CONTENTS - National Book Development Board
Transcription
CONTENTS - National Book Development Board
CONTENTS 4 Feature 11Read Pinoy! The 12th Philippine Book Development Month Report 20Interview with Precious Heart Romance’s bestselling author Martha Cecilia 24 Book Colllecting: A Lifelong Passion by Jonathan Best 26The Poem is the Real: A Poetics by Gémino H. Abad COVERSTORY 22Chin-chin Gutierrez: How books inspire her to help change lives In Every Issue Chairman’s Message Executive Director’s Message Deputy Executive Director’s Message Editor’s Letter 10 NBDB Book Club Diaries 18Read Alert! 19 BookStop 29 Hot Off the Press BOOKBUZZ 04 NBDB helps fulfill debutante’s birthday wish 05 National Book Development Trust Fund passed into law 06 Booklatan sa Bayan kicks off 2009 in Iloilo 06 UNLAK brings Isagani Cruz to San Joaquin High School On the Cover 07 NBDB launches books Chin-chin reads Kuwentong Siyudad (Ateneo Press), edited by Rolando Tolentino, Romulo Baquiran, Jr. and Alwin Aguirre. Photography by Jay Alonzo. Kuwentong Siyudad is available at National Book Store and Ateneo Press, at P295. 08 Writers gather for the 2008 UP Writers’ Day 09 Gatas Tisoy sponsors NBDB storytelling committee 2009 editor-in-chief Contributing Writers Circulation Staff Camille Dianne S. Mendoza Jonathan Best Gémino H. Abad Arvin Mangohig Sylvia C. Mendoza Rhonell C. Dacio Jun Tomonong Art Director Mikke Gallardo Managing Editor Photographers Maria E.J. Pia V. Benosa Jay Alonzo, Daniel Tan Writers Marketing Staff Alvin Buenaventura, Glenn L. Malimban, Kristina Corren Marcelo, Edgardo P. Sabalvoro, Grace G. Santos Salvador D. Briola Jr. Board of Advisers Dr. Dennis T. Gonzalez chairman Atty. Andrea Pasion-Flores executive officer National Book Development Board 2/F National Printing Office Bldg., EDSA corner NIA Northside Road, Diliman, Quezon City 1100 Trunk lines: (632) 920-9853, 929-3677, 929-3887 Frances Jeanne L. Sarmiento deputy executive officer www.nbdb.gov.ph The National Book Development Board is a government agency created under Republic Act 8047, or the “Book Publishing Industry Development Act.” 1 MESSAGES Chairman’s Message Deputy Executive Director’s Message Deputy Executive Director’s Message Hitting the Ground Running Hitting the Ground Running The NBDB is happy to report that the 14th Congress has legislated the “National Book Development Trust Fund To Support Filipino Authorship” (SB 2409 and HB 4213) last 19 January 2009, which most likely will have been formally signed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo by the time you read this issue of Bookwatch. We will change the literary setting in the Philippines once the interest of the Fund will be available in the form of grants to at least fifty budding and veteran Filipino authors from all regions of the country annually. I thank everybody who joined us through six years in pushing for the creation of the Book Development Trust Fund. The NBDB had the great privilege of taking the lead in generating interest and sustaining the support of industry players, literary professionals, and legislators through three congresses. Pushing for this book development agenda was a fascinating learning experience. We were able to utilize all opportunities available and work within the dynamics of the existing political set-up in both Houses of Congress. Timing, focus, information resources, and our lasting partnerships with our lawmakers and various industry stakeholders contributed to this successful legislative drive. Our special thanks to the principal authors and co-authors of the law: Representatives Raul T. Gonzalez Jr., Rufus B. Rodríguez, Del R. de Guzman, Junie E. Cua, Edcel C. Lagman, Thelma Z. Almario, Laarni L. Cayetano, Carlos M. Padilla, Edgardo M. Chatto, Maria Isabelle G. Clímaco, Jesús Crispin C. Remulla, Carmencito O. Reyes, Marcelino R. Teodoro, Rodolfo G. Valencia, Liza L. Maza, Trinidad G. Apóstol, Mariano U. Piamonte, Mark Llandro L. Mendoza, Isidro T. Ungab, Florencio C. Garay, Arturo B. Robes, Francisco T. Matugas, and Eufrocino M. Codilla Sr., and Senators Allan Peter S. Cayetano, Edgardo J. Angara, Jinggoy E. Estrada, Manny B. Villar, Lito M. Lapid, and Juan Miguel F. Zubiri. With this Trust Fund, we shall empower more writers in the regions, provide new economic opportunities for the publishing and printing industries, create new contents in the sciences and literature in major local languages for publication in various print or electronic formats, and eventually develop new readers or market niches and a vibrant book trade. May we sustain this new beginning and find other ways to build the competitive advantages of the Philippines so as to become a publishing hub in Asia. Congratulations to everybody! The start of 2009 has swept past us here at NBDB with the maximum sustained winds of a supertyphoon. The first two months alone have kept us constantly on the move in our efforts to promote the development of the book industry. January brings with it the first in a series of Booklatan sa Bayan activities, which is made possible for the entire 2009 through a partnership with the Knowledge and Development Center (KDC) and its partner schools and universities. The first Booklatan was held in Iloilo in cooperation with KDC member Central Philippine University. In January, NBDB also launched two historic publications: the Directory of Industry Stakeholders, which lists all NBDB-registered entities involved in the book publishing industry; and the first-ever Catalogue of Award-Winning Titles, a compilation of twenty-five years’ worth of winners of the country’s four prestigious awards: the National Book Awards, the Gintong Aklat Awards, the Madrigal-Gonzales First Book Award, and the PBBY Salanga Children’s Book Award. Likewise, the book Train of Thought, and its accompanying CD, which compile in book and audio formats the poems recorded and heard over the PA system of the LRT Line 2 under the Tulaan sa Tren project, was also launched in January. February brings with it the second and third Booklatan sa Bayan events for 2009, to be held in Caloocan City and Naga (in cooperation with Ateneo de Naga University) respectively. A reading-cum-performance of Francisco Baltazar’s Florante at Laura is also set for this month at the Trinoma Mall in Quezon City. February also saw the poet Jose “Pete” F. Lacaba visiting Pateros National High School under the auspices of a joint project of NBDB and the Unyon ng Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL) called UNLAK, or UMPIL-NBDB Lakbay Awtor Para sa Kabataan. For March, NBDB has lined up another Booklatan sa Bayan event, this time in Palawan, with the cooperation of Palawan State University. We also hope that the signing into law of one of the most significant pieces of legislation for the book industry, the National Book Development Trust Fund Act, will be held during this month, so that we can cap the first quarter of 2009 with a celebration of a hard-won victory for our stakeholders. We at NBDB hope that the next three quarters of 2009 will be as positive and productive as the current one. The start of 2009 has swept past us here at NBDB with the maximum sustained winds of a supertyphoon. The first two months alone have kept us constantly on the move in our efforts to promote the development of the book industry. January brings with it the first in a series of Booklatan sa Bayan activities, which is made possible for the entire 2009 through a partnership with the Knowledge and Development Center (KDC) and its partner schools and universities. The first Booklatan was held in Iloilo in cooperation with KDC member Central Philippine University. In January, NBDB also launched two historic publications: the Directory of Industry Stakeholders, which lists all NBDB-registered entities involved in the book publishing industry; and the first-ever Catalogue of Award-Winning Titles, a compilation of twenty-five years’ worth of winners of the country’s four prestigious awards: the National Book Awards, the Gintong Aklat Awards, the Madrigal-Gonzales First Book Award, and the PBBY Salanga Children’s Book Award. Likewise, the book Train of Thought, and its accompanying CD, which compile in book and audio formats the poems recorded and heard over the PA system of the LRT Line 2 under the Tulaan sa Tren project, was also launched in January. February brings with it the second and third Booklatan sa Bayan events for 2009, to be held in Caloocan City and Naga (in cooperation with Ateneo de Naga University) respectively. A reading-cum-performance of Francisco Baltazar’s Florante at Laura is also set for this month at the Trinoma Mall in Quezon City. February also saw the poet Jose “Pete” F. Lacaba visiting Pateros National High School under the auspices of a joint project of NBDB and the Unyon ng Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL) called UNLAK, or UMPIL-NBDB Lakbay Awtor Para sa Kabataan. For March, NBDB has lined up another Booklatan sa Bayan event, this time in Palawan, with the cooperation of Palawan State University. We also hope that the signing into law of one of the most significant pieces of legislation for the book industry, the National Book Development Trust Fund Act, will be held during this month, so that we can cap the first quarter of 2009 with a celebration of a hard-won victory for our stakeholders. We at NBDB hope that the next three quarters of 2009 will be as positive and productive as the current one. Photo by OCS ALVAREZ Trust Fund Law for Our Authors DR. DENNIS T. GONZALEZ 2 NBDB Chairman 3 BOOKBUZZ EDITOR’S LETTER INDUSTRY NEWS AND BOOK HAPPENINGS What I’m Reading Now Young and edgy fashion designer Tippi Ocampo, in her charming, little cloth-covered Not By the Book (available in