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.
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
