So they slept
standing up with hardly room
To snore. True, it’s
a misery replicated
In virtually every
lockup in this country,
So it’s nothing
unique. All those cheap lives,
Not even dead yet,
coffined upright
In their sleep. So
this elegy can’t really
Be for them. We
grieve for the bookcase
Because the bookcase,
as we know it, is dead.
*
ALFRED A. YUSON
Civil Service
Just another day at
the office
in this mess of a
city: a tangle
of tripwires overhead
and underfoot,
muddy alleys and
flotsam creeks
binding jerrybuilt
quality of life
in small-change
paradise of muck.
So I kill. With my
badge, vigilance,
approval tacit if
guttural, my power
knows no bounds among
small fry.
Just another
darkening hour. Just
another body
benighted in cardboard
with Pentel-pen codes
as alarums.
Just justice so small-time,
served
in shanty strokes as
micro bulletins.
Yes I kissed my wife
after breakfast
of small dried fish
and rice, patted
the heads of our kids
before they crept
off to school, to
learn of the wild ways
of the big world,
such maelstrom of crowds
in rubber slippers.
Or big shoes. To fill.
My eyes are trained,
out in the open,
to spot the
difference. I am the drug
buster. I can read
tattoos. I can fire
between the eyes or
into sunken
chests, from where no
treasures
can possibly be
sniffed even by dog
eaters. I know the
smell of small wars.
Victims aren’t
ill-starred, just numbers.
I direct my piss at
corrugated sheets
that wall off irony
between the same
small lives with no
place else to go
but where the
generals point the way.
I zip up and follow
the spoor of fates
so small they just
crowd the venue.
Just another prey,
just another day
of making mothers
wail. They have
nothing else but have
been so noisy
anyway. Just add
another prostrate
figure to TV news.
This is how we clean
up image of
citizenry. No courts’ apples
to be polished, just
ravenous small bites
at our metered polis.
No quibbling at quota.
Just another day out
in the open and close
of country’s woes.
Just causing a certain class
of vermin to chew the
dust of example. Just
another sample of how
it is to be so easily
snuffed out amidst
the bright lights that
shine on rats, curs
and bitches, cats that purr
for more lives. Hah!
Deeper down south
you enter the hole
not whole but headless.
Here in entrepot you
are smaller but bigger.
You have not been
federalized. Yet. I salvage
what I can of too
many small souls. I bestow
the honor of random
selection. I decimate
regardless of lessons
learned. No delirium. I must do
my job, maybe till the
killing becomes untidy tedium.
*
MARRA PL. LANOT
Soldier’s Song
Let the hills and
mountains
Roll up behind me
like
The tangled past of a
jungle.
Let a rose grow when
I lay down my gun
Where the desert
meets the shore.
I long to throw away
This mask of
maleness,
All male desire to
kill,
To spit the blood,
the sour-
Ness balled in my
mouth.
I have forgotten the
face
Of my mother, sister,
niece.
All I see are
trenches
Hate burrowed in my
brother’s face,
His eyes, two barrels
of a gun
Unleashing bullets.
I have learned that
foes
May become friends
tomorrow
And friends my foes
tonight.
This season I may own
a
Bowl of rice, next
year
I might bite a fruit
Or have a new dress
Or a roof over our
heads.
But I remember home
Each time a child
Presses a cheek to
mine
Or even when a horse
Gives birth and goats
Cavort in a manger.
Let the hills and
mountains
Roll up behind me
like
The tangled past of a
jungle.
Let a rose grow when
I lay down my gun
Where the desert
meets the shore.
*
CHRISTINE V. LAO
Survivor’s guilt
What to do with a backhoe
in a poem we would rather gild
with lilies? What to do with a hole
in the ground and fifty-eight bodies —
I approach the image, my mind
draws a blank. Darkness incomprehensible
impenetrable unyielding.
How long has it been
since I shuttered my home,
muttering to myself in
the dark? Say nothing,
I sang, nothing.
For what have
words done
in the years intervening?
Say governance, justice,
rule of law, peace. Seven
years later, we are only still
on the verge of morning.
Say equity, fairness,
due process, peace. Still
bodies pile up, crowding out
the light, laying claim
to the space newly emptied of words.
The dead need no words. It is we who need soothing.
Every elegy I did write was an ode
for the living.
I would rather sing this poem
in the style of crickets and
birdsong.
I would rather that I never meet the
barrel of a gun.
Who gets to choose between
abundance
and grace, who decides which among
us
lives to sing about the dead? Like
you I have no
real choice in this matter.