Powerbooks), shows us how the unsightly, the ordinary everyday things, and the chaotic can be sources of creative inspirations. Tippi’s funky designs, believe it or not, are inspired by everyday scenes, from cabbages in the wet market and the rusting tin roofs of shanties, to patterned jeepney seats and fish tails. Creativity does not only apply to fashion and design, and the book serves as a guide for anyone who’s into anything that requires creativity. Just like Tippi, we at the NBDB also believe that we should always come up with something fresh, cutting-edge, and new to make Filipinos from all walks of life read more. Take for example the successful 12th Philippine Book Development Month (Pages 1217), where we were able to pull off never-been-done-before activities like the overnight Marathon Reading of Noli Me Tangere, the Food and Writing Tour in Bulacan and Pampanga, and bringing PBDM activities to Cebu for the first time. While Tippi tells us to go against what the book says, this issue’s cover girl Chin-chin Gutierrez (Page 22) followed the example set by a heroine in her favorite children’s book to change the lives of thousands around her, using her creativity as an artist. Who says that in this country, writers cannot be celebrities? Queen of Romance Martha Cecilia (Page 20) debunks this misconception, as she shares with Bookwatch the many outrageous and unbelievable things loyal fans have done in devotion to her. We are also honored to feature poet Gemino Abad’s UP Centennial Panayam Lecture (The Poem is the Real: A Poetics on Page 24). Not By the Book does not only show us how a Filipino reacts to her everyday surroundings, translating the ugly and ordinary into fabulous pieces of art. Beautifully designed by Cynthia Bauzon-Arre, Lizza Gutierrez, and Chinggay Labrador, the book is a tactile experience that delights one’s sense of touch and should set an example for other publishers to think of design as an important element to market books. (Not By the Book: Fashioning Design by Tippi Ocampo is available in selected Powerbooks branches at P950.) Congress approves trust fund to support local authors I CAMILLE DIANNE S. MENDOZA Editor-in-Chief Birthday book-drive NBDB executive director Andrea Pasion-Flores and Nicole Tan give life to the stories Aka, Aka, Ayaw Maging Palaka by Amrel Janna and Wako, Ang Kuwagong Pilyo by Victoria Añonuevo. 4 Laptops and iPods may make it to the top of young people’s wish lists these days, but for eighteen-year-old Nicole Tan, books are still the ideal gifts to give and receive, so that instead of asking for anything else, she asked relatives and friends for books which she hoped to share with other kids when she celebrated her eighteenth birthday last September. Getting in touch with the NBDB and the Quezon City Public Library (QCPL) to help her distribute the books she raised from her birthday book drive, Nicole shared her love for books and reading with kids of Brgy. Escopa II Day Care last January 30 by holding a special book donation and storytelling party. Seeing the smiles and joy in the faces of the children who attended the party proves that books are still the best gifts. NBDB executive director Andrea PasionFlores and Nicole delighted the kids by reading Aka, Aka, Ayaw Maging Palaka by Amrel Janna and Wako, Ang Kuwagong Pilyo by Victoria Añonuevo. Aside from donating books, Nicole also gave away toys and goodies to the preschool children. The NBDB, through the help of AHON Foundation, also donated over six boxes of children’s books from its book donation program to the barangay library. The storytelling event is one of the NBDB’s programs for 2009 to help spread the love for reading among the young. The Brgy. Escopa II Day Care Center was the first venue of the monthly storytelling sessions the NBDB is spearheading together with QCPL’s Troy Lacsamana.—Glenn L. Malimban Photo by Jay alonzo NBDB helps debutante fulfill her birthday wish f there is an advocacy shared by local authors, publishing industry players and the NBDB that began at the 12th Congress through the 14th Congress, it is the enactment into law of the National Book Development Trust Fund to support Filipino authorship. This legislative agenda of the NBDB to create a trust fund to support Filipino authorship began when the first Authors trust fund bill was filed at the 12th Congress by then Iloilo Congressman and Deputy Speaker for the Visayas and now Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez. At the 13th Congress, said bill was filed by his son, Congressman Raul T. Gonzalez. Jr. at the House with Senators Luisa “Loi” Estrada and Edgardo Angara at the Senate. On 19 January 2009, the current Congress accomplished what the previous Congresses failed to do. Both Houses have adopted Senate Bill 2409, authored by Senator Alan Peter Cayetano together with Senators Edgardo J. Angara and Jinggoy Ejercito Estrada. This provides for Php 50M allotment from the General Appropriations Act (GAA) annually for 5 years aside from allotments from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), which will each contribute P5 million a month for ten months or P50 million each to the Fund. Technically, it is now enacted into law and is awaiting signature by the President. Dr. Isagani Cruz, a former Education undersecretary and founding chair of the Manila Critics Circle said in his Philippine Star column last year that “one of NBDB’s biggest efforts [this year] is to have Senate Bill 2409 passed into law.” He stressed that “the point is to help starving writers, those that write books that publishers will ordinarily not touch (such as books of plays or literary theory, books in vernacular languages other than Filipino, books on local history, or books about scientific experiments or discoveries).” “We would like to thank the participation and support of the book industry associations, the NBDB personnel, local authors and writers groups, in lobbying for the passing into law of the National Book Development Trust Fund to support Filipino authors,” says NBDB Chairman Dr. Dennis T. Gonzalez. “This will be a new window of opportunity for authors and creative artists who could not avail of limited number of research grants or fellowships and are forced to temporarily abandon their literary or artistic calling or pursue other financially rewarding undertakings,” he adds. With quality works produced annually by competing authors, the local book publishers will be forced to compete and invest in new talents and new titles. The Philippines being a publishing hub in Asia will soon be a reality. For the NBDB Executive Director Atty. Andrea Pasion-Flores, a book author herself, a trust fund will “boost the annual number of titles produced especially in local history, science and technology, indigenous children’s stories and the translations of classic works into local languages, not only for books written in English.” This will encourage veteran as well as budding authors and book writers to write Filipino books in English or in the eight major local languages or dialects viz. Cebuano, Hiligaynon (Ilonggo), Bikol, Kapampangan, Ilokano, Waray, Tagalog, Pangasinan etc. and eventually create a vibrant book trade in the regions, she adds. With at least sixty-five (65) grants worth P150,000.00 each per region that will be at stake annually, the NBDB believes it will benefit the right people—deserving writers or researchers in the Philippines who will produce or finish excellent manuscripts on a variety of topics or subject areas for publication that will eventually benefit the book-reading Filipinos. The NBDB will act as fund administrator and would soon hold consultations on the law’s implementing rules and regulations or (IRR). –Edgardo P. Sabalvoro 5 BOOKBUZZ NBDB launches publications B ook industry luminaries gathered last January 28 at the Filipinas Heritage Library to celebrate the launch of the three landmark publications of the NBDB: A Catalogue of Award-Winning Titles, Directory of NBDB Stakeholders, and Train of Thought: Poems from Tulaan sa Tren. Published to help put the Philippines in the book industry world map, the Catalogue of Award-Winning Titles and Directory of NBDB Stakeholders will serve as an important reference to the best published books in the country and a comprehensive list of the Philippines’ book industry entities respectively. The Catalogue of Award-Winning Titles features all the books that have won the National Book Awards, the Gintong Aklat Awards, the Madrigal-Gonzales First Book Award, and the Philippine Board on Books for the Young People’s Salanga Prize. The Directory of NBDB Stakeholders, which lists all the book entities registered with the NBDB, aims to help promote publishing entities in both local and international markets. Finally, Train of Thought is the muchawaited compilation of the poems featured in the NBDB and Light Rail Transit Authority’s Tulaan sa Tren project. The book also includes a special edition CD containing some of the poems pre-recorded by celebrities and heard in LRT stations. Fuji Xerox Philippines sponsored the printing of the book designed by poet Adam David. Participants demonstrate their skills in storytelling during the group presentation NBDB gears up for 2009 Booklatan First of 2009 Booklatan sa Bayan held in Iloilo -Glenn Malimban Critic-at-Large visits school UNLAK brings Isagani Cruz to Pasig high school The UMPIL-NBDB Lakbay Awtor para sa Kabataan (UNLAK) recently brought playwright, fictionist, critic, and columnist Isagani Cruz to the San Joaquin-Kalawaan High School in Pasig City for the fourth leg of the UNLAK tour. The prizewinning author and founding member of the Manila Critics Circle spoke before high school students, encouraging them to write, while giving tips on how neophyte writers can hone their writing skills. 