No. 23 • Contributors

Gottfried Helnwein (b. October 8, 1948, Vienna), an acclaimed modern master, is an Austrian-Irish fine artist, painter, photographer, installation and performance artist. He is best known for his Epiphany, The Adorations of the Magi (our cover), which belongs to the collection of the Denver Art Museum. According to Wikipedia, he studied at the University of Visual Art in Vienna (German: Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Wien), where he was awarded the Master-class prize (Meisterschulpreis), the Kardinal-König prize and the Theodor-Körner prize. He has worked as a painter, draftsman, photographer, muralist, sculptor, installation- and performance artist, using a wide variety of techniques and media. His early work consists mainly of hyper-realistic watercolors, depicting wounded children, as well as performances—often with children—in public spaces. Helnwein is concerned primarily with psychological and sociological anxiety, historical issues and political topics. As a result of this, his work is often considered provocative and controversial.

Luisa Igloria emailed us her newest poem, “written only yesterday,” (Dec. 19 in Norfolk, VA, where she is based), as part of her Christmas greetings. Poet and writer of numerous books, the latest of which is Trill & Mordent, Luisa is an associate professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program of Old Dominion University. Her work has appeared or will be forthcoming in various anthologies and journals including Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, The Missouri Review, Indiana Review, to name a few, and her latest award is the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize for Juan Luna’s Revolver (which was forthcoming from the University of Notre Dame Press in November 2008. This makes it her latest book).

Francis Macansantos, poet, writer, cultural worker, teacher of writing and former professor of literature based in Baguio City, recently launched his 4,ooo-line epic, Womb of Water, Breasts of Earth, the winner of 2003 NCCA Writers Prize. A four-time Palanca winnner and fellow of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC), Butch has an MA in Creative Writing from Silliman University and took his English undergraduate course in Mindanao State and Ateneo de Davao universities. He has taught literature at Mindanao State, Silliman, and UP Baguio. He has served in the panel of the Dumaguete Workshop and was the Local Fellow for Poetry at the UP ICW in 1999. poet’sPicturebook will soon publish an excerpt from his epic.

Kristian Cordero, a bilingual Bicolano poet, readily sent us “Herodès,” a poem in the Filipino language, when we emailed him at short notice for this special Christmas issue. He is the 2008 winner of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Writers Prize for Poetry. A literature teacher at the Ateneo de Naga University who writes his poetry both in Filipino and the Bikol language, Kristian is one of the young poets leading the recent revival in Bikol writing and literature. The author of three award-winning books of poetry, he has attended the University of the Philippines National Writers Workshop and has won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards and the Premio Tomas Arejola for Bikol Literature, among many others.

Victor Peñaranda continues to send us poems that serve both as postcards from and meditations on the many places he visits in the Philippines in his development work, and the other places of his international assigments in the recent past, including Bhutan, Macedonia and the other places in Europe and Asia. Last we heard, he was workshopping soldiers on the intricacies of peace. He is also currently preparing his second collection of poetry, to be published by Anvil, some of which first appeared online in poet’Picturebook.

Dap-ay Sapata (a nom-de-guerre) sends the photo of the Sagada dawn from somewhere in the Cordilleras.

Mario Mercado, when we asked for his curriculum vitae, writes us: “My early life was vertiginously steeped in adventures of physical, spiritual (distinct from 'religious'), intellectual, emotional and romantic nature. There is no one way of describing me who I was. Much of my past is better left where I left it, unless someone is around who had openly connected me to circumstances I can no longer deny.” My friend from the Banggaan artists, writers, and photographers e-group is a professional photographer and artist (fine and digital), who went to the prestigious artist run school, the Art Students League of New York, operates a full-complement photography and computerized graphics studio in Putnam (previously in Manhattan), has been managing editor of the Philippine-American News, has done studio and location photography all over the world, apart from the various creative engagements that populate his rich resume.

Marne Kilates edits this magazine and sends the readers of poet’sPicturebook all the best of the Season.

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No. 22 • Contributors

Kim Min'gi's first album of songs appeared in South Korea in 1971 when he was a student at Seoul National University. Shortly thereafter the album was confiscated by the government authorities, and Kim Min'gi himself was seized, interrogated, and beaten by the government's enforcement agencies. During the next two decades he continued to be subject to regular harassment by South Korea's various military regimes and his songs publicly banned. In the end, however, it was Kim and his songs that triumphed. Both he and his music became symbols of heroic dissent for Korean students of the 1970s and 1980s, and one song in particular, Achim Iseul (Morning Dew), emerged as the unofficial anthem of the anti-government student movement in this period. Whenever students gathered to protest, Achim Iseul was invariably the first song to be sung, the song that most stirred the emotions and forged the bonds of comradeship. (from “A Gentle Voice in the Darkness: The Musical Genius of Kim Min’gi” by Carter J. Eckert, Professor of Korean History, Harvard University)

Sanghee Lee, a lawyer who loves the arts and listens to music all her waking hours (and adores Kim Min'gi), is a senior partner at Hankyul Law Firm and is a member of Minbyun Lawyers for Democracy. She specializes in litigation, fair trade, taxation, and international family law. She has traveled widely doing volunteer work in Thailand, Burma, West Papua, the Philippines, and in her native South Korea. Whenever her hectic schedule permits, Sanghee Lee plays the piano, reads a lot of poetry, occasionally does watercolors and nude sketches, indulges her love for photography, or climbs Mt. Jili simply to enjoy the breeze or watch the stars.

Jesus Manuel Santiago, to many of his poet friends, is first a poet before a singer-composer. He holds the distinction of being the only poet declared by the Institute of National Language as “Poet of the Year” twice in a row. But his familial and historical roots in Obando, Bulacan led him to what he had always wanted to do, sing his poems. He is also a scholar, having been a fellow for the Asian Public Intellectuals, and has traveled broadly, performing his songs in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. He has won the Palanca Awards and the Cultural Center of the Philippines Awards for his poetry, and was a National Fellow for Poetry of the University of the Philippines Institue of Creative Writing. His book of poetry, Gitara (1997), is a bilingual collection with translations by this author. Koyang Jess, as he is called by friends, is a prime mover of the people’s music movement in the Philippines. He has recorded two albums of his own compositions, Halina (1991) and Obando (1993). Recently he finished his third album of new and unrecorded songs, titled Puso at Isip (Hearts and Minds), which is to be released on CD in 2009.

Maryanne Moll, perhaps one of our most compelling storytellers, writes that her “life as a writer... is measured not so much in terms of weeks, days, and months as in number of pages written, number of people met, found, and lost, letters mailed, number of movies watched and books read.” She also seems one of our busiest, editing a military magazine, moderating an online club for Mac users, maintaining a blog and writing a novel, while being a graduate student of Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines. Maryanne has won the Palanca Awards for her fiction, has written two books, Awakenings (essays, New Day, 2001), and Little Freedoms (fiction, Giraffe Books, 2003). The latter was also published under the Ubud Writers Prize of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). She attended the University of Santo Tomas National Writers Workshop and the Dumaguete National Writers Workshop.

Jaime Jesus Borlagdan is another young, busy writer making his presence felt in the literary web, while being aware of tradition and form in his native language. He maintains two sites: a website for his works at www.jimplejimple.blogspot.com/ and Karangahan (Pagranga sa Pagsurat Bikolnon) at http://karangahan.multiply.com/, a site “honoring Bikol literature that has been written and still being written in contemporary times.” Of his own poetry, Jimple, as he his called by friends, says in Bikol (which I translate), “...all this is at the back of what I say, and it cannot be molded by words, it cannot be put within gun sight, but if in reading my work you run into a fugitive emotion that you can’t utter...” the rest is a passionate enumeration of possibilities. Bikol critic Tito Genova Valiente reacts to his poetry by saying that it is “heartbreaking to feel the forms.”

Pancho C. Villanueva is an architect, painter, and poet whose “negotiations” with his technical training and art, and his intense sensitivity that drives him to use both pigment and found object in his paintings, compel him to be a poet (he has long practiced his profession and art before attending the Silliman University Writers Workshop). While his spatial studies of bold color fields, textures, and surfaces make him popular among collectors, his realistic works are full of magical narratives that, as in his abstracts, underline his belief in and esthetic of what he calls in his poetry “the persistence of energy...” that he uses to address “the unnameable terror [that] hides behind the creases of the ground, among the fine, delicate debris of surrounding human ruins.”

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No. 21 • Contributors

Myrna Peña-Reyes, author of the poetry collection, The River Singing Stone (Anvil 1994), teacher of literature, and one of our finest poets in English, is a native of Cagayan de Oro and Dumaguete City (where her family moved after the Second World War). She continues to teach at Silliman University and sits at the panel of its famous workshop, after she had been requested to teach again when she returned from the United States a few years ago. Myrna holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Oregon where she met her husband, poet William “Bill” T. Sweet. She taught college in Eugene for several years, operated a bookshop, and wrote her poetry, before coming home with Bill to Dumaguete for good. From there she sends us her austere lines, almost wry in their eloquence, poems which Marjorie Evasco describes as having “perfect tone and pitch [which] always gives me the shiver of truth.”

