BLOODLUST: PHILIPPINE PROTEST POETRY co-edited by ALFRED A. YUSON and GEMINO H. ABAD

From the Poetry of 

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.