6 Dr. Isagani Cruz advises aspiring young writers to keep a journal and write everyday UNLAK (UMPIL-NBDB Lakbay Awtor para sa Kabataan) tours foremost Filipino writers around schools in Metro Manila to bring local authors and their works closer to the young. -Camille Dianne Mendoza Participants of Booklatan sa Iloilo Booklatan sa Bayan goes to 10 cities for 2009 Every year, the NBDB brings the Booklatan sa Bayan to different parts of the country. It has been successfully implemented in the cities of San Fernando (La Union), Dagupan, Calamba, Lipa, Naga, Iloilo, Ormoc, Pagadian, Iligan, Pasig, Mandaluyong, and Manila; and in the provinces of Camarines Sur, Sultan Kudarat, and Davao Oriental. In 2009, the NBDB is partnering with the World Bank-Knowledge for Development Center (WB-KDC) to bring Booklatan to eight major cities nationwide. The KDC schools and institutions will sponsor the venues. These schools are Palawan State University, Palawan; Ateneo de Naga University, Naga City; St. Paul University, Tuguegarao City; Notre Dame University, Cotabato City; University of Southeastern Philippines, Davao City; Western Mindanao State University, Zamboanga City; and Siliman University, Dumaguete City. Teachers, librarians, and other school officials of the said schools are expected to attend the series of trainings. Aside from the WB-KDC-sponsored Booklatan, the NBDB will also implement the Booklatan in Bagumbong High School in Caloocan City, and in the Philippine State College of Aeronautics, Villamor Airbase, Pasay City. – Glenn L. Malimban Photos by Glenn Malimban Resource speaker Dr. Elena Cutiongco, former president of the Reading Association of the Philippines, discussed the need for schools to raise the level of functional literacy in our people, as well as the importance of reading among children and students. Manolo Silayan of the Alitaptap Storytellers Philippines Inc. gave workshops on how teachers and librarians can hone their skills in bookbased storytelling. The Booklatan sa Bayan is the NBDB’s continuing readership and market development program. It aims to promote Filipino-authored books and the importance of reading as a life-long habit. Photos by Glenn Malimban The NBDB’s Booklatan sa Bayan program kicked off 2009 in Jaro, Iloilo City last January 21 to 23. The NBDB partnered with the Review and Continuing Education Center of the Central Philippine University (CPU), headed by its director Dr. Felnor Importante; and the Knowledge for Development Center (KDC), Iloilo, committee chaired by Prof. Victory Dionio, to bring Booklatan to Iloilo. Over 90 participants consisting of teachers, principals, and librarians benefited from the three-day series of lectures and workshops on promoting good reading habits held at the Henry Luce III Library inside the CPU campus. ”The NBDB is beginning the year right for the local book industry, in spite of the gloomy global economy,” says Chairman Dennis Gonzalez. LRTA Administrator Mel Robles congratulated the NBDB for the success of Tulaan sa Tren, which continues to receive recognition and warm response from the public. Robles also expressed LRTA’s willingness to renew the contract with the NBDB. Tulaan sa Tren featured poets Conchitina Cruz, Alfred Yuson, and National Artist Virgilio Almario each read their own poems. Almario read “Huling Biyahe” (Rekwerdo), the first time he read before an audience in two decades. Others present during the launch were Central Book’s Paolo Sibal, Milflores Publishing’s Antonio Hidalgo, Philippine Board on Books for Young People’s Ruben de Jesus, author Jaime An Lim, and other representatives from different publishing houses. The Catalogue of Award-Winning Titles and Directory of NBDB Stakeholders are available at the NBDB office. For details on how to order, call the NBDB at 920-9853. -Camille Dianne Mendoza HULING BIYAHE Rio Alma Nang umagang umalis ang huling tren Si Suko’y sanlinggo nang may koronang dilim At nilalangaw ang bagong-huling hito’t pehe At may limang naglilimas sa maputik na palengke. Nang umalis ang treng kinakalawang May natuklasang walong bangkay sa parang; May kalabaw pang biglang tumawid sa riles At hinimatay ang limang balo sa bukid. Amoy-kandila’t amarilyo ang mga gusgusing kapilya At ang panadero’y kinakapos sa arina. Nang umalis ang tren sa estasyon Gumagapang sa buntis nang uhay ang mga tipaklong; May galít na ngiping kumakagat sa gutóm na dila, May nagtitiis lumunok na lamang ng laway at luha. Maraming lumuluhod sa namumutlang santo Marami ding kumakatok sa saradong munisipyo At dumarami ang nakikinig sa mahabang talumpati Ng kumander hinggil sa tunggalian ng mga uri. Nang umalis ang tren palunsod May limang pasahero’t walong sundalong pagód; Hinayang na hinayang ang mga komersiyante, Pinunit ng meyor ang sampaldong tiket na libre. Mga paslit lamang ang nananaginip habang naghahatid: Babalik ang tren, ang tren ay babalik. (Retrato at Rekwerdo, 1984) Fuji Xerox’s Ricky Munoz with a copy of Train of Thought LRTA Administrator Mel Robles expresses his joy for the success of Tulaan sa Tren Rio Alma reads “Huling Biyahe,” the first time he has read before an audience since the 1980s Krip Yuson reads his poem “Babala” Conchitina Cruz reads “Dear City” 7 BOOKBUZZ Gatas Tisoy: The Magic of Fresh Milk Hacienda Macalauan, the dairy capital of Laguna By Alvin J. Buenaventura 8 mga Mata by Alvin B. Yapan, Apókripos by Jerry B. Gracio and Pagluwas by Zosimo Quibilan, Jr. Quibilan. Quibilan’s Pagluwas, a collection of short-short fiction, won the award plus a check for P50,000. The LIKHAAN: UP Institute of Creative Writing which organizes UP Writers Night, thought better of expanding the occasion in line with the celebration of the University of the Philippines’ centenary. The second issue of the Likhaan Journal, edited by National Artist Virgilio S. Almario, was also launched this year, and contains the works of writers such as Abdon M. Balde, Jr., Carlos Piocos, Mookie Katigbak, Marne Kilates and many others. Organized in part by UP Writers Club, the Writers Night, which concludes the event, is also a gathering for budding writers. Most of them were the performers themselves, all providing temporary entertainment to men and women who become once again their supers and professors when school days return. There were also remarkable performances by renowned artists Susan Fernandez, Romancing Venus, Cynthia Alexander, Giniling Festival and the ventriloquist, Ony Carcamo. Performance Poets GP Abrajano and Siege Malvar hosted the event. After this year’s jam-packed celebration, we definitely have much to look forward to in the years to come. After all, with the expansion of the UP Writers Night to UP Writers Day, we just know that things move in one general direction (and hopefully the same goes for the rest of Philippine Literature): that of getting better.- Maria EJ Pia V. Benosa T he NBDB and Hacienda Macalauan, Inc. are partnering to give Filipino children a healthy body and sound mind, as HMI commits to provide young participants of NBDB storytelling sessions Gatas Tisoy milk during NBDB-sponsored events. Finalists and judges for the 2008 MadrigalGonzalez First Book Award Benefits from Milk Milk contains nine essential nutrients which benefit children, teens, and adults. Calcium builds strong bones and teeth. Experts from Boston University also discovered that children and teenagers, who consume at least three servings of low-fat milk and dairy products a day, lower their risk of becoming obese in adulthood. The protein in milk, whey and casein are called “high-quality proteins,” which makes the creamy liquid the best muscle builder in the world. Folk singer Susan Fernandez serenades the audience Hacienda Macalauan, home of Gatas Tisoy Mookie Katigbak reads her poem Alitaptap Storytellers read Jean LeePatindol’s Mama’s House, Papa’s House Photos by Glenn Malimban L ast December, writers drove off to Diliman, postponing thinking about the economics of living even for just one day, to celebrate their craft with other writers and artists at the UP Writers Day. The 2008 festivities began even before the actual Writers Day on December 5. Weeks before, an exhibit had been put up at the Faculty Center of the College of Arts and Letters commemorating the many years of the UP National Writers Workshop. The concept this year was homecoming, and most of the activities were aimed at bringing together all who have been fellows in the Workshops, as well as young writers who will eventually gain admission to the advanced UP NWW held yearly in Baguio. On December 5, Dr. Gémino H. Abad, Professor Emeritus at the UP College of Arts and Letters, gave a lecture for the last instalment of the UP ICW’s Centennial Panayam Series. His talk, “The Poem is the Real: A Poetics”, which is about the importance of poetry as a signifier of reality, gained an audience of students, writers, artists from other fields, literary critics and other colleagues. It has also been a tradition to award the Madrigal-Gonzales Best First Book Award at the annual Writers Night. This year, to give people in the audience a chance to hear about the writing process and the difficulties that authors had to endure before the publication of their works, the finalists were invited to a round-table discussion, moderated by Palanca awardwinning writer Kristian Cordero. The finalists were: Naglalayag (Silent Passage) by Irma V. Dimaranan, Ang Sandali ng Photos courtesy of UP-ICW ‘Night Becomes Day at THE UP Writers DAY 2008 Contributors to the 2008 Likhaan Journal: (from left) Vim Nadera, Jose Dalisay, National Artist Virgilio Almario, Susan Lara, Marne Kilates, Angelo Lacuesta, Mookie Katigbak, Abdon Balde, Charlson Ong, Carlos