When it comes for me I will offer no
resistance,
I who am guilty, having ceded all my
words. Will the darkness
teach me its grammar, let me learn
its many names?
I ask the backhoe that moves from
shadow to light,
ask the gaping hole in the ground:
Will you hold me as tenderly?
CF PADERNA
Marcela
In
memory of Marcela Agoncillo, Mother of the Philippine flag
Surely you knew, as
you threaded the needle,
What your labor
meant: the blood in red,
The peace in blue,
the sun seamless
As our islands never
were. Back home,
A war in earnest,
garrote and gunfire
A language both
Spaniard and indio understood.
Exiled in Hong Kong,
you must have known
What, as a woman, you
could only do,
How our country’s
flag, silk like water
In your hands, was
made beautiful
By its limits. If you
could just see us now,
Your banner waving above
offices,
Our women at work
beside men.
Girls drive cars
these days, and we are told
That this country is
our own. But still
We see red in lives
spilt on the streets,
And death flowers
blue in the corpses at dawn.
A hundred years ago,
you must have thought,
I can only do so
much. Here we are now,
Daughters as you were
of this country,
And you have indeed
done much:
Embroidered freedom
into the fabric
Of our longing, hewed
the sun so we need not
Shield our eyes.
Marcela, we are still at war,
But we are finally
women with choice,
And we choose to
fight now, we choose to be
As eloquent as your
craft, and we reject
All the limits,
conqueror or dictator be damned.
*
MARJORIE EVASCO
Tambaloslos
(Gikan sa kasugiran sa Kabisay-an)
Mangtas nga uwagan, mailhan ni siya diha sa iyang
dakong baba, luag ug gakang-a nga ampapangig.
Pahimangno sa katiguwangan, siya mokaon sa iyang
kaugalingon ug sa ubang tawo, galinla sa mga
naminaw niya, nahimuot sa mga pamalikas nga
gadahili sa iyang baba matag gabii ug adlaw.
Unsaon pagkaog tawo ang amamaliwng ingon niya?
Sukmat sa sukdan sa Inabanga, ang tambaloslos
magpasundayag sa iyang luslos nga kinatawo,
walay kaulaw manghambog nga daghang nalinlang
sa iyang saad nga lamonon ang tanang matang
nga kahugaw sa dakbayan. Dili gayod tuod
makalingkawas ang kinagamyang utitod, suom,
uk-uk nga mosuksok sa mga hilit nga tago-anan,
mamasin mabuhi bisan sa salin-salin sa uban
nga gibalibag nas basura sa matag siyudad.
Ug lagi banhaan man kini siya, manimaho iyang
ginhawaan, moasdang gikan sa dunot sa tinai.
Sa matag takna nga iyang ibukhad iyang luag nga baba
ug itabon sa iyang nawong hangtod sa likod sa iyang
ulo, takoban niya ang iyang kaugalingon. Dihang
wala na kini siyay nawong, walay makaikyas sa mga
mangtas nga kamot, ug kon dili ka magbantay
hanepan pod ka, maglibot-libot, buang gasalimuang.
Tambaloslos
(From Visayan wisdom lore)
Monster of lust, he is known by his
big mouth, that loose and open maw.
The elders warn he eats his own
self and other beings, deceiving
his listeners amused by curses drib-
bling from his mouth night & day.
How does a demon like him eat humans?
A sukdan of Inabanga says, the tambaloslos
displays his herniated genitals, shameless
with pride that many people believe in
his promise to gorge on all the dross
of the land. Indeed, nothing can escape
him, not the red fire ant, black ant,
or cockroach that scurries to hiding places,
taking the chance of surviving on the waste
of others, thrown into the garbage of each city.
And this creature is noisy, his breath smells
putrid, rising from the decay in his intestines.
Each time he opens his loose mouth, with which
he covers his entire face and up over the back
of his head, he covers up his identity. The moment
he loses his face, no one can escape monstrous
hands, and if you do not take heed maybe you
will also be cursed, run raving mad in circles.
ERIC GAMALINDA
Dalangin
Bakit ba ang hirap
maging Pilipino,
isinilang nga ba ako
sa kaliluha, hinubog
nga ba sa putik
ang kaluluwa ko,
at kailan ko ba
kinagat
ang mansanas ng
dalita?
Aba Ginoong Maria,
ngayong malayo na ako
sa bulong ng iyong
grasya,
bakit ko ba hinahabol
ang tentasyon, anong
dalangin
ang magpapalubag-loob
sa sumpa ng pagiging
ako? At sa bawat
ungol
ng krimen, ano nga ba
ang nakikita mo
sa anino namin?