Jose Marte A. Abueg’s collection "Bird Lands, River Nights and Other Melancholies" won for him the Grand Prize in Gawad Likhaan: The University of the Philippines Centennial Award, for poetry in English. His other literary awards include the Palancas for fiction and the Philippines Free Press award for poetry. He has been published in the Ani literary annual of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Philippines Free Press, Sunday Times Magazine, and the website A Critical Survey of Philippine Literature, among others. Mart is a longtime journalist and editor, currently the managing editor of INQUIRER.net and overall editor in charge of the INQUIRER.net Money website. He has been editor at different Philippine publications and Philippine correspondent of foreign publications, including The Australian Financial Review and Asian Business magazine. In the corporate sector, he served as an executive at AsianBank Corporation and the PHINMA Group.

Chanelle Jieyong Kim will receive a gold medal for outstanding thesis in literature when she graduates on February 9, 2009 at De La Salle University. The thesis is titled “The Poetry of Gustatory Desires: Writing Poetry about Food,” and her teacher Marjorie Evasco calls Chanelle’s translation of her own work as “transcreations,” which she does with flying colors, we think. According to Chanelle’s notes, our friend Marjorie writes, “soju is a Korean liquor made from potatoes; miyeok-guk is sea mustard soup, and sanjeok is beef and vegetables grilled on skewers. And sijo is a traditional poetry form (similar in exactness to the haiku) of Korea.” Delicious!

Victor Peñaranda writes us, “Pare, I realized that I have a poem written after an experience at the rear open gallery of the National Musuem in Bangkok. There's an enclosed garden in this part of the museum. I sat down on a bench. In front of me were colossal heads of statues resting on top of pedestals. According to the inscriptions beneath the display, these heads belonged to much larger statues guarding a Buddhist temple. No one knows which temple they come from. No one knows if a conquering army or a band of thieves separated them from their bodies. I was resting but was also gazing at these statues for a long while. I wrote some notes that evolved into a poem. The poem must have been written in 2002 or 2003; retouched it several times along the way. It's still unpublished. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera to somehow capture the ancient artworks at that moment.” We found the Brancusi at the Moma.

Kristian Cordero is about the most awarded Bikol poet writing today, and he writes both in Filipino and the Bikol language. “Kitang Ipinangidam sa Kasâlan / We who were Conceived in Sin” is part of the collection “Segunda Mano” (Second Hand) which won for him the 2008 National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Writers Prize for Poetry. A literature teacher at the Ateneo de Naga University, Kristian is one of the young poets leading the renaissance in Bikol writing and realizing its possibilities in reflecting a modern consciousness. The author of three award-winning books of poetry, he has attended the University of the Philippines National Writers Workshop and has won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards and the Premio Tomas Arejola for Bikol Literature, among many others.

Mark Bagain Schwab has a German last name, a language that by no means can he speak, he write us. He is a twenty-seven year old Filipino who has not yet chosen to live or work abroad. He has momentarily (and maybe permanently) retired from designing websites and laying out magazines but not from taking pictures. He is also a fellow of this year’s LIRA (Linangan sa Retorika, Imahen at Arte) poetry workshop, where poets learn all the Filipino and foreign verse forms before they are allowed to experiment with “loose” poetry. Soon, Mark writes, he will flee the metropolis to find some peace in his hometown of Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte, where he plans to write his first collection of poems.

Rodolfo "Rod" Samonte is one of our leading names in the arts, a painter, printmaker, photographer, and digital artist. A longtime resident of Burbank, California, migrating after he had well established his name in Manila, Rod has shown his work in 19 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows in the Philippines, the U.S., Europe, and South America. A fellow member of the e-group Banggaan, of artists, photographers, writers, and musicians exchanging interactive art and gossip both serious and hilarious, he tells me to "use" any of his works anytime for this ezine, a generous offer considering the value of his art. The critic Alice Guillermo, writing about one of Rod's exhibits of his digital creations, remarks about the "new technologies... stunningly displayed," where "he is only proving his excellence in his employment of the new digital language."

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No. 20 • Contributors

Joel Toledo recently launched his well-received first collection of poems, Chiaroscuro (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2008). One of our leading younger poets, Joel teaches literature at Miriam College and hosts the popular Happy Mondays poetry reading event at Mag:Net Katipunan held every first and third Monday of the month. He also plays drums for the band, Los Chupacabras, composed of poets and artists, which plays at Mag:Net on the same schedules. In 2006, Joel won second prize for his poem “The Same Old Figurative” the Bridport Prize, an international literary competition based at the Bridport Arts Centre of UK. The poem won over 5,600 entries from all over the world. His collection, “What Little I Know of Luminosity,” won the Palanca poetry prize in 2005, and his first published work is “Pedro and the Life Force,” a pioneering novelette for young adults. He took his undergraduate and Master of Arts degrees in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines.

Marie La Viña’s collection, “The Gospel According to the Blind Man,” won third prize in the 2008 Palanca Memorial Awards for poetry. Ahead of many of her contemporaries, and well-published while still in her young poet’s age, Marie has made good of much of the promise in her intensely sensitive and intellectually stimulating and eloquent poetry and stories. Currently a junior philosophy major at the Ateneo de Manila University, Marie graduated from the Philippine High School for the Arts in 2004, was a fellow for poetry in the 2004 Dumaguete National Writers' Workshop and the 2005 UP National Writers' Workshop. Her work has appeared in Philippines Free Press, Story Philippines, Heights and The Philippine Collegian Anthology.

Jaime Jesus Borlagdan is, by all indications, one of the main tributaries from the Albay sector feeding into the onrushing river of writing that’s happening in the Bikol language today. One of the most active in literary writing in the Web today, Borlagdan, maintains two sites: a website for his works at www.jimplejimple.blogspot.com/ and Karangahan (Pagranga sa Pagsurat Bikolnon) at http://karangahan.multiply.com/, a site “honoring Bikol literature that has been written and still being written in contemporary times.” Of his own poetry, Jimple, as he his called by friends, says (in Bikol, which I essay in translation), “...all this is at the back of what I say, and it cannot be molded by words, it cannot be put within gun sight, but if in reading my work you run into a fugitive emotion that you can’t utter...” the rest is a passionate enumeration of possibilities. Bikol critic Tito Genova Valiente reacts to his poetry by saying that it is “heartbreaking to feel the forms.”

Gerardo ‘Gerry’ Peralta is another participant in the burgeoning Bikol literary renaissance being felt even by observers outside the region. He has a Masters in Arts and Communication from University of the Philippines, where he also finished bachelor of arts degree in Broadcast Communication. He was a fellow for poetry at the 2005 National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City and has been writing poetry in Bikol and in English. His Bikol poems have been published by the Bicol Reporter. While devoting serious time to his poetry, Gerry is a freelance voice talent for radio and television commercials, audio-visual presentations and runs his own production outfit, Active Voice. He also teaches speech courses at Speechpower.

Victor Peñaranda, after long assignments in Bhutan and Macedonia while doing development work, is back in the Philippines and once again extensively traveling his beloved home archipelago. From his various stops he invariably sends us poems like postcards—deep, inward-looking mementoes (and shots-in-the-arm)—which help keep our little online magazine going. He has won the Palancas, the Philippines Free Press Awards, and has been in journalism, most notably the now defunct broadsheet-format New Age and literary magazine called Ermita, which he edited together with Alfred A. Yuson. In its inimitable manner, Ermita brought together some of the best Filipino literary and artistic talents during its existence of a little more than a year. Bimboy, as he is known to friends, is a man of many interests, from the hard realities of underdevelopment to the evolution of consciousness. His first book, Voyage in Dry Season, won the Manila Critics Circle’s National Book Award in 1996.

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No. 19 • Contributors

Cesar Ruiz Aquino attended the very first Silliman workshop, and studied creative writing under Edilberto (Doc) and “Mom” Edith Tiempo, Francisco Arcellana, and Nick Joaquin. He belongs to the 60s generation of writers whom Joaquin referred to as “wild geniuses” (among whom were Jose Lansang, Ninotchka Rosca, Erwin Castillo, Wilfredo Pascua Sanches, and Jun Terra). After teaching literature at UP, Ateneo de Manila, Lyceum and Maryknoll (among others), “Sawi” Aquino went back to Silliman to work for his literature doctorate and continue teaching there. The master and magus has four or more Palanca awards under his sleeve, was the UP Institute of Creative Writing national fellow for poetry in 2003. Dr. Aquino's publications include Chronicles of Suspicion (short stories, Kalikasan Press 1988), Word Without End (Anvil, 1993), Checkmeta: A Cesar Aquino Reader (Midtown, 2004). His latest collection, In Samarkand, Poems & Verseliterations (UST Press, 2007) was launched recently, which Sylvia Mayuga calls “adventures of the spirit.”

Francis Macansantos, based in Baguio City, recenly launched his 4,ooo-line epic, Womb of Water, Breasts of Earth, the winner of 2003 NCCA Writers Prize. A four-time Palanca winnner and fellow of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC), Butch has an MA in Creative Writing from Silliman University and took his English undergraduate course in Mindanao State and Ateneo de Davao universities. He has taught literature at Mindanao State, Silliman, and UP Baguio. He has served in the panel of the Dumaguete Workshop and was the Local Fellow for Poetry at the UP ICW in 1999. Of Butch’s epic, Alfred Yuson notes that no “one else... has in recent years managed to complete an epic poem, one beholden not only to relative great length, but as well to a central unifying theme that is explored for its multi-faceted avenues of extended expression, as well as manifestation of multiple if singularly sourced insights.”