Piocos, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, and Roland Tolentino. Nestled in the pristine foothills of Mt. Makiling, Hacienda Macalauan (www. haciendamacalauan.com) is currently home to more two hundred Freshian Sahiwals dairy cows. Owner-manager Eduardo Jose Soriano imported the initial herd via airplane from Australia. Soriano is a veteran of San Miguel and an expert in the dairy industry. His family brought to generations of milk lovers Magnolia’s “Choco-Vim.” Now, his low-fat fresh milk is marketed as Gatas Tisoy. Hacienda Macalauan, Inc. (HMI) partners with NBDB In an interview with BOOKWATCH, Soriano said that “it’s important for the baby (calf) to drink its mother’s milk early on because this first milk known as colostrum contains antibodies that will protect the calf from diseases later on.” From an initial 100 heads, the farm doubled its herd through artificial insemination and the care of its dedicated veterinarians. Intensely innovative, Soriano is pushing for a fully operational Embryo Transfer laboratory. Through HMI’s marketing officer Sandra Yulo, packs of delicious Gatas Tisoy were distributed for free to participants of the Pistang Kwentuhan at the UP Bahay ng Alumni. As part of the National Book Development Board’s 12th Philippine Book Development Month celebrations, the agency invited GMA 7 broadcasters Rhea Santos and Lyn Ching-Pascual to conduct storytelling for children at the festival. GMA 7 newscasters and TV hosts Rhea Santos and Lyn Ching-Pascual take turns as storytellers to read to pre-school children of Taytay, Rizal and Batangas City at the “Storytelling Festival (Pistahang Kentuhan)” organized by the NBDB at AT3 at the U.P. Bahay ng Alumni on November 21. Rhea gave life to the story “Si Langgam at si Tipaklong” while Lyn told the story “Bakit Asul ang Langit?” Gatas Tsinoy provided milk to kids who participated in the event. Good books for a healthy mind, quality milk for a healthy body Nuts Doughnut chain, Java Man chain, Mario’s, Dulcinea, Manila Golf and Country Club, Manila Hotel, Manila Peninsula, Crowne Plaza, and Hyatt Hotel, among others. Prior to the NBDB partnership, HMI milk fed 9,602 children in DepEd’s Food for School Program and 11,060 children in the Department of Social Welfare’s feeding program. HMI’s commitment to high quality and excellence did not go unnoticed as they were conferred accolades like the 2005 Philippine Marketing Excellence Award and the National Shopper’s Choice Award. HMI’s clientele includes The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Bo’s Coffee chain, Krispy Kreme chain, Go Aside from the standard low-fat fresh milk, enjoy the magic of Gatas Tisoy in chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla flavors. HMI is open for educational visits and invites would be distributors to contact Sandra Yulo at 811-5656 or Peter Flores at 0915-974-7519. 9 BOOKCLUB DIARIES Student NBDB Book Club participants with KUTING members Of Heartbreaks and Adolescence DECEMBER 2008 January 2009 It was barely Christmas and already, the NBDB Book Club was gladly wallowing in heartbreak with its reading of Sawi: Funny Essays, Stories, and Poems on All Kinds of Heartbreaks last December 13 at Hooked on Books along Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City. Guests from the Fort Bonifacio High School in Makati, consisting of a number of students led by their teachers, provided a youthful account of how it is to fall for someone and have your heart broken instead. Edited by Ada Loredo, BJ Patiño and Rica Bolipata-Santos, Sawi centers on the different takes on love and the frustrations of unhappy endings that woe each of us. Loredo elaborated on the appeal of the book as a “vicarious” experience for everyone effected not only by the universality of the untiring theme of love but also by the assorted genres of poetry, short fiction and essay included in the collection with which the downsides of love were dealt with either hilarity or solemnity. Testament to the appeal of Sawi is its relative success as a bestseller and the prospect of a sequel in the works, suggestions for which were solicited from the attendees who willingly voiced their preferences and expectations. Sawi is published by Milflores Publishing Inc. and is available in bookstores nationwide.—Kristina Corren Marcelo Who doesn’t remember those awkward ‘tween years, when you starved yourself at dinner and secretly tried slimming pills to shake off stubborn baby fat? The pressure you felt when not a single boy in class had made a move to be your date three days to prom night? When you began to get insecure with a cousin your age who had more suitors and was more popular in school? Surely, writers of KUTING (Kuwentista ng mga Tsikiting) clearly remember, and they accurately illustrated the troubles, heartaches, and sappy experiences that make adolescence memorable in Bagets, a collection of short stories for young adults. The NBDB Book Club discussed the book together with members of KUTING and students of Krus na Ligas High School last January 31 at Popular Bookstore in Tomas Morato, Quezon City. KUTING members Bong Oris, Zarah Gagatiga, and Astrid Mae Tobias discussed the genre of young adult fiction, a relatively new genre in Philippine Lit. Bagets was the product of KUTING’s effort to offer young readers a local book about their own experiences. Published by UP Press, Bagets (an Anthology of Young Adult Fiction) is edited by Carla Pacis and Eugene Evasco. The book is available at the UP Press and National Book Store. 10 Bagets: An Anthology of Filipino Young Adult Fiction —Camille Dianne Mendoza The message was brief and catchy. Two short words, that relayed two different meanings: to peruse the exceptional works of Pinoy writers, and at the same time a shout-out to all Filipinos—read! Both meanings redound to one ultimate goal, so we didn’t mind the double meaning at all. Sawi editor Ada Loredo (extreme left) and writer Libay Linsangan Cantor (second from right) share their thoughts on how to turn one’s heartaches into creatively written pieces. And so with the 12th Philippine Book Development Month, the NBDB successfully got the message across to people all over the country, who participated in the activities the NBDB spearheaded last November. We flew and brought fun-filled book activities to Cebu, brought a group of Manileños on a literary and gastronomic adventure up North, stayed up all night to read an entire novel, quizzed students on how much they know about the books they read, showcased teachers’ storytelling prowess, brought book fairs to malls as our early Christmas gifts to bookworms, and made sure everyone hollered with us, ‘Read Pinoy!’ KUTING’s Bong Oris, Astrid Tobias, and Zarah Gagatiga with NBDB Executive Director Andrea Pasion-Flores Sawi is a hit among high school NBDB Book Club attendees Photos by Pia Benosa and Dianne Mendoza Sawi: Funny Essays, Stories, and Poems on All Kinds of Heartbreaks 11 Noli Me Tangere 5:30 NOVEMBER 8 1:00 Writer Edgar Samar reads Chapter 14 “Tasiong Baliw o Pilosopo” p.m. National Artist Virgilio Almario praises Jose Rizal, the novelist, during his opening lecture for the marathon reading 10:00 p.m. Fictionist Sarge Lacuesta and poet Mookie Katigbak read Chapter 25 “Elias at Salome” a.m. Fictionist Abdon Balde reads Chapter 54 “Il Buon Di Si Conosce Da Mattina” 2:00 p.m. Alitaptap Storytellers begin the Noli marathon by reading the first three chapters of the novel “Kailangang basahin si Rizal hindi dahil bayani siya, kundi dahil magaling siyang manunulat.” 2:30 p.m. p.m. High Chair poet Oliver Ortega reads “Sisa” as cellist Renato Lucas strums along p.m. Poet and Ateneo professor Danton Remoto reads Chapter 18 “Mga Kaluluwang Naghihirap” Photos by Glenn Malimban and Dianne Mendoza 7:05 3:30 p.m. Husband and wife Julius and Christine Babao play read Chapter 7 “Suyuan sa Isang Asotea” 5:15 p.m. Poet and Radioactive Sago Project’s frontman Lourd de Veyra reads Chapter 13 “Mga Banta ng Unos” a.m. Storyteller Melody Remorca gives life to Chapter 57 “Sabi-sabi at Kuro-kuro” a.m. NOVEMBER 9 a.m. Fictionist and UP-Institute of Creative Writing director Butch Dalisay reads Chapter 37 “Unang Ulap” p.m. Veteran actor Roy Iglesias moves the audience when he reads Chapter 19 “Mga Kapalaran ng Isang Guro” 9:45 a.m. Fictionist and screenwriter Jerry Gracio reads Chapter 59 “Isinumpa” 2:35 10:00 a.m. Poet Rogelio Mangahas reading Chapter 60 “Pambayan at mga Pansariling Kapakanan” 2:50 a.m. The young poets of LIRA stay awake to read Chapters 38-43 p.m. Children’s book writer and publisher Ani Almario reads Chapter 8 “Mga Alaala” 9:00 Fictionist Mario Miclat reads “Vae Victis” 6:45 a.m. Poet Becky Añonuevo reads Chapter 56 “Malaking Sakuna” 9:20 p.m. Cultural Center of the Philippines’ chair Emily Abrera reads Chapter 5 “Isang Gabing Madilim” 4:00 11:15 Storyteller Napoleon Loseo reads Chapter 28 “Sa Takipsilim” 2:40 8:45 10:15 p.m. Family of poets: Marra Lanot, Kris Lanot Lacaba, and Pete Lacaba read Chapter 26 “Sa Bahay ng Pilosopo” p.m. p.m. Stage director Njil de Mesa reads “Basilio” Poet Vim Nadera reads Chapter 4, “Erehe at Filibustero,” accompanied by musician Cesar Caleja – National Artist for Literature Virgilio S. Almario 6:30 a.m. LIRA’s Lilia Antonio reads Chapter 55 “Ang Pagbubunyag” 6:15 By Camille Dianne Mendoza 12 8:10 8:25 The Marathon Reading We’re not sure if we would’ve made it to the Guinness Book of World Records had we invited them; the event lasted approximately 24 hours. But whether it could have been a world record or not, the long reading of Noli Me Tangere was definitely one of the highlights of the 12th PBDM celebration; it was a major feat on its own in the entire Philippine Book Development Month