Talaga bang
wala na kaming
pag-asa,
hanggang dito na lang
ba
ang lansangang
patungo
sa lunsod ng langit?
Narito
kaming lahat, mga
hampas
lupa at mandurukot
sa ekonomiya, masdan
mo
ang bayan ko, pugad
ng
salbahe at walang
hiya… mga pinagpalang
lahi ng Ama namin,
tunay
na mga anak ng tupa.
Devotion
Why is it so hard
to be Filipino,
was I really born
in treachery,
was my soul
shaped from mud,
and when did I ever
bite
the apple of misery?
Hail Holy Mary,
now that I am far
from the murmur of
grace,
why do I run after
temptation, what
devotion
will ever ease the
curse
of being me?
And in every grumble
of crime, what do you
see
in our shadow? Have
we
really lost all hope,
is this where the
road
to the city of heaven
really
ends? Here we all
are,
all the wretched
and pickpockets
of the economy,
take a look
at my country,
nest of the wicked
and
shameless… these
blessed sons
of our Father the
shepherd,
these sons of
bitches.
*****
ABOUT THE POETS:
Gémino H. Abad (1939 - ), University Professor emeritus of
literature and creative writing, is a poet, fictionist, and literary critic and
historian, with various honors and awards. In 2009, he received Italy’s Premio
Feronia (“Foreign author category”) for his poetry, later published as a
bi-lingual edn., Dove le parole non si spezzano (Roma: Edizioni
Ensemble, 2015): selected poems from In Ordinary Time (2004). Where No
Words Break (2014) is his tenth poetry collection, and Past Mountain
Dreaming (2010), his ninth of critical essays; he has two collections of
short stories, Orion’s Belt (1996) and A Makeshift Sun (2001). He
is known also for his three-volume anthology of Filipino poetry in English from
1905 to the 1990s — Man of Earth (1989), A Native Clearing
(1993), and A Habit of Shores (1999); and a six-volume anthology of
Filipino short stories in English from 1956 to 2008 — Upon Our Own Ground
(2008), Underground Spirit (2010), and Hoard of Thunder (2012).
He obtained his Ph.D. in English at the University of Chicago in 1970, and
continues to teach at U.P. where he has served as Secretary of the University,
Vice-President for Academic Affairs, and Director of the U.P. Creative Writing
Center (now an Institute).
Isabela Banzon teaches at the University of the Philippines. Her
poetry book Maybe Something received both the National Book Award and
the Gintong Aklat Award in 2016.
Fidelito C. Cortes has written two books of poetry, Waiting for the
Exterminator and Everyday Things.
Marjorie Evasco was the SEAWrite 2010 awardee for the
Philippines. She has also received the NCCA Ani ng Dangal award, the Gawad
Pambansang Alagad Balagtas for Poetry from UMPIL (Unyon ng mga Manunulat ng
Pilipinas) in 2004, the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan from the City of
Manila in 2005, the Outstanding Silliman University Alumna for creative writing
in 2008, the Carlos P. Garcia award for literature from the province of Bohol
in 2011, and the 2013 Taboan Literature Festival award for her achievements as
a writer and for promoting the growth of literature of Central Visayas. Her
books have won the National Book Awards for poetry (Dreamweavers and Ochre
Tones); oral history (Six Women Poets: Inter/views, co-authored by
Edna Zapanta-Manlapaz); biography (A Life Shaped by Music: Andrea O.
Veneracion and the Philippine Madrigal Singers); and art (Ani: The Life
and Art of Hermogena Borja Lungay, Boholano Painter). Her most recent book
is an anthology she edited of memoirs, titled The Bohol We Love (2016). She is a
University Fellow and Professor Emeritus of Literature of De La Salle
University.
Eric Gamalinda is a human being at http://www.ericgamalinda.com
Luisa A. Igloria is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the
world's first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate
Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of
Haori (poetry chapbook, Tea & Tattered Pages Press, April 2017), Bright
as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for
Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (selected by
Mark Doty for the 2014 May Swenson Prize, Utah State University Press), Night
Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2014), The Saints of Streets
(University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver
(2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other
books. She teaches on the faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old
Dominion University, which she directed from 2009-2015.
Miyako Dominguez Izabel is a Lumad writer who grew up in Davao City
and Davao Oriental.