Ana Maria Katigbak, one of our leading, younger women writers, finished her BA at the Ateneo de Manila University and her MFA at the New School University, New York. Mookie’s collection, Proxy Eros, which won for her third place at the Palancas in 2005, has become her first book of poems (Anvil 2008), and was launched this year at the Manila International Book Fair. "Reading Proxy Eros," Benilda Santos writes, [flings me] “...into the epicenter of passion and its phantom hungers, the body’s haunts and erotic sites, and the shadows of prior lives despairing... I mark her debut as a poet of consequence.” Apart from local publications, Mookie’s works have appeared in the New York Quarterly.

Marjorie Evasco, one of poet’sPicturebook’s earliest contributors, has watched the birth and exertions of our little online magazine and from her sublunar garden has stirred its growth with her magic wand. Dr. Evasco is a full professor at De La Salle University’s department of literature, has authored five books, two which are her poetry collections: Dreamweavers: Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1986) and Ochre Tones: Poems in English and Cebuano (1999). Both have won the Manila Critics Circle National Book Awards for Poetry. Six Women Poets: Inter/Views (1996), co-authored with Edna Manlapaz, and A Life Shaped by Music: Andrea Veneracion and the Philippine Madrigal Singers, also won National Book Awards for Oral History and Biography respectively. In 2006 her book Ani: The Life and Art of Hermogena Borja Lungay won the A. Ongpin National Book Award on Art from the Manila Critics Circle.

Lourd de Veyra, poet, journalist, musician, winner of several Palanca Awards for his prose and poetry, and the NCCA Writers Prize, is also the leader of the notorious band Radioactive Sago Project. Notorious for its jazz and “rock-and-droll” music, which is both irreverent and intelligent, and not always belonging to any category or “radio-friendly.” Of his idea of poetry, which is similar to his music, Lourd himself says in the recent UP Writers Workshop (for writers in “mid-career”), “What I look for in poetry is an uneasy kind of energy. An energy that is already beyond the configuration of words and then assumes a density that is akin to music.... The poetry I want to read is the kind that slams you in the face like a rock-and-roll chord. This does not necessarily require a healthy degree of hysteria and profanity; even a quiet Zen haiku about a frog and a pond can achieve the same effect.”

Edgar B. Maranan, the 2008 UMPIL Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas Awardee for poetry & essay, is also a fictionist, playwright, writer of children’s stories, and translator. With a total of thirty prizes for his works in English and Filipino, he was inducted into the Palanca Hall of Fame in 2000. His other awards inlcude the CCP Literary Contest, Palihang Aurelio Tolentino, Institute of National Language, Philippines Free Press Literary Awards, Philippine Graphic Magazine Nick Joaquin Literary Prize, Filamore Tabios Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize (Meritage Press, USA), and the Philippine Board on Books for Young People (PBBY) Salanga Writers Prize. Ed’s third poetry book, Passage, Poems 1983-2006 (Bookmark, 2007), gather poems from his Palanca Award-winning collections, which are Voyage, 1984; Hinterland, 1987; Star Maps, 1988; and Tabon, 2000. Ed is an active member of the newly formed Baguio Writers Group.

James T.C. Na, sometimes known by his pen name Yun He, is James Na Teng Choon, the 2008 Balagtas Awardee for Poetry in Chinese. Born and educated in the Philippines, he published his debut collection of verses, Melancholic Score, at 17. He has since then produced eight books of poetry translated into several languages apart from Filipino and English. As literary editor of various local and foreign Chinese and Filipino publications, he has extensive memberships in Chinese literary organizations and has enjoyed fellowships visiting lectures at the Chinese mainland. His latest collections are Poems, and The Wild Plant, the last with a CD of his readings and translations by La Salle professor Shirley Lua, among others.

Ricardo M. de Ungria recently concluded his two-term residency as Chancellor of U.P. Mindanao in Davao City, but continues to teach there. He heads the Committee on Literary Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), and is a founding member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC) and the Unyon ng mga Manunulat ng Pilipinas (UMPIL). Ricky has an A.B. Literature from the De La Salle University, M.F.A. in the Creative Arts from the Washington University in Missouri, and has been a Fellow at Fulbright, Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, Bellagio Study & Conference Center, and Washington University. His awards include the Academy of American Poets Prize, Saint Louis Poetry Annual Contest, Florida State University State Street Poetry Contest, Manila Critics Circle, Palanca, CCP Contest, and the Free Press. Among his six books of poetry, are R+A+D+I+O (1986), Decimal Places (1991), Waking Ice, and Pidgin Levitations (UP Press, 2004).

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No. 18 • Contributors

Victor Peñaranda, our peripatetic poet and development worker, is recently doing the lecture circuit for NGOs, and lately spoke to a group of soldiers on the art of war and peace. He came home recently and maybe for good (or perhaps until work and wanderlust call him again). A Palanca Award winner and more recently of the Philippines Free Press Awards for poetry, he has traveled extensively in the Philippines for his development work, then to Bhutan and Macedonia on long assignments. Together with Alfred A. Yuson, he edited the now defunct but sorely missed broadsheet-format New Age and literary magazine called Ermita, which brought together the best Filipino literary and artistic talents during its existence of a little more than a year. But Bimboy, as he is known to friends, is first and foremost a poet of a broad consciousness that is however fully grounded on social realities. His many readers await the next to his first book, Voyage in Dry Season, which won the Manila Critics Circle’s National Book Award in 1996.

Eileen Tabios has, according to kultureflash: Headlines From London, “an enormous tonal range in her poetry. A breathless intensity may be her most characteristic mode.” An award-winning Filipino-American poet, fiction writer, conceptual/visual artist, editor, anthologist, critic, and publisher, Eileen is at present one of the most active in the Fil-Am literary movement in the U.S., having released fourteen print, four electronic, one CD poetry collections, an art essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, and a short story book. She has created a unique body of work melding transcolonialism with ekphrasis, and is the inventor of the poetic form called "hay(na)ku.” Among Eileen’s books are Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole, Black Lightning, Beyond Life Sentences, Dredging for Atlantis, and I Take Thee, English, for My Beloved. Her numerous awards include the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award, PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, Philippine American Writers & Artists’ Catalagan Award, and recognition from the Academy of American Poets. She was born in the Philippines but has lived for over three decades in the United States.

Marjorie Evasco, one of our leading women poets, recently came back from travel as poet to a festival in Medillin, Colombia, and as tourist to parts of Europe, where she was a pilgrim to the birth place of Federico Garcia Lorca. Marj has two books of poems, Dreamweavers: Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1986) and Ochre Tones: Poems in English and Cebuano (1999) won the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award for Poetry. Her two other books, Six Women Poets: Inter/Views (1996), co-authored with Edna Manlapaz, and A Life Shaped by Music: Andrea Veneracion and the Philippine Madrigal Singers, also won National Book Awards for Oral History and Biography respectively. In 2006 her book Ani: The Life and Art of Hermogena Borja Lungay won the A. Ongpin National Book Award on Art from the Manila Critics Circle. Marj has received various writing residencies and grants, including the Rockefeller Foundation writing residency in Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy (1992), the International Writers’ Retreat residency in Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, Scotland (1991), and the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa, U.S.A. (2002). She finished her Ph.D. in Literature at De La Salle University, where she is a full professor at the the Department of Literature, and has also held the Julia Vargas professorial chair for Philippine Literature.

Nicolás Suescún, the translator of Marj Evasco’s “Sonnet O, Solving for X / Soneto O, Solución de X,” is a famous Colombian poet, short story writer, journalist, and translator. The translation was specially written for the prestigious Medellin International Poetry Festival, which Marj attended and Señor Suescún was paired with her as translator. Born in Bogotá, Suescún is the author of an “antinovel”, Los cuadernos de N (1994), which has become an underground cult book among Colombia’s young people. He has published four books of short stories—El retorno a casa (1971), El último escalón (1974), El extraño y otros cuentos (1980) and Oniromanía (1996)—and several collections of poetry, among them, La vida es, 3 A.M (1986) and Bag Bag (selección) (2003), of which he made a selection in La voz de nadie. His poems as well as his short stories have been included in many anthologies. Suescún is also a graphic designer and journalist—he regularly writes on world affairs, now in Cromos. The collages with which he illustrates his work in magazines have been displayed in various exhibitions.

Cirilo F. Bautista is one of our foremost poets in English and is also a fiction writer, painter, and educator. He received his degrees in AB Literature from the University of Santo Tomas (magna cum laude, 1963), MA Literature from St. Louis University, Baguio City (magna cum laude, 1968). Now Professor Emeritus of Literature at De La Salle University, where he also obtained his D.A. in Language and Literature, Dr. Bautista has written numerous poetry books, including the Cave and Other Poems, Charts, and Telex Moon. The last volume of his long work, The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus, “Sunlight on Broken Stones,” won for him the Centennial Prize for the Epic in 1998. A bilingual writer, Dr. Baustista published his first Tagalog novel, Galaw ng Asoge in 1994 (UST Press), and has won the Makata ng Taon (Poet of the Year) Prize of the Commission on the Filipino Language. He was Honorary Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa in 1969, and was a visiting writer at Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1987. Dr. Bautista was elevated to the Hall of Fame of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 1995.