history. It wasn’t Noli as you’ve seen, heard or read before. For one, it wasn’t required or imposed reading and everybody stayed as they pleased, unlike how you experienced it in third year high school or in your Rizal class in college. Practically everyone has read the novel, yet that day, people flocked to the Filipinas Heritage Library, to revive the power and beauty of this great Philippine novel, and experience it again on a different level. Using National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario’s exceptional translation, storytellers animatedly read aloud, poets and authors recited the chapters most meaningful for them, veteran thespians moved us with their powerful reading, a contemporary dancer and a cellist enthralled us with their accompanying performances, and surprise celebrity readers gamely read their favorite chapters. The audience, with copies of the book in hand, read along. People stayed over merienda, dinner, and midnight snacks, until breakfast and lunch the next day – an overnight festivity celebrating not Rizal the National Hero but Rizal, the great Filipino novelist. Thanks to Almario’s faithful translation, Rizal’s dream of making the novel available to the Filipino reader in a language he/she understands was realized. And for one night, Noli Me Tangere, oftentimes read for its historical value, was savored for the literary jewel that it actually is. And for that, the marathon reading last November 8 and 9 should already make a record. p.m. 7:35 p.m. Stage directors Arthur Casanova and Frank Rivera read Chapter 20 “Ang Pulong sa Tribunal” 8:40 p.m. Members of Pinoy Poets read Chapters 23 and 24 10:30 a.m. Chin-chin Gutierrez reprises her role as Maria Clara as she reads Chapters 61 and 63, “Ikakasal na si Maria Clara” and “Nagpaliwanag si Padre Damaso” 11:00 a.m. High school principal Jeanette Coroza reads the second to the last chapter “Pagtakas Hanggang Lawa” Poet Mike Coroza finally concludes the marathon reading with the novel’s Epilogue at 11:35 13 The mural on the wall of Hiyas Museum, painted by Bulacan artists, depicts the province’s colorful past and its significant contributions to the country’s history and culture. Hiyas Museum in Malolos. Claude Tayag and wife Mary Ann welcome everyone to Bale Dutung Historian Jaime Veneracion discusses how Bulacan’s food, history, and literature are intertwined The food were served one dish at a time, our meal lasting for four hours, because Claude and Mary Ann wanted everyone to savour and appreciate every specialty served before us. The group feasts on ensaladang pakó, inasal na pugo, and lumpiang ubod for appetizers. The Tayags opened their house at the upper floor of the restaurant and showed us functional pieces of art made by Claude himself. The group made a short stopover at Eurobake for pasalubong and a demo on how to make the yummy inipit Bulacan’s local delicacies at Citang’s Participants view the mounted exhibit featuring National Artist for Literature UP Pampanga’s Dr. Juliet Mallari talks about the literary tradition of Pampanga and how young Kapampangan writers enliven the present literary scene Bulacan and Pampanga Virgilio Almario ulacan and Pampanga ooze with warm hospitality, yummy gastronomic treats, colorful histories, and rich literary heritage. Whatever historical controversy and conflict have been argued for decades about the relationship of the two provinces do not match the good stuff that abound there. Armed with adventurous appetites and a great passion for history and literature, a group of twenty Manileños joined the 14 NBDB and the Filipinas Heritage Library on a Food and Writing Tour of Bulacan and Pampanga last November 22. So much have been said about the cuisines of these two provinces, Pampanga being the “Food Capital of the Philippines” and Bulacan famous for its desserts and pastries, that many of us have overlooked the affluent culture worth boasting of in these provinces. Bulacan is the home of the Balagtasan, hometown to eight National Artists including Amado Hernandez and Virgilio Almario, literary giants like Francisco Balagtas and Jose Corazon de Jesus, and many more great Filipino artists. The tour’s first stopover at Hiyas Museum displays exhibits of the famous sons and daughters of the province from celebrities to revolutionary heroes and artists. There, renowned historian and Bulakeño Dr. Jaime Veneracion gave a brief lecture explaining how the culinary heritage, history, and arts of Bulacan all By Camille Dianne Mendoza Photos by Glenn Malimban and Dianne Mendoza B The Food and Literary Tour Claude signs copies of his book, Food Tour, for tour participants play a significant part in the development of the province’s literature. From Hiyas Museum, the group proceeded to Citang’s Eatery for brunch where we sampled the kakanins and pastries Bulacan is famous for, especially the goto and pancit, anyone who’s been to Aling Citang’s little carinderia rave about. From there, the group dropped by Eurobake to watch a demo of how the local delicacy inipit is made before proceeding to Pampanga. Artist chef Claude Tayag and wife Mary Ann welcomed us to their home and restaurant Bale Dutung in Angeles City for lunch. Bale Dutung, which means wooden house in Kapampangan, is a restaurant, house, and museum of sorts. Claude, who apart from the many other things he does, is also a writer, told us that what defines Pampanga cuisine is the “linamnam.” Thus, we savored the linamnam of his version of inasal na pugo, ensaladang pako and lumpiang ubod. Our lunch lasted for four hours because Claude and Mary Anne served one dish at a time, instead of the usual smorgasbord Pinoys are used to, so that we could savor and appreciate each cuisine. UP Pampanga’s Dr. Juliet Mallari also joined us for lunch to talk about Kapampangan literature. Participants of the trip went back to Manila with a full stomach, plenty of pasalubong, and a bagful of new insights about the provinces. 15 e h t f o s t h g i Other Highl M D B P h 12t NBDB executive director Andrea Pasion-Flores and USC’s Ching Remedio Dr. Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo lectures on creative non-fiction How to Read Lecture Series Textbook R & D What better way for lovers of literature to have greater appreciation for the poems, essays, and stories they read than by having authors themselves teach them how to better understand literary works. Teachers and students alike attended the four-part lecture series, where some of the biggest names in Philippine Literature: Gémino Abad (poetry in English), Jose Y. Dalisay (English fiction), Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo (creative non-fiction), and Vim Nadera (Philippine poetry), discussed techniques on how to read and teach the different literary genres. With the many issues surrounding the quality of instructional reading materials, the NBDB invited former DepEd undersecretary Dr. Isagani Cruz and Instructional Materials Council Secretariat Director Socorro Pilor to talk about the importance of research and development in textbook publishing for private and public school textbooks. Lost in Translation Prizewinning fictionist Jose Dalisay talks about the elements of fiction With over 170 languages in the country, translating publishing works should be considered a worthwhile endeavor in Philippine book publishing. Prizewinning translator and poet Marne L. Kilates discussed the losses and gains in translating, and how translator and translatee both “profit in meaning and understanding.” Writers’ Rights Sycip Law’s Atty. Vicente Amador gave an audience of publishers and authors the basics on copyright, royalties, and other fees. How Writers Can Break into the International Market Penguin Publishing’s Ariel Balatbat, Random House’s Rino Balatbat, and Simon and Schuster’s Jenny Javier – Philippine representatives of the biggest international publishing houses – took part in a panel discussion to give Philippine writers tips on how they can get published abroad. Poet Vim Nadera gets questions and reactions from participants Book exhibit at the Publishing 101 Fair McCann-Erickson’s Emily Abrera presents publishers with innovative ways to sell books Market-based Selling for Publishers With other products and foreign titles to compete with, how do local publishers get the attention of their target market to buy locally-published books? McCann Erickson Philippines’ Emily Abrera provided participants of the lecture innovative ways on how to creatively sell their books, in the midst of tough competition and a world in recession. Publishing 101: Academic Publishing Conference The NBDB partnered with the University of San Carlos-CHED Zonal Research Division in Cebu City to hold Publishing 101: Academic Publishing Fair for Visayas and Mindanao-based schools and publishers. More than a hundred participants were taught the basics in academic and commercial publishing, with executives from the biggest commercial and academic publishing houses as speakers. Book Fairs at the Ayala Malls The NBDB and members of the Philippine Booksellers Association, Inc. (PBAI) treated bookworms to an early Christmas treat, when they organized pre-Christmas book fairs at the TriNoma from November 10 to 14 and the Ayala Center Cebu from November 28 to 30. NBDB partners for the 12th Philippine Book Development Month are the Filipinas Heritage Library, Ayala Malls, Manila Bulletin, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Book Development Association of the Philippines, Philippine Booksellers Association Inc., Philippine Association of Educational Publishers, Philippine Bible Society, C & E Publishing, Central Books, A-Z Direct Marketing, National Book Store, Yuchengco Museum, Fuji Xerox Philippines, Vibal