Marne Kilates has published six books of poetry. His recent book, Time’s
Enchantment & Other Reflections (Ateneo de Naga University Press,
2014), won the National Book Award, while his latest collection, Lyrical
Objects (UST Publishing House, 2015), was finalist for the same award. He
has also translated numerous works of leading writers in Filipino into English.
He has won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards, National Book Awards, and
the 1998 SEAWrite Award given by the Thai royalty. In 2012 he was the holder of
the Henry Lee Irwin Professorial Chair for Creative Writing at the Ateneo de
Manila University. In April 2017 he received the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni
Balagtas for his poetry from UMPIL or the Writers Union of the Philippines.
Jose F. Lacaba, popularly known as Pete Lacaba, is a
film writer, editor, poet, screenwriter, journalist and translator. He has
authored several poetry collections in Filipino, as well as the now-classic
collection of reportage before Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972: Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage. He was conferred the Cinemanila International
Film Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008, as well as the Aruna
Vasudev Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Cinema during the 10th
Osian’s Cinefan Festival held in New Delhi on the same year. He also received
the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication’s 2013 Gawad
Plaridel. He is currently the executive editor of Summit Media's YES! Magazine.
Christine V. Lao earned her MA in Creative Writing from the
University of the Philippines Diliman and attended the Silliman University
National Writers Workshop. Her work has been included in the anthologies Heat:
A Southeast Asian Anthology of Urban Writing (Buku Fixi: Kuala Lumpur); Maximum
Volume: Best New Filipino Fiction 2014 (Anvil Publishing); Lauriat: An
Anthology of Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press: New
Jersey); and the Philippine Speculative Fiction series (Kestrel
Publishing). Her poems have also been featured in Kritika Kultura,
Philippines Graphic, Philippines Free Press, and Under the Storm: An
Anthology of Contemporary Philippine Poetry (The Antithesis Collective).
Arvin Abejo Mangohig is the author of The Gaze: Poems published by
the UP Press (2003), and Bloodflow: A Lyric Sequence published by
DLSU/Central Books (2012). He received his BA and MA in English from the
University of the Philippines Diliman. He has won Philippines Free Press
and NVM Gonzalez awards for his poetry and fiction. He has been shortlisted for
the Kokoy Guevara Poetry Competition. Mangohig was the webmaster of
panitikan.com.ph for almost ten years and works as copy editor for the UP
Press. He was a Fellow for Poetry at the 56th University of the Philippines
National Writers Workshop in 2017.
CF Paderna was previously published as Charisse-Fuschia
Paderna. Her poetry has appeared in various anthologies and publications. Her
collection, “An Abundance of Selves,” won First Prize in the Carlos Palanca
Memorial Awards for Literature in 2015. She was also a recipient of the Ateneo
de Manila University’s Loyola Schools Award for the Arts in English Poetry. She
was a Fellow in the 2005 Silliman University National Writers Workshop in
Dumaguete and the 2017 UP National Writers Workshop.
Victor Peñaranda is the author of three collections of poetry: Voyage
in Dry Season; Pilgrim in Transit; and Lucid Lightning. His
writing awards include Poet of the Year, Nick Joaquin Awards, Philippines
Graphic (2015) and Gawad Alagad ni Balagtas for English Poetry, Unyon ng
mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (2014).
Padmapani L. Perez is, in no particular order, anthropologist, midwife
to Mt Cloud Bookshop, member of the Baguio Writers Group, mother of two.
Lourd Ernest de Veyra has published eight books including three collections
of poetry: Subterranean Thought Parade (1998), Shadowboxing in
Headphones (2001), and Insectissimo (2011); the novel Superpanalo
Sounds (2011, UST Publishing House); as well as several collection of
essays, including from his Spot.ph blog, This is a Crazy Planets. He has
won Carlos Palanca awards, the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards,
and the first ever National Commission for Culture and the Arts Writers Prize.
He now works for the News and Public Affairs Department of TV5.
Alfred A. Yuson cares about human rights as much as he recoils from
abusive leaders, especially those who are arrogant, narrow-minded,
foul-mouthed, obsessed with bloodlust, and think so highly of themselves just
because they got a law degree and served as mayor for decades. He has authored
30 books thus far, including novels, poetry collections, short fiction, essays,
children’s stories, biographies and coffee-table books, and edited various
titles that include several literary anthologies. Distinctions include the Gawad
Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas from UMPIL or Writers Union of the
Philippines, the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan award from the City of
Manila, and the SEAWrite (SouthEast Asian Writers) Award from Thai royalty for
lifetime achievement. He has also been elevated to the Hall of Fame of the
Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. His poetry and prose have been
translated into a dozen languages.