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No.17 Contributors

Parc Cruz, our guest cover photographer, began charting an identity in the field of photography only in July of 2005. With little training, he opted to learn the craft in his own time, with his own style, and his photos have since then been noted for their emotional power and cinematic quality. A lover of the arts and the movies, Parc constantly tries to go beyond the constraints and limitations of his medium and boldly defies convention, through a flair for experimentation and exploration

Rodrigo V. de la Peña Jr writes to correct us about his being based in Dumaguete. He has gone gone back to La Union, he says, “where my roots are. Leaving the City of Gentle People was difficult, but all good things, as they say, have to end, and I figured it was time for me to begin anew. Both my parents are based here (La Union) in a sleepy little town called Balaoan, which fortunately has Internet connection." Igor continues his writing, "though partially afflicted with the writing paralysis typical of fellows who have just finished a workshop.” His stories and essays have been published in various magazines and anthologies and he is building up his collection of ekphrastic poetry. He was a fellow of the recent (2008) Dumaguete National Writers Workshop conducted by National Artist Edith Tiempo.

Frank V. Peñones, an advocate Bikol culture and writing, is one of the region's respected poets. He has received writing and study grants from the University of the Philippines, Cultural Center of the Philippines and is currently a fellow of Ford International. Author of two bilingual poetry collections Ragang Rinaranga (2005) and Cancion nin Tawong Lipod (upcoming) both published by Agnus Press in Naga City, he has won several times in the Saint Peter Baptist Catholic Mass Media Awards, 2005 Premio Tomas Arejola Para Sa Literaturang Bikol and the Sumagang Awards For Literature and Journalism. He is finishing his MFA at San Jose State University in California.

Edgar B. Maranan is a poet, essayist, fictionist, playwright, writer of children’s stories, and translator. He has won a total of thirty prizes—a record number—for his works in English and Filipino, in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, and was inducted into the Palanca Hall of Fame in 2000. He has also won awards in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Annual Literary Contest, Palihang Aurelio Tolentino Playwriting Competition, Institute of National Language poetry competition, Philippines Free Press Literary Awards, Philippine Graphic Magazine Nick Joaquin Literary Prize, Filamore Tabios Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize (Meritage Press, USA), and the Philippine Board on Books for Young People (PBBY)-Salanga Writers Prize, which he won three years in a row, from 1989 to 1991. Maranan’s third poetry book, Passage / poems 1983-2006, came out in October 2007, under the Bookmark imprint. Most of the poems in this book are part of poetry collections which won in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature (Voyage, 1984; Hinterland, 1987; Star Maps, 1988; and Tabon, 2000). He is an active member of the newly formed Baguio Writers Group.

Rio Alma, or Virgilio S. Almario, presently the Dean of the College of Art and Letters of the University of the Philippines, was conferred the Order of National Artist for Literature in 2003. Perhaps the foremost living Filipino poet writing in the National Language, Rio Alma is also, as eminently, literary historian and critic, publisher, cultural administrator, mentor and academic. A prolific author, he has a little less than 30 books to his name, almost in equal parts poetry and literary criticism, all written in Filipino. His poetry books deeply explore Filipino life, mind, and history, using traditional as well modern and formalist forms and modes of writing, while his critical works encompass vital studies of the national language. He founded the Children's Communication Center, the Philippine pioneer in children's book publishing, and publisher of Adarna Books, conducts the long-running poetry clinic, Linangan sa Retorika at Arte (LIRA), and has been Executive Director of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

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Issue 16 Contributors

Ben Cabrera (Bencab), painter, printmaker and friend of younger and other artists, is widely hailed as a master of Philippine contemporary art. A graduate Fine Arts graduate of the University of the Philippines, he has exhibited widely in the Philippines and in Asia, Europe, and the United States, and has been the subject of several art books and conferred awards here and abroad. He was visiting artist and artist-in-residenced at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute 1n 2005, and in 1997
 he received the ASEAN Achievement Award for Visual & Performing Arts, in Jakarta. In 1992, he received the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining (Cultural Center of the Philippines Award for the Arts), and in 2006 was conferred the Order of National Artist for Visual Arts, the Philippines’ highest artistic achievement award.

Edd Aragon, the Filipino editorial cartoonist of the Sydney Morning Herald, recently completed a triple homecoming show in Manila called Tres Kantos (Three Corners), last April. The series of shows featured his ultra-violet reactive paintings, his digital art, and his editorial cartoons in three separate venues each. A famous cartoonist of the defunct Philippine Daily Express during the Martial Law years, Edd migrated to Australia in the 1970s and has thrice bagged the prestigious Artist of the Year award from the Australian Black and White Artists Society.

Cirilo F. Bautista, one of our foremost poets in English, is also a fiction writer, painter, and educator. Professor Emeritus of Literature at De La Salle University, where he also obtained his D.A. in Language and Literature, Dr. Bautista has written numerous poetry books, including The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus, whose last volume, “Sunlight on Broken Stones,” won for him the Centennial Prize for the Epic in 1998. A bilingual writer, Dr. Baustista published his first Tagalog novel, Galaw ng Asoge in 1994 (UST Press), and has won the Makata ng Taon (Poet of the Year) Prize of the Commission on the Filipino Language. He was Honorary Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa in 1969, and was a visiting writer at Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1987. Dr. Bautista was elevated to the Hall of Fame of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 1995.

Gémino H. Abad, eminent poet, fictionist, literary critic and historian, and anthologist, at present Centennial Fellow and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Philipines, is well known for his two sets of important critical and historical anthologies of Philippine writing in English. The first, consisting of Man of Earth, A Native Clearing, and A Habit of Shores, traces all poems produced from the 1905 to the present; while the second set gathers the Philippine short story from 1925 to the present, in two-volume compilations, Upon Our Own Ground and Underground Spirit. Dr. Abad obtained his Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Chicago, held various fellowships and visiting professorships, including those at Trinity College, Iowa Writers Program, Manoa University, the Oxford Conference, and Singapore Management University. Together with poets Cirilo F. Bautista, the late Alfrredo Navarro Salanga, Ricardo M. de Ungria, and Alfred A. Yuson, Dr. Abad helped found the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC).

Luisa A. Igloria (previously published as Maria Luisa Aguilar-Cariño) recently won the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize for Juan Luna’s Revolver (forthcoming, the University of Notre Dame Press, November 2008). She is a tenured Associate Professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program and Department of English, Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Her work has appeared or will be forthcoming in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, The Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Poetry East, Smartish Pace, Rattle, The North American Review, Bellingham Review, Shearsman (UK), PRISM International (Canada), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), The Asian Pacific American Journal, and TriQuarterly. Among her numerous national and international awards are the 2007 49th Parallel Poetry Prize, the 2007 James Hearst Poetry Prize, the 2006 Stephen Dunn Award for Poetry, the Philippine National Book Awards, eleven Palanca Awards, and the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Awards (poetry category). She is originally from Baguio City.

Kristian Cordero is the 2008 winner of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Writers Prize for Poetry. The prize is a grant for a proposed book project and Kristian’s is a new collection of his Bikol poems. A literature teacher at the Ateneo de Naga University who writes his poetry both in Filipino and the Bikol language, Kristian is one of the young poets spearheading a renaissance in Bikol writing and realizing its possibilities in reflecting a modern consciousness. The author of three award-winning books of poetry, he has attended the University of the Philippines National Writers Workshop and has won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards and the Premio Tomas Arejola for Bikol Literature, among many others.

Joi Barrios, who has taught in the United States and Japan, is one of today’s leading feminist and activist poets and playwrights writing in both the protest mode and the fine lyric. Joi obtained her PhD in Literature from the University of the Philippines (2003) and served once as assistant dean at the UP College of Arts and Letters. Among her publications are Ang Pagiging Babae ay Pamumuhay sa Panahon ng Digma (1990), Bailaya: Mga Dula Para sa Kababaihan (1997), and Prince Charming at Iba Pang Nobelang Romantiko (2001). She resides at present in the United States.

Edgar Talusan Fernandez, who signs his works simply as “Egai,” is one of the Philippines’ leading artists comfortable in both representational art and abstractions, as well as the involved form of social realism. An advertising graduate of Philippine Women’s University, Egai began his professional career as an artist at 19, through his first solo as well as group exhibit in 1974, and went on to gain a reputation in local and international art exhibitions. Also an award-winning watercolorist and a sculptor, he was a recipient the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ “13 Artists Award.” An Unfinished Painting of the Present was exhibited at Singapore Art Museum’s The Bic Picture Show of Asia murals in conjuction with the ASEAN Ministerial Form in 2007.

Rio Alma, or Virgilio S. Almario, presently the Dean of the College of Art and Letters of the University of the Philippines, was conferred the Order of National Artist for Literature in 2003. Perhaps the foremost living Filipino poet writing in the National Language, Rio Alma is also, as eminently, literary historian and critic, publisher, cultural administrator, mentor and academic. A prolific author, he has a little less than 30 books to his name, almost in equal parts poetry and literary criticism, all written in Filipino. His poetry books deeply explore Filipino life, mind, and history, using traditional as well modern and formalist forms and modes of writing, while his critical works encompass vital studies of the national language. He founded the Children's Communication Center, the Philippine pioneer in children's book publishing, and publisher of Adarna Books, conducts the long-running poetry clinic, Linangan sa Retorika at Arte (LIRA), and has been Executive Director of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

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Issue 15 Contributors

Edgar B. Maranan is a poet, essayist, fictionist, playwright, writer of children’s stories, and translator. He has won a total of thirty prizes—a record number—for his works in English and Filipino, in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, and was inducted into the Palanca Hall of Fame in 2000. He has also won awards in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Annual Literary Contest, Palihang Aurelio Tolentino Playwriting Competition, Institute of National Language poetry competition, Philippines Free Press Literary Awards, Philippine Graphic Magazine Nick Joaquin Literary Prize, Filamore Tabios Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize (Meritage Press, USA), and the Philippine Board on Books for Young People (PBBY)-Salanga Writers Prize, which he won three years in a row, from 1989 to 1991. Maranan’s third poetry book, Passage / poems 1983-2006, came out in October 2007, under the Bookmark imprint. Most of the poems in this book are part of poetry collections which won in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature (Voyage, 1984; Hinterland, 1987; Star Maps, 1988; and Tabon, 2000). He is an active member of the newly formed Baguio Writers Group.