Publishing, Adarna House, Anvil Publishing, and Cebu Daily News. 16 Participants of the storytelling and Art of Folk contests in the Visayas Nikki Gil surprises mall-goers with a storytelling treat Book fair at the Ayala Center Cebu Winners of the Book Marathon with their teachers and loved ones during the grand finals at the TriNoma Storytelling and Book Marathon Contests Private and public school students and teachers from the National Capital Region and the Visayas joined the storytelling and book marathon contests the NBDB organized in celebration of the 12th PBDM. As early as September, the NBDB and the Filipinas Heritage Library already started with preliminary elimination rounds for the Storytelling contest for teachers and the children’s book marathon. Fourteen English and Filipino elementary and high school teachers from public and private schools were invited to join the storytelling contests, where teachers showcased their storytelling skills and read from Philippine-authored books. Twenty-two elementary school students from various schools joined the Book Marathon contest, where they were quizzed on how much they know about Philippineauthored children’s books. The grand finals were held at the TriNoma Mall for participants in the NCR, while Ayala Center Cebu hosted the grand finals in the Visayas. During the grand finals at the TriNoma, Get Caught Reading celebrity endorser Nikki Gil surprised mall goers, when she treated them to a special storytelling session at the mall’s activity area. Nikki read Rene Villanueva’s well-loved classic Tiktaktok at Pikpakbum to mall-goers and students of the Brgy. Calamansi Day Care Center in Caloocan City. Winners of the contests BOOK MARATHON 1ST place - Eliezl M. Montemayor, Mapulang Lupa Elementary School 2ND place - Joshua Martin L. Kalaw, Elizabeth Seton School 3RD place - Lyza Del P. Natividad, Kids Land Christian School STORYTELLING CONTEST NCR 1ST place - Rosemarie Rada Vasquez, Colegio San Agustin 2ND place - Katherine Paulette B. Colonia, Mapulang Lupa Elementary School 3RD place - Napoleon N. Loseo, Manuyo Elementary School VISAYAS Winner- Gleah T. Sevilleno, Mandaue City School for the Arts ART OF FOLK (VISAYAS) Winner – Mandaue City School for the Arts The winners received cash prizes and gift checks from the Ayala Malls and National Bookstore. 17 READALERT C hildren’s stories are fun to read. Children have an innate love for stories; they are always delighted to explore their imaginations through reading and listening to stories. Tell a child that you have a story and he’ll surely be enthusiastic and excited to listen. His eyes would light up in anticipation of the adventures the simple words bring. I remember hearing a mother share how her children would always ask her to tell stories at night before going to sleep. The children love hearing them and would always ask for more stories. There even came a time when the mother made up stories of her own out of the 18 lizard up on the ceiling, the ants on the floor, the cat meowing, the dog barking, or the fish in the aquarium. Imagine how the simple and ordinary (like the lizard) can make one good story. Doctor-writer, Luis Gatmaitan, has written several children’s books, many of them are award-winning. A lot of his stories were about his young patients; he wrote the funny yet enlightening Duglit, Ang Dugong Makulit and the very inspiring Isang Dosenang Sapatos. A writer by heart, Dr. Gat, as his friends call him, writes heartwarming stories depicting how extraordinary young characters in his stories overcome hardships, such as illnesses, while maintaining positive outlook in life. your guide to the city’s little book havens Popular Bookstore is located along Tomas Morato Avenue, Quezon City Popular Bookstore boasts of hard-to-find titles they import directly from abroad POPULAR BOOKSTORE: One Family’s Legacy By Maria E. J. Pia V. Benosa I Photos by Dianne Mendoza By Glenn L. Malimban The NBDB regularly organizes storytelling events in line with their readership campaign program. The NBDB’s Get Caught Reading endorsers are often invited as the featured storytellers in venues like daycare centers, public libraries, and malls. Active on these events are Karylle, Miriam Quiambao, Nikki Gil, Lyn Ching-Pascual, Rhea Santos, and Christine Bersola-Babao. There are a lot of children’s stories written by Filipinos and they are best for storytelling to children. The NBDB often recommend the use of Filipino-authored children’s books in these events. There are plenty of stories which are equally good as, if not better than, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’ or ‘Tarzan’. Some of the NBDB-GCR endorsers even venture into writing children’s books, writing from their childhood experiences and for the sheer joy of telling stories to kids: Christine Babao has already written three books: “Bryan”, “Basura Monster”, and “Christine.” Award-winning actress Maricel Laxa created a superhero, “Superbenj,” inspired by her own son, who underwent heart surgery. TV Host and newscaster Rhea Santos is also considering writing her own children’s books. Among the Hollywood celebrities who have written books for kids are Bill Cosby, Jamie Lee Curtis, Whoopi Goldberg, Bette Midler, Dolly Parton, Madonna, Will Smith, and John Travolta. This proves that writing stories for kids is fulfilling. Writers may write a book thinking of a child, own experiences, or impart lessons learned. Others say writing a children’s book is part of the process of healing. I’m no longer a child but I still like to read children’s stories. In bookstores, I would browse different titles of children’s books, or read for hours at home old books I had as a kid. There is something uplifting reading them. The stories are simple, entertaining, and of course, funny yet always offer lessons about life. Above all, they make you forget about life’s heartaches, even for a moment. Take time to read children’s stories to the kids in your life. Sometimes, for an adult, being happy is as simple as having a child’s heart. Photo by Daniel Tan A Child at Heart BOOKSTOP t used to be that when people needed books for school or were itching to get their hands on upbeat, phenomenal and forbidden reads, they would scoot over to authentic book shops in Old Manila, and only then would the digging begin. But today the old ways of the trade are gone, and with the advantage of having the latest technology in the inventory and delivery systems, it is but natural for customers to flock, and even hang out, at the bigger, more efficient book superstores in the city. Some, however, like to keep things the old way. A true gem in the world of Literature, Popular Bookstore has had its own share of a colorful past grounded in some of the most important periods in Philippine history. It was opened shortly after World War II in 1946 by Joaquin Po and his three younger brothers, Alfredo, Vicente and Jesus, wanting to provide quality textbooks and other reading materials to engineering students at the Mapua Institute of Technology, and other schools at the University Belt. The four brothers, as is common with the Chinese, are skilled businessmen—thus, before the actual structure was built at Doroteo Jose St., they had begun peddling in carts books and magazines they bought at the docks in Manila. Later on, as the business boomed, Popular started importing pocketbooks and textbooks from abroad. What they became more known for later on however, was their varied selection of rare and progressive books. These days, though their shelves carry an eclectic mix of New Age books, cookbooks, books on Art and many others, traces of their liberal past are still visible on the racks. Some of the books are on literary criticism, poetry, feminism, Marxist thought and postmodernism, among others. The role of these books was maximized in the most tumultuous of times. In the 1950s, Joaquin Po was questioned and tortured by authorities because Popular was the favorite bookstore of nationalist writer Amado V. Hernandez. His release had to be campaigned for by the media and after a stretch of months, the government eventually gave in. Years later Martial Hardcore bookworms will get more than great bargains on prices from the discount shelves of Popular Law prohibited the continuous operation of radical bookstores across the country. But Joaquin Po was firm on his support for underground activists, and advocated the education of the people in political studies. Fortunately the consequences for this were not as rash, Po was invited by the military to answer questions, and after giving a statement that he sold the kinds of books he did because he’s a capitalist, and that these were the titles that sold well, he was released. Popular Bookstore relocated to Tomas Morato Avenue in Quezon City in 2001. Here, they are able to host functions and other events, such as NBDB Book Club Meetings, in the wide space on their top floor. Popular is now being managed by the daughter of Joaquin Po, the artist Dina Po, along with her sisters Jackie P. Co and Katherine P. Palomera. Though the change in location has proved a radical deviance from the antiquated feel of Manila, students and academics have not ceased to seek books in the comforts of Popular. After all, this is one landmark only waiting to be spurred again by the annals of history. 