Aberjhani, poet, historian, journalist, blogger, and novelist, appears for the second time in our online magazine. He is co-author of the award-winning Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts On File); and author of The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois. The recently published Bridge of Silver Wings is his third book of poetry; and Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World his first novel. He is currently at work on the completion of a 17-year book project, titled Elemental: the Power of Illuminated Love, featuring the work of the critically acclaimed award-winning artist Luther E. Vann with poetry and prose by Aberjhani. In addition, he is founder of the popular Creative Thinkers International website.

Arturo Luz, painter, sculptor and designer, received the title of National Artist in Visual Arts in 1997. Member of the Neo-Realists and the Thirteen Moderns, a group of modern artists established in 1938 and led by Victorio C. Edades, he described himself as “semi-representational, semi-abstracted.” He is best known for his linear art and his series on street musicians, vendors, cyclists and carnival performers, but also sculpted using wood, concrete and metal. His works are characterized by sophisticated simplicity and exemplify sublime austerity in their expression and form.

Kristian Cordero is our regular contributor from Bikol who teaches literature at the Ateneo de Naga University. Writing his poetry both in Filipino and the Bikol language, Kristian is one of the young poets spearheading a renaissance in Bikol writing and realizing its possibilities in reflecting a modern consciousness. The author of three award-winning books of poetry, he has attended the University of the Philippines National Writers Workshop and has won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards and the Premio Tomas Arejola for Bikol Literature, among many others.

Igor V. de la Peña Jr is building up his collection of ekphrastic poetry. A second-time contributor to our magazine, he is a graduate of Political Science from UP Diliman and has been a fellow for poetry in the UP, Iligan and Iyas Writing Workshops. His poems, stories and essays have been published in various magazines and anthologies. He is currently based in Dumaguete and is a fellow of the 2008 Dumaguete National Writers Workshop conducted by National Artist Edith Tiempo.

Fernando Zobel, born in Manila in 1924, was one of the leading modernists in Philippine art. A keen observer of Filipino painting, he said, “For a painter perhaps the most striking thing about the Philippines is the quality of light. Normally we have to deal with the white colorless glare that bounces off every surface and refuses to cast a shadow… The implications of this kind of light to painters are legion, because although a painter may not paint what he sees, his surroundings condition what he paints.”

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Issue 14 Contributors

Rio Alma, or Virgilio S. Almario, confered the Order of National Artist for Literature in 2003, is a man of many literary hats. He is a poet, literary historian and critic, publisher, cultural administrator, mentor and academic. A real prolific author, he has a little less than 30 books to his name, almost in equal parts poetry and literary criticism, all written in Filipino, the National Language. He founded the Children's Communication Center, the Philippine pioneer in children's book publishing, and publisher of Adarna Books; he conducts the long-running poetry clinic, Linangan sa Retorika at Arte (LIRA); was Executive Director of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA); and at present the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters of the University of the Philippines.

Ang Kiukok (1931-2005), the son of Chinese immigrants, crossed national boundaries (his paintings are auctioned by Sotheby's or Christie's) but remained truly and undeniably Filipino. The dominant images of his art—gaunt angular Christs, rabid dogs, starvation fishbones, demented cockfights—"blazed an iconographic path of his own," according an NCCA citation, but are also frighteningly familiar. They bespeak the almost unrelieved agony of the human condition, but more so the all-too-real and nightmarish contemporary Filipino experience. Ang Kiukok, whose "placid and affable" person contrasted with the anger in his work, was confered the Order of National Artist in 2001.

Fidel Rillo, whose series titled "Sonnets from Life" (my translation) is unpublished, and two of which are sampled here, is one of our leading poets writing in Filipino whose contemporary sensibility is not constrained by the use of traditional forms. He belongs to the generation that counts among them Teo Antonio, the late Mike Bigornia, Jesus Manuel Santiago, the late Romulo Sandoval, and Virgilio V. Vitug, whose deep social commitment and historical consciousness were otherwise untrammeled by the lyric voice that is only one of their high distinctions. Rillo is also an active participant in the local book industry as one of our best book designers. He designed, edited and gave a perceptive introduction to Sonetos Postumos.

Jose F. Lacaba lends us his poetry for the second time. Pete writes "I found my old college-era poem on the Georges Seurat painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" (Un dimanche après-midi à l'Ile de la Grande Jatte) and in the process found another ekphrasis that I had all but forgotten about, this one on Sandro Botticelli's "Birth of Venus." If memory serves, the Seurat poem was previously published only in a mimeographed newsletter of the Ateneo Arts Club. The Botticelli poem is unpublished, and was written sometime in the mid-1960s, after the Post Office banned from the mails an issue of the Philippines Free Press that used the painting to illustrate a page 1 editorial." These poems by Pete, who since then had chosen to write his poetry only in Filipino, are thus a rare find for Poet's Picturebook.

Victor Peñaranda has sent our magazine (once he knew about it) poems from his frequent travels abroad, in Bhutan or Macedonia, or locally now that he is back in the Philippines maybe for sometime. Before leaving for Mt. Data, the place so beloved of our late poet friend Mike Bigornia, where the latter spent part of his youth and wrote poems from, Bimboy sent us a poem about stillness that belies the evocation of its title. It was probably in anticipation of the natural serenity that Mt. Data is known for. "Everything here reminds us of Mike," he wrote later.

Ben Razon is a professional photographer (and an able analyst of its esthetics and techniques), and a member of the Banggaan e-group of Filipino artists, photographers, and writers, musicians. He worked for various publications, including the defunct Philippines Newsday. On his various sorties for photography and documentation projects, he is never without his Nikons and Fujis, especially the new Fuji FinePix 100fs, and captures just about everything, from the dim light in a bar in Malate to the sunlight streaming in a laundry area to the hellish smoke of the burning dumpsite (Ulingan) at Manila's Pier 18.

Dante Perez, after a long stint as editorial illustrator for various newspapers, including the Straights Times of Singapore, has gone full time into painting and has had several shows. His latest, "Sacred," is on-going at 1/of Gallery, 2nd level, Serendra, Bonifacio Global City. Dante, according to his show notes, "depicts unlikely saints..." and "this time he illumines the progeny of the underground and exalts them as bodhisattvas. To experience Perez's new series is to slither through the underbelly of the city, to partake with its derelict dandies, and to know no difference between the publicized, beatified saints and the dregs of society."

Bryan Paraiso, our first-time contributor, received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, major in Painting from the University of Santo Tomas in 1997. He had worked as an Education Officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila and in an art center in Negros Occidental, Philippines from 1998 to 2004. He is currently a researcher/ analyst for a Philippine government agency. He was a finalist at the 2007 2nd Philippine Graphic/ Fiction Awards sponsored by Fully Booked, and had received Certificates of Merit at art competitions such as the Shell National Student Painting Competition, Philippine Board on Books for the Young Illustrator's Competition, St. Scholastica's College and Technological University of the Philippines On-the-Spot Painting Competitions.

Mohammed Sidique Khan (October 20, 1974 – July 7, 2005) was the oldest of the four suicide bombers responsible for the 7 July 2005 London bombings, in which bombs were detonated on three London Underground trains and one bus in central London suicide attacks that killed 52 people and injured over 700. Khan bombed the Edgware Road train in which seven people died, including himself. (Wikipedia)

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Issue 13 Contributors

Raul (RG) Morales, an architect and entrepreneur, the editor's neighbor at Makati South Hills, debuts with his photographs in our online magazine. Apart from designing and building houses and having been a manager of a tire company, RG is an ardent amateur photographer and takes his Canon along every time he travels on business or with his family. The photos here are from a recent Ilocos trip.

Victor Peñaranda, our peripatetic poet and development worker, came recently and maybe for good (or maybe until work and wanderlust call him again). A Palanca Award winner and more recently of the Philippines Free Press Awards for poetry, he has traveled extensively in the Philippines for his development work and lately to Bhutan and Macedonia on long assignments. Together with Alfred A. Yuson, he edited the now defunct but sorely missed broadsheet-format New Age and literary magazine called Ermita, which brought together the best Filipino literary and artistic talents during its existence of a little more than a year. But Bimboy, as he is known to friends, is first and foremost a poet of a broad consciousness that is however fully grounded on social realities. His many readers await the next to his first book, Voyage in Dry Season, which won the Manila Critics Circle’s National Book Award in 1996.

Sid Gómez Hildawa (1962-2008) will be much missed by the art and literary community of which he was very much a part. He passed away in March this year. Sid was a poet, visual artist and professional architect. As an artist, he was among the recipients of the CCP Thirteen Artists Award and the British Council Fellowship for art and architecture in 1990. He has participated in many group and solo exhibitions, among them the 2000 International Art Biennale of Havana Cuba, and the 2002 artist-in-residency program at Fujino, Japan. As an architect, he designed houses and offices on a freelance basis. As a writer, he was a poetry fellow to the UP National Writer's workshop in 1995 and the Iligan National Writer's workshop in 1997. He won 2nd place twice in the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards for poetry, in 2001 and 2004. At the time of his death, Sid was pursuing a PhD Literature degree from the De La Salle University, after obtaining his Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing there in 2004. He worked full-time as director for the Cultural Center of the Philippines' Visual, Literary, and Media Arts Department.

Joel Toledo, award-winning poet and active host of poetry readings at MagNet Gallery and Café in Katipunan, teaches literature at Miriam College and plays drums for the band, Los Chupacabras, the Happy Mondays mainstay at MagNet. Joel won second prize and £1,000 for his poem “The Same Old Figurative” in the Bridport Prize 2006 competition, an international literary competition based at the Bridport Arts Centre of UK. The poem won over 5,600 entries from all over the world and will be published in an anthology. His collection, “What Little I Know of Luminosity,” won the Palanca 2005 1st Prize in Poetry. His first published work was “Pedro and the Life Force,” a pioneering novelette for young adults. He took his undergraduate and Master of Arts degrees in Creative Writing in UP. With fellow poet and Radioactive Sago bandleader Lourd Ernest de Veyra, Joel edited the Philippine Literary Arts Council’s Caracoa 2006 Silver Issue.

Kristian Cordero, one of our regular contributors, is a literature professor at Ateneo de Naga and one of the busiest poets in Bicol today. The author of three collections of award-winning poetry, Kristian has won several local and national literary awards including the 2004 Premio Tomas Arejola Para sa Literaturang Bikolnon, Homelife Poetry Contest (Second Prize for the years 1999, 2005, 2007 and Grand Prize Winner for 2004), Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature (for short fiction) and the Madrigal-Gonzales Best First Book Award in 2006. He also received the Outstanding Alumni Award by the University of Saint Anthony, a special citation from the local government of Iriga City and the Melchor Villanueva Centennial Awards for Bikol Literature in 2007.

Adrian Remodo, whose intriguing and ironic picture of the statue of the Virgin looking abandoned in a corner is the subject of Kristian’s poem, is himself a poet and essayist. He has an M.A. in Philosophy from the Ateneo de Manila University, has won the Premio Tomas Arejola for Bikol Literature (for essay) in 2006, and the Filipinas Institute of Translation (FIT) Salita ng Taon essay prize on new Filipino words in 2007.

Dan Pinto, our regular photography contributor, is a writer, editor, teacher, and artist whose work has brought him to much of the world from Samar to Saudi Arabia. He presently heads the Senate publication committee, designs books for and drinks with his writer friends, and joins online forums and groups on his other interest, computer graphic art. Apart from his pictures, he will soon come out with literary pieces in our magazine.

Edd Aragon is the editorial illustrator for the Sydney Morning Herald. He was a famous and popular cartoonist for the Philippine Daily Express of the Martial Law years before migrating to Sydney in the 1970s, where he has thrice bagged the prestigious Artist of the Year award from the Australian Black and White Artists Society. A painter and digital artist, Edd has an on-going triple homecoming show in Manila. Called Tres Kantos (Three Corners), the three exhibits in separate venues feature his ultraviolet-reactive paintings, his digital artworks and his editorial cartoons.

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Another set of contributors

24 Filipino poets in new Norton poetry anthology

Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond
(W.W. Norton, April 7, 2008)

Editors: Tina Chang, Ravi Shankar, Nathalie Handal
Foreword: Carolyn Forche




Amazon Notes:

A landmark anthology, providing the most ambitious, far-reaching collection of contemporary Asian and Middle Eastern poetry available.

Language for a New Century celebrates the artistic and cultural forces flourishing today in the East, bringing together an unprecedented selection of works by South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian poets as well as poets living in the Diaspora. Some poets, such as Bei Dao and Mahmoud Darwish, are acclaimed worldwide, but many more will be new to the reader. The collection includes 400 unique voices—political and apolitical, monastic and erotic—that represent a wider artistic movement that challenges thousand-year-old traditions, broadening our notion of contemporary literature.

Each section of the anthology—organized by theme rather than by national affiliation—is preceded by a personal essay from the editors that introduces the poetry and exhorts readers to examine their own identities in light of these powerful poems. In an age of violence and terrorism, often predicated by cultural ignorance, this anthology is a bold declaration of shared humanity and devotion to the transformative power of art.

About the Editors

Tina Chang, author of Half-Lit Houses, teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. New York-based poet, playwright, and writer Nathalie Handal performs and teaches worldwide. Ravi Shankar, founding editor of Drunken Boat and author of Instrumentality, lives in Connecticut.

Filipino Contributors

Gémino H. Abad
Merlie M. Alunan
Cesar Ruiz Aquino
Nick Carbó
Marjorie Evasco
Luis H. Francia
Marne L. Kilates
Edgar B. Maranan
Edith L. Tiempo
Ricardo M. de Ungria
Alfred A. Yuson
Rick Barot
Luis Cabalquinto
Eric Gamalinda
Sarah Gambito
Eugene Gloria
Jessica Hagedorn
Luisa A. Igloria
Paolo Javier
Joseph O. Legaspi
R. Zamora Linmark
Jon Pineda
Bino A. Realuyo
Eileen R. Tabios

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Issue 12 Contributors

Juan Rafael Belgica Jr, one of Bikol's leading poets, is a man of many interests, from history to economics to political science to art, as I remember from our major-less period in college. But he couldn’t deny his genes. The son of the poet-educator Juan Sr (Johnny to his many friends), Jun found himself in poetry, in the Bicol language. With two books of poetry to his name, the first, Duru’ngan, a collaboration with Rafael Banzuela, Jun is hard at work writing, researching and refreshing the Bikol language in poetry. While his first poem “Sa Lukunlukunan kan Pantalan,” written in the 70s, would seem to me the first modern Bikol poem, Jun’s preoccupation now with Western as well as native poetic forms, and his revival of old or rare Bikol words make for a well-rounded and grounded work that can only enrich the Bikol language.

Dan Pinto is a writer, editor, teacher, and artist whose work has brought him to much of the world from Samar to Saudi. He presently heads the Senate publication committee, designs books for his writer friends, and joins online forums and groups on his other interest, computer graphic art. He appears here both as translator and photographer of our cover image.

Frank V. Peñones is one of Bikol’s respected literary icons. He has received writing and study grants from the University of the Philippines, Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Ford International. Author of two bilingual poetry collections Ragang Rinaranga (2005) and Cancion nin Tawong Lipod (upcoming) both published by Agnus Press in Naga City, he has won several times in the Saint Peter Baptist Catholic Mass Media Awards, 2005 Premio Tomas Arejola Para Sa Literaturang Bikol and the Sumagang Awards For Literature and Journalism. Currently, he is finishing his MFA at San Jose State University in California.

Vic Nierva works for the U.P. Institute of Creative Writing, is a publication designer, and being one of the most active Bikol writers, has recently put our his first book of poetry titled Antisipasyon. The Austrialia-based Filipina poet, Merlinda Bobis, also a Bikolana, has this to say about Vic’s first book: “At its best, Vic Nierva’s poetry is fraught with waiting. Metaphor is quietly built up to the final insight. Almost, almost there, but seemingly never handed over… Nierva has been breathing in us through the night.”

Raffi Banzuela, another pioneer in the Bikol revival, had been honed in the college publication and art organizations circuit, as well as in campus leadership and politics, before graduating into an accomplished and award-winning broadcaster, former radio station manager, head of the Mass Communications Program at Aquinas University, and lately University Secretary. The natural Bikolano cadence and accent of his prosody give it a clear and evident public voice, due perhaps to his practice as broadcaster and commentator. Apart from Duru’ngan, Raffi’s books are the essay collection Albay Viejo and the upcoming Selebra, where the powers of the Bikol language and Raffi’s poetry are evident.

Abdon Balde Jr, a premier fictionist in Filipino and winner of several National Book Awards and the Juan C. Laya award for the novel, was an engineer and construction company executive for 30 years before he returned to his real calling, literature. Within the seven years after he retired from his profession he has produced about as many number of books and won about the same number of awards. He writes in Filipino about both the frontier world of construction and the modern and ancient world of the Bikols, and the Filipino. Like our friend Dan Pinto, he appears on our pages as a photographer.

Kristian Cordero, one of our regular contributors, a literature professor at Ateneo de Naga, is one of the busiest poets in Bikol today. The author of three collections of award-winning poetry, Kristian has won several local and national literary awards including the 2004 Premio Tomas Arejola Para sa Literaturang Bikolnon, Homelife Poetry Contest (Second Prize for the years 1999, 2005, 2007 and Grand Prize Winner for 2004), Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature (for short fiction) and the Madrigal-Gonzales Best First Book Award in 2006. He also received the Outstanding Alumni Award by the University of Saint Anthony, a special citation from the local government of Iriga City and the Melchor Villanueva Centennial Awards for Bikol Literature in 2007.