19 By Maria E. J. Pia V. Benosa In the world of books, celebrity is when, without the added fuss of checking stocks, a store clerk can lead you immediately to specific shelves after you had just given an author’s name. Or when on ordinary days, you, the writer receives in the mail gifts from fans like fruitcake, the latest Twilight books and more surprisingly, as a consequence of posting online that your current device is malfunctioning: a computer monitor in the old one’s stead. Or better yet, it’s when a party is funded and thrown for you by supporters— not even because it’s your birthday, but in celebration of your thirteenth year anniversary in the writing business. Really, who has the time to do these things in this country? Such are life’s rewards for bestselling Tagalog romance novelist Martha Cecilia, who hides her pride in ladylike laughs and blushes as she recalls stories of the craziest things her fans had done for her in the past. Among her friends and colleagues in the publishing industry, she is simply known as Babes, a nickname derived from her real name, Maribeth dela Cruz. Her second child, the real Martha Cecilia, is all grown up now and teaches in preschool. 20 Setting up the Pen Martha did not set out to be a writer of novels. She took up Management at the University of the East in the 1970s, but dropped out on her fourth year because then, she was also part of a small construction firm. “I have absolutely no regret,” she says, “because what I knew then about management, I was actually learning more at work than at school.” Secretly though, she says it was probably the military service classes for women True to Life Definitely, Martha Cecilia writes what she knows. She makes use of her own life experiences, as well as friends’, for her stories. For example, she shares with us how a single letter from a man in her past had inspired many of her books. Though they did not end up together, Martha reads the letter to this day, taking it from her treasure trove every so often, and gets either a good laugh out of it, or a story. “’Pag naiyak ako sa kuwento ko, maiiyak din ang reader ko. ‘Pag natakot ako, matatakot din siya. ‘Pag natawa ako, sigurado tatawa din siya.” However, Martha’s characters and storylines beg to differ. She says each of her heroines is a tweaked version of herself, and every guy always of an alpha male vibe—stable and, of course, irresistible, even if only in the page. It is actually said that Martha’s books are one of the first to deviate from the practice of other Tagalog romance novels (which derive themselves from early Tagalog comics): where vengeance is a must, and she who comes from rags blossoms into princess-hood later on. Her book Dugtungan for example, attempts to topple the usual stereotype of women, because early on the heroine is presented as heavy with child. “I try hard at grounding the situations in the real world, only with fewer problems, because it’s for escape that readers come to us. Should I really give them more things to worry about?” she asks. Living like Royalty Photos by Pia Benosa Romance TheQueen of that turned her off from college. When the construction company had to shut off during Martial Law, Martha was forced to look for work in other places (Carnation Philippines, now Nestle), and ventured into networking, direct selling, and other ‘sidelines’ pragmatic moms excel in. So when did the actual writing come into the picture? Martha said that as a child, she had always loved to read, write and draw. After leaving her hometown Dapitan when she was nine, she had to move from place to place with her mother in Manila. Once, she recalls, they got to live in a house in Natib St., Cubao, where neighbors were the likes of Nora Aunor, Artemio Marquez and other directors of the time. “I was really fond of those people, so I watch the movies they make, too. But after watching, what I feel is that I can write better stories,” she says. Still, it wasn’t until many years later, in 1994, that she became driven enough to produce a manuscript. By then, she had read the books of American romance writers Brenda Joyce, Sandra Brown, Stella Cameron and Barbara Cartland. But the bigger picture was this: she and her husband were raising four kids, Jose Paolo, Martha Cecilia, Nina Martinne and Juan Miguel, all still very young and in school. “When I was a beginning writer, I was really doing it for the money,” Martha admits. She tells the story of how her first finished manuscript, Dugtungan mo ang Isang Magandang Alaala, was really just something she wrote out of desperation. “I had four kids then and I was missing my period. It was making me crazy!” she laughs. Fortunately for Martha, her editors immediately liked her work. Her first letter of acceptance even commented on how she seemed to be writing in the tradition of Judith McNaught—whom she hadn’t read at the time. Since then Martha has written over a hundred books (she can’t even remember the exact number), including several series like Kristine and Sweetheart, with twenty books or more in each of them. When writing these days, Martha says she actually has to lay down all her books so she could be reminded of what she already wrote to avoid repetition of details in the newer works. Martha has taken a pause in writing these days. A thorn had just been taken from her throat: daughters Martha and Nina now have careers in education, while Jose Paolo and Juan Miguel have been engaged for a while with their own writing activities, both in books and in media. Martha does not want to force herself into writing, because when she does, it has to be from a trembling surge of emotions, and she has to be in a really quiet environment. She can’t seem to write with music around. That is why as of late, Martha writes only because she has an intended message to deliver to her readers. These readers, whom she meets regularly, on days like her 13th Anniversary Celebration last October 2008, or more casually as friends hanging out, continue to inspire her to improve her craft and to make longer, better, more mature stories. Her Sweetheart series, for example, was inspired by fan mail from a fifteen-year-old girl in Mindoro. “But that was back then! Imagine how many more fifteen-year-olds are out there right now and are writing to me in their spare time,” she exclaims. Besides having inspired her own sons to write, Martha is also proud of her protégés—friends and fans who surprise her by showing her their own manuscripts, though she admits she needs more time to read them because they come in such amazing numbers. She is very meticulous in the criticism of these works because, she admits, “It’s the same stories being told over and over again. The difference only comes from how you turn the familiar patterns around—how you weave the Bestselling author Martha Cecilia, who turns 54 this May, has published over one hundred books in the span of her thirteen-year writing career. Martha Cecilia’s fans come from different walks of life. There are engineers, colegialas, moms and others, who are great friends to this day. Her website, www.geocities.com/ eirycat, is maintained by fans. Martha has been friends with her publisher, Segundo Matias, Jr., for over a decade now. In the 2007 NBDB Readership Survey, Romance ranks number 2 (33%) in the top 5 kinds of non-school books that Filipinos read. The Bible ranks number 1 at 67%. Martha has released 73 titles, including the popular series Kristine and Sweetheart, and published 109 books. The sales figure of the top three book retailers in the country shows over 200,000 copies of Martha Cecilia books sold in 2008, making Martha one of the bestselling authors in the country, along with Bob Ong of Visual Print Enterprises. words.” According to Martha, who is a naturalized Bulakeña, language, this weaving of words, is very important in the romance genre because once you take away a word and replace it with another that’s unfitting, you take away the very romance you wanted to write about in the first place. Martha, then, does not keep to herself what she knows about craft. “After all,” she says, “style cannot be copied. I’m just teaching other people how to write, primarily—how they are to overcome initial difficulties such as their anxieties to finish up manuscripts.” Her own sons give her away though. “’Pag pinuri ka ni Mama, maniwala ka. Kasi mahal ang papuri niya,” they say, laughing. Dealing with Celebrity In 1997, through the initiative of Precious Hearts Romances General Manager Jun Matias, Martha and two other popular writers of the time, Amanda and Hilda Amor, went to Hong Kong to launch their new titles. The presence of fans there was so overwhelming, that the function had to be transferred from a conference room in a mall, into the atrium itself. The three writers even had to be surrounded by their own security. Talk about a real mall tour! On a regular Monday Martha gets fan mail that says, “I read Substitute Bride again, for the umpteenth time, and what do you know, I still feel very much the same way when I first read it,” and her day is made. On other days she spends time with her family: her husband is engaged in business, and their children enjoy watching with them TV shows like Criminal Minds, House M.D., CSI and many others—which is also why she wishes to pursue writing thriller novels in the future. “The reason why this whole thing has been so rewarding for me is probably because I know how to take care of people, friends—and I see them as that, not just readers or fans. I tell them that ‘My friendship has no floors, no ceilings, and no walls’,” she shares. True enough, long-time friend and publisher Jun Matias enters the room toward the end of our interview and tells more stories about Martha, plus news that some of her books are again, for the nth time, up for reprinting. Long live the queen! 