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Issue 11 Contributors

Alfredo Roces is the Filipino artist-writer based in Sydney who has written many books on Filipino culture, history, and art, the latest of which is Adios, Patria Adorada: The Filipino as Ilustrado, the Ilustrado as Filipino (De La Salle University Press), which won the Manila Critics Circle 2006 National Book Award for Social Science. Also a publisher and editor, Roces counts among his notable book projects the encyclopedic multi-volume Filipino Heritage series (unfortunately out of print now). A former student of the artist George Grosz, Roces has exhibited his works in the Philippines and abroad.

Edd Aragon, former and famous cartoonist for the Philippine Daily Express of the Martial Law years, migrated to Sydney in the 1970s and later became editorial illustrator for the Sydney Morning Herald and has thrice bagged the prestigious Artist of the Year award from the Australian Black and White Artists Society. A painter and digital artist, Edd exhibits his works in a triple homecoming show in Manila this April. Called Tres Kantos (Three Corners), the three exhibits in separate venues feature his ultraviolet-reactive paintings, his digital artworks and his editorial cartoons.

Romulo P. Baquiran Jr is one of the leading younger poets in Filipino and has published two books of poetry, Mga Tula ng Paglusong and Onyx. A founding member of the Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika at Arte (LIRA), the long-running poetry clinic founded by National Artist Virgilio Almario (Rio Alma), “Joey” Baquiran is also a member of the Orágon Poets, the Filipinas Institute of Translation (FIT), the Union ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL), or the Writiers Union of the Philippines. He is a literature professor at the University of the Philippines.

Teo T. Antonio finished Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas but went on to become one of the finest and most prolific poets of his generation. His many books include Biro-biro kung Sanlan (1982), Taga sa Bato (1991), Bagay-bagay (1992), Pira-priasong Bituin (1996), Kalawang sa Patalim (1998), Ornamental (1998), Karikatura at Iba Pang Kontra-Banda (2000), Piping-Dilat (2000), Sa Aking Soledad: Koleksiyon ng mga Tula sa Pag-ibig (2002), Tilad na Dalit (Mga Piling Tula: 1973-1999) (2003), and Pagsunog ng Dayami (2003). Conversant in both the traditional and modern mode of Tagalog poetry, he is considered the reigning “King of the Poetic Joust (Balagtasan).”

Roberto A. Añonuevo, as one of the recent enfant terribles of Filipino poetry, has won numerous prizes at an early age and came into his own as a writing professional as early. He was inducted into the Palanca Awards Hall of Fame in 2000 and received the SEAWRite Award from the King of Thailand in 2004. He has been editor of the defunct Filipino Magazin (FilMag), translator for Diyaryo Filipino, editor providing long critical introductions for many literatry volumes on various authors at the Ateneo de Manila University and other publishers, and now heads WikiFilipino, the Filipino version of the Philippine online encyclopedia-writing project Wikipilipinas. His three poetry books are Paghipo sa Matang-tubig (1994), Pagsiping sa Lupain (2000), and Liyab sa Alaala (2004).

Joi Barrios has a PhD in Literature from the University of the Philippines (2003) and is considered one of today’s leading feminist and activist poets and playwrights writing in both the protest mode and the fine lyric. She presently resides in the United States. Among her publications are Ang Pagiging Babae ay Pamumuhay sa Panahon ng Digma (1990), Bailaya: Mga Dula Para sa Kababaihan (1997), and Prince Charming at Iba Pang Nobelang Romantiko (2001).

Eric Gamalinda presently teaches literature in New York City and has won extensive recognition for his poetry both here and abroad. His poetry books are Fire Poems/Rain Poems (1976), Lyrics from a Dead Language (1981), Zero Gravity (1999), and Amigo Warfare (2007), while his prose works include Peripheral Vision (1992), Planet Waves (1989), Confessions of a Volcano (1990), Empire of Memory (1992), and My Sad Republic (2000), which won for him the 1998 Philippine Centennial Literary Prize. Eric is well-travelled and has enjoyed wirters’ residencies at Bellagio, Italy, Valparaiso, Spain, among others. He has also won the Asiaweek prize, CCP, Palanca and National Book Awards. Award-winning Fil-Am poet Patrict Rosal pays tribute to Eric’s poetry by saying, “I wish I didn't know Eric Gamalinda personally, then my appraisal of his two books of poems Zero Gravity and, very recently, Amigo Warfare as among the absolute best lyrics this country has seen in contemporary literature—and likely longer—could be taken more seriously.”

Jose Y. Dalisay, or Butch, is of course the Filipino novelist who made it to the short list of the Man Booker Prize Asia last year, the newspaper columnist of old pens and sundry literary issues under the title Penman, and the most prominent, most read advocate for the Apple Mac in the Philippines. A prolific writer who also started early as a reporter for various newspapers before going to several writing and teaching fellowships abroad, and whose works can be found from the printed pages to cinema, television and the theater, Butch appears here as a photographer.

Marne L. Kilates, poet, translator, and blogger, is the editor of this online magazine.

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Issue 10 Contributors

Victor Peñaranda, a Palanca Award winner and more recently of the Philippines Free Press Awards for poetry, has traveled extensively in the Philippines for his development work and lately to Bhutan and now to Macedonia on long assignments. Together with Alfred A. Yuson, he edited the now defunct but sorely missed broadsheet-format New Age and literary magazine called Ermita, which brought together the best Filipino literary and artistic talents during its existence of a little more than a year. But Bimboy, as he is known to friends, is first and foremost a poet of a broad consciousness that is however fully grounded on social realities. His many readers await the next to his first book, Voyage in Dry Season, which won the Manila Critics Circle’s National Book Award in 1996.

After almost a decade of working as a freelance photographer in Europe, Maurice Oliver returned to America in 1990. Then, in 1995, he made a life-long dream reality by traveling around the world for eight months. But instead of taking pictures, he recorded the experience in a journal which eventually became poems. And so began his desire to be a poet. His poetry has appeared in numerous national and international publications and literary websites including Potomac Journal, Pebble Lake Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), Dandelion Magazine (Canada), Stride Magazine (UK), and online at thievesjargon.com, interpoetry.com (UK), kritya.com (India), blueprintreview.de (Germany), and is forthcoming in The Arabesques Review (Algeria). His forth chapbook, "One Remedy Is Travel" was published in August '07 at Origami Condom. The editor of the ezine Concelebratory Shoehorn Review (www.concelebratory.blogspot.com) he lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works as a private tutor.

Argee Guevarra, or Roberto (nickname from his initials), is a poet, activist, newspaper columnist for Business World, and lawyer for various activist causes and organizations. As one of the legal counsels of Sanlakas Party, a national coalition of peoples organizations working for the protection of people's rights and welfare, and supporter or legal counsel for opposition personalities, Argee has found himself many times at the receiving end of state harassment including actual arrests and detention. A fellow of the U.P. National Writers Workshop, Argee's first book of poetry is Salimbayan, (Swoop, Sipat Publishing, 1994 ), co-authored with Neal Imperial and Jim Pascual Agustin (also a contributor of this magazine).

Aberjhani, poet, historian, journalist, blogger, and novelist, is one of the most versatile African-American authors writing today. He is co-author of the award-winning Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts On File); and author of The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois. The recently published Bridge of Silver Wings is his third book of poetry; and Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World his first novel. He is currently at work on the completion of a 17-year book project, titled Elemental: the Power of Illuminated Love, featuring the work of the critically acclaimed award-winning artist Luther E. Vann with poetry and prose by Aberjhani. In addition, he is founder of the popular Creative Thinkers International website.

Jose F. Lacaba, "the poor boy from Pateros [a town near Manila] who went to the rich people's school on a scholarship," the Ateneo de Manila, dropped out on his fourth year as an English major to write for the leading news magazine the Philippines Free Press, under the editorship of the great Nick Joaquin and publisher Teodoro Locsin Sr. He was hired as "proofreader/ copyreader/reporter," and as the last he came into his own politicization. As reporter, he covered the student beat "when the students were involving themselves with the farmers and workers, the people were agitating against the Marcos regime, and the stage was being set for what is now known as the First Quarter Storm." In fact he became the Free Press star reporter and later collected his reportage in the book Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage (1982). He has since then become a professional and consummate journalist, having edited a succession of magazines, including Filipino Free Press, Asia-Philippines Reader, National Midweek and Philippine Graphic. Apart from being one of our foremost poets in Filipino, with four books of poetry and one translation, Pete is one of our finest screen playwrights, having written several award-winning films (locally and internationally) for the great director Lino Brocka.

Neil Doloricon has been a Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines and is one of the leading social realist painters of the Philippines. He has mounted numerous solo and group exhibits and is lately experimenting with digital art. He is also a superb printmaker who works adorn book covers, gallery and collectors' walls and rally streamers and placards.

Heber Bartolome is a poet, song writer and painter, and more popularly known as the leader and founder of the nationalist folk and rock group Banyuhay (Metamorphosis). Together his borthers Jess and Levi, they led a resurgence of nationalist popular music which was also both innovative and respectful of Filipino musical traditions. Heber's Banyuhay songs include the immortal Tayo'y mga Pinoy, Nena, and many others. He continues to compose and cut records for both his new and loyal fans.

Saira Peñaranda is the daughter of Bimboy and Jo Peñaranda.

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Issue 9 Contributors

A graduate of Political Science from UP Diliman, Rodrigo V. Dela Peña Jr ('Igor'). has been a fellow for poetry in the UP, Iligan and Iyas Writing Workshops. His poems, stories and essays have been published in various magazines and anthologies. He is currently based in Dumaguete.

H. Francisco V. Peñones Jr (Frank V. Peñones) is one of Bikol’s respected literary icons. He has received writing and study grants from the University of the Philippines, Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Ford International. Author of two bilingual poetry collections Ragang Rinaranga (2005) and Cancion nin Tawong Lipod (upcoming) both published by Agnus Press in Naga City, he has won several times in the Saint Peter Baptist Catholic Mass Media Awards, 2005 Premio Tomas Arejola Para Sa Literaturang Bikol and the Sumagang Awards For Literature and Journalism. Currently, he is finishing his MFA at San Jose State University in California.

Santiago Bose, Santi to his many friends, was the Philippines foremost painter of various disciplines (often using various indigenous media and materials in his paintings) from the Seventies until he passed away sudddenly in Baguio in 2002. "He was brave, infinitely creative, intelligent, humorous, personable and passionate. His overwhelming personality was linked to his artwork and his life in art, which for most of us will be his main legacy. His personal energy and vision led to the founding of the Baguio Arts Festival which he presided over in a loose but focused way for most of its long and successful life. He put the hill town of Baguio on the arts map. Throughout his life he led other arts communities to new projects, in the Philippines, here in Australia, in North America and elsewhere." (by Allison Carroll at Artlink)

Lina Llaguno Ciani is the noted Filipina painter who since the1960s has been living partly in Italy, partly in Bikol, in a beach house in a little village facing the Albay Gulf. This house and many of her paintings were not spared by Typhoon Reming, whose devastation is the subject of her current exhibit in Galleria Duemila in Manila. Ciani is a graduate ot the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts, and took advanced studies at the Accademia delle Belli Arti in Perugia, Italy. Her works have been exhibited in New York, Rome and various parts of Italy, Jakarta, and Manila.

Our constant contributor, Luisa A. Igloria lives in Virginia and teaches at the Old Dominion University. (Her more detailed biographical note is in Issue 8.)

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Issue 8 Contributors

(Poets’ bios may be provided by the authors themselves or taken partly and researched by the Editor from other sources such as Panitikan.Com, the portal for Philippine literature maintained by the University of Philippines. Authors may update or correct their entries by writing me.)


Junjun Sta. Ana is a Filipino artist, photographer and digital artist residing in the United States. He is a new member of the Banggaan e-group of artists, photographers and writers from the Philippines and from the Filipino diaspora.

Jim Pascual Agustin spent his early years in rural Marikina in a large communal house where he struggled to keep count of numerous cousins (pinsang buo and others) until his family was forced out of the land to make way for the construction of Marcos Highway. Through the kindness of Fr. James O’Brien, SJ, Jim attended the Ateneo de Manila High School and University. He is a fellow of the UP Writers Workshop in Diliman and the Iligan Writers Workshop. In October 1994 he moved to Cape Town, South Africa where he now lives with his wife and their twin daughters. His two books are Beneath an Angry Star (Anvil, 1990) and Salimbayan (with Argee Guevarra and Neal Imperial; Sipat, 1994)

Luisa A. Igloria (previously published as Maria Luisa Aguilar-Cariño) is an Associate Professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program and Department of English, Old Dominion University (Norfolk, Virginia). Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, The Missouri Review, Poetry East, Smartish Pace, The Asian Pacific American Journal, and TriQuarterly. Various national and international literary awards include the 2007 49th Parallel Poetry Prize (Bellingham Review, selected by Carolyne Wright); the 2007 James Hearst Poetry Prize (selected by former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser for the North American Review); the 2006 Richard Peterson Poetry Prize (Crab Orchard Review); and the 2006 Stephen Dunn Award for Poetry. Formerly of Baguio City, Luisa has been inducted in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature Hall of Fame, being an eleven-time recipient of prizes in three genres (poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction). She has published nine books in the Philippines and America.

Cesar Ruiz Aquino belongs to the brilliant generation of young writers in the 60s that included Jose Lansang, Jr., Ernesto Manalo, Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez, Erwin E. Castillo, Ninotchka Rosca, & Perfecto Tera, Jr. among others. He presently teaches at Silliman University where he obtained his doctoral degree. He has won the Palanca four times for his fiction and his poetry, the Free Press poetry prize and the Graphic short-story prize. In 2004 he received the SEAWRITE award from the Prince of Thailand in Bangkok for Checkmeta, a personal anthology of poems & prose pieces both in fiction and non-fiction.

Issue 7 Contributors

Rod Samonte, a Filipino painter and photographer and master of the macro shot, resides in Burbank, California. He is also a pioneering member of the e-group, Banggaan, an informal and lively collective of Filipino photographers, artists and writers exchanging all sorts of creative production (mutually and digitally altered by each member in a sort of collision or interaction, "Bangga" in their terms), as well as artistic discussion, insights, and gossip, from home or the Diaspora.

Maurice Oliver. After almost a decade of working as a freelance photographer in Europe, Maurice Oliver returned to America in 1990. Then, in 1995, he made a life-long dream reality by traveling around the world for eight months. But instead of taking pictures, he recorded the experience in a journal which eventually became poems. And so began his desire to be a poet. His poetry has appeared in numerous national and international publications and literary websites including Potomac Journal, Pebble Lake Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), Dandelion Magazine (Canada), Stride Magazine (UK), and online at thievesjargon.com, interpoetry.com (UK), kritya.com (India), blueprintreview.de (Germany), and is forthcoming in The Arabesques Review (Algeria). His forth chapbook, "One Remedy Is Travel" was published in August '07 at Origami Condom. The editor of the ezine Concelebratory Shoehorn Review (www.concelebratory.blogspot.com) he lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works as a private tutor.

Kristian Sendon Cordero. Author of two previous collections of award-winning poetry, Kristian has won several local and national literary awards including the 2004 Premio Tomas Arejola Para sa Literaturang Bikolnon, Homelife Poetry Contest (Second Prize for the years 1999, 2005, 2007 and Grand Prize Winner for 2004), Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature (for short fiction) and the Madrigal-Gonzales Best First Book Award in 2006. He also received the Outstanding Alumni Award by the University of Saint Anthony, a special citation from the local government of Iriga City and the Melchor Villanueva Centennial Awards for Bikol Literature in 2007.

Melissa Nolledo, artist and photographer from the States, who recently exhibited her works at the Philippine Center in New York, is also a member of Banggaan. She is the proud daughter of the lateWilfido D. Nolledo, one of the Philippines' foremost novelists writing in the 1960s and 70s, whose early and apparently unpublished poem Melissa is featuring here with her digital art.

Paul Gomez is a 35-year old all-around creative in an advertising firm. His work entails taking and retouching photographs, writing copy, and burning the midnight oil to come up with jingles and marketing ploys. He graduated with a degree in Advertising at the University of Santo Tomas in the 1990s. In his free time, he enjoys experimenting with different art media such as oil and encaustic painting, watercolors, egg tempera painting, pen and ink illustration, and manipulation of photographs. He loves to read 19 th century literature and has just finished most of the available Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart novels, and he is currently attempting to read Benito Perez-Galdos' Fortunata and Jacinta. He also loves to read poetry, and enjoys spending quiet time with his young daughter Joanna, and playing with his two dogs.

Issue 6 Contributors

(first full issue imported from the old site)

Alfred A. Yuson. If there is a Filipino literary gypsy, it should be Alfred “Krip” Yuson, but gypsy not in the sense of somehow strangely uncouth, but in being magical, or in being a magician, a fortune-teller and one unable to resist his native wanderlust, and Filipino. One of our foremost writers in English, Krip is a poet, novelist, newspaper columnist, and writer of screenplays, all of which he does with, to say the least, amazing, masterfulness. He was one of the first to win the Hall of Fame of the Carlos Palanca Literary Awards for at least five first prizes for his poetry, novel and essays. He has 12 books of poetry, fiction, essays, children’s literature. His poetry collections are Sea Serpent, Dream of Knives, Trading in Mermaids, and the selection, Mothers Like Elephants. Yuson’s novel, The Great Philippine Jungle Energy Café, described by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo in her exhaustive essay “Fabulists & Chroniclers” as a “mock epic… a crazy fiesta in a café in the sky” with irrevent Pinoy laughter at is core, is a tour-de-force of “re-imagin[ing] the nation.” Apart from wearing various writers’ hats, Yuson serves as the Philippine editor of MANOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing (University of Hawaii), a member of the Manila Critics Circle, a founding member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC), and teaches poetry and fiction at the Ateneo de Manila University, where he held the Henry Lee Irwin Professorial Chair in 1999.

Marjorie Evasco’s two books of poems, Dreamweavers: Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1986) and Ochre Tones: Poems in English and Cebuano (1999) both won the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award for Poetry, Her two other books, Six Women Poets: Inter/Views (1996), co-authored with Edna Manlapaz, and A Life Shaped by Music: Andrea Veneracion and the Philippine Madrigal Singers, also won National Book Awards for Oral History and Biography respectively. In 2006 her book Ani: The Life and Art of Hermogena Borja Lungay won the A. Ongpin National Book Award on Art from the Manila Critics Circle. Marj has received various writing residencies and grants, including the Rockefeller Foundation writing residency in Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy (1992), the International Writers’ Retreat residency in Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, Scotland (1991), and the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa, U.S.A. (2002). She finished her Ph.D. in Literature at De La Salle University, where she is a full professor at the the Department of Literature, and has also held the Julia Vargas professorial chair for Philippine Literature.

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