21 her childhood heroine In spite of breaking into mainstream TV and film since her debut role as Maria Clara in the National Commission for Culture and the Arts’ adaptation of Noli Me Tangere, she has remained brooding and enigmatic over the years. I imagine each time the set wraps up and her stage performances end, she goes back to her enchanting world. What else could explain her intact sensibilities, her pursuit to safeguard the environment and uphold our indigenous heritage? Before she graced the screen in the memorable roles she portrayed in film and television and gained recognition for her efforts to preserve the environment and our cultural heritage, Chinchin Gutierrez was a toddler in nursery school who read fairy tales to classmates during siesta time and dreamt of saving the lives of many just like the audacious heroine of her favorite story. Chin-chin fondly recalls her first years in school, when during breaktime, she’d pick her favorite book, The 1001 Arabian Nights, and read to classmates the story of Scheherazade. “There was urgency in the story. It meant life and death for the women of that time. (She) was a voice that represented lives. (Her story shows that) what you do can affect lives.” Defying the norms of her time, Scheherazade saved the lives of many women by marrying the ruthless King and educating him about morality and kindness through the stories and books she read. Chin-chin’s grandfather, Solomon Arnaldo, was one of the first Library Science students in the University of the Philippines and was director of the UNESCO in its early years in the Philippines. Chin-chin’s mother, a former nun, took up Fine Arts in college, while her father has a PhD in Botany. “All the books that they have collected from all those years (of study), I lived to see in our library at home.” “Even simple stories like fairy tales give you a multi-sensory glimpse of a culture in a very internal way. You become more sensitive and specific about relating to everyday life; it shapes the way you think. It gives you a chance to open your mind to so many options and possibilities that may not normally happen in a very linear way of living out your life,” says Chin-chin. The stories she read as a little girl would make an indelible mark on her, that years later, although she did not intend or plan to do so, she would be an advocate of many causes and her works as an artist would affect the lives of many. Chin-chin Gutierrez How the books and stories Chin-chin grew up reading made a real life heroine out of her By Camille Dianne S. Mendoza heroes and received the 2004 The Outstanding Women in Nation’s Service (TOWNS) Award. her latest advocacy As one of the latest additions to the NBDB’s Get Caught Reading campaign endorsers, readership promotion is now an addition to Chin-chin’s many advocacies. Chin-chin takes daily commuters of the LRT in a refreshing poetic ride with her captivating readings of Nick Joaquin’s The Innocence of Solomon, Alain Russ Dimzon’s Munting Inday, and Marra PL Lanot’s Quiapo, which are regularly played in LRT stations. Chin-chin was one of the celebrities who took part in the Tulaan sa Tren project of the NBDB and the Light Rail Transit Authority. A poet herself, she looks up to Filipino poets like Nick Joaquin and Edith Tiempo. It’s a good thing Chin-chin remembers her own poems by heart. When their house burned down a few years ago, her journals containing her poems got burned to ashes along with her collection of books. Chin-chin is grateful that friends send her copies of some of the poems she no longer memorizes. During the 12th Philippine Book Development Month celebration, Chin-chin reprised her Maria Clara role by reading the last two chapters of Noli Me Tangere during the overnight Marathon Reading of Rizal’s novel. Reading the Noli and playing Maria Clara for her first professional performance was very memorable for Chin-chin. “Without this book, I probably would not have experienced performing. It was just like an initiation. (I got to work with the likes of ) Rolando Tinio, Tony Mabesa, Ruben Rustia, and Ishmael Bernal. It was too significant for me to ignore–the investigative process that goes with it, our Filipino identity, our Filipino soul.” “Books and the experience of reading build cultures. It’s a way to build culture in a very intimate way.” Chin-chin Chin-chin reads Jose F. Lacaba’s Edad Medya (Anvil Publishing) Watching Chin-chin Gutierrez play eccentric roles on TV and in movies, listening to her ardently talk about caring for nature in lectures and interviews, with her goddess-like features and soft voice enthralling audiences, I’ve somehow believed that she was actually a forest nymph who grew up with fairies. It wasn’t until this interview that I found out that Chin-chin actually had an ordinary childhood in Bicol, and what made the difference was that she and her brother were raised by their grandmother, in a house filled with books. Photo by JAY ALONZO voice in the desert 22 Chin-chin’s calling to be Mother Nature’s ambassador started ten years ago, when fellow artist friends organized an environmental concert. “Bringing what I feel and what I think into action, together with others, is something manifested from reading about those heroes,” she says. Since then, local and international recognitions for her efforts to preserve the environment added to her already numerous acting accolades. Aside from that, she is also known as a “defender of the country’s cultural heritage” by helping preserve our indigenous roots through her works as an artist. Her album, “Uyayi: A Collection of Philippine Lullabies,” received the 2004 Catholic Mass Media Award (CMMA) as Best Secular Album. She graced the cover of TIMES Asia in 2003 for a feature on Asian preserving our tradition For someone as devoted to the preservation of our traditions as Chin-chin, books should also serve as useful tools to preserve our rich heritage. “We have over a hundred different languages in the country – such rich diverse, and immensely beautiful culture, which we have not really discovered and explored deep enough. We’ve lost the content of our oral tradition.” Being the spiritual and introspective person that she is, Chin-chin cites the Bible, the Koran, The Granth Sahib (Sacred Book of the Sikh Religion), Philippine Materia Medica authored by her father Dr. Hermes Gutierrez (“It’s a book I glance every now and then.”), her mother Cecilia Maria Arnaldo’s book Fingerprints of an Angel: Golden Secrets of Eternal Love (for which she wrote the Foreword and was nominated for a National Book Award for Spirituality), and Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet as her favorite books. She is also currently enrolled in SAIDI School of Organizational Development. “Books and the experience of reading build cultures. It’s a way to build culture in a very intimate way,” remarks Chin-chin. Chin-chin’s distinction as an actress who can play the most eccentric of roles is only matched by the many roles she plays in real life as an earth-keeper, cultural preserver, and reading advocate. It turns out it wasn’t the receptivity of the woods that gifted her with such deep feeling and awareness as I used to imagine, but the pages of books that nurtured her sensibility. 23 Book Collecting: A Life-Long Passion by Jonathan Best For a chosen few, book collecting is a life long avocation. Whether they collect books for their artistry, as beautiful antiques or as invaluable reference material, for each collector their library is a highly personal accomplishment. Books reflect a person’s character and deepest interests more closely than any other possessions. Whether one collects in conjunction with one’s career, area of study, hobby or sport, the book collection itself oftentimes becomes the primary interest. Information in one book leads to others, on and on, one book to the next. Each book imparts new knowledge and this in turn stimulates one’s curiosity. Over a lifetime, few passions will enrich a person as much as book collecting. Grouped together in libraries, books become a “body of knowledge” and take on added value in association with 24 their peers. A single book of poetry is fine; a complete set of a favorite writer’s work is even better. A couple of dozen books on Philippine art make a good starting collection; several hundred books, pamphlets and catalogs become a comprehensive collection. The desire to create comprehensive and unique collections is the passion that drives book collectors and dedicated librarians around the world. Collecting takes many forms. Some collectors collect simply for the beauty of a book’s design and printing. They are connoisseurs of the “book arts”. They look for fine art illustrations, unique typeface, pages crafted from handmade paper or parchment, and gold stamped lettering on fine hand tooled leather bindings. The book arts go back at least a thousand years in Western Europe and even longer in Asia. As early as the ninth century, during the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese printed copies the Diamond Sutras from hand carved wood blocks. The earliest book with extensive Filipiniana illustrations is the 1595 Boxer Codex, a bound manuscript, with a series of seventy-five color paintings, fifteen depicting pre-Spanish Filipinos in elegant regional costumes adorned with exquisite gold jewelry. Also from the late sixteenth century, the Doctrina Christiana is the first example of a book printed in the Philippines and the first in a native language. The deluxe four volume folio edition of Father Manuel Blanco’s Flora de Filipinas, published posthumously from1877-1883, is the most magnificent Philippine printed book. With over two hundred color lithographs of Philippine botanicals it is a monumental work of artistry and decorative book binding. Today there is a revival of the book arts in the country, with many Filipino artists including national artist Ben Cabrera experimenting with handmade paper and custom illustrations. Most Filipino book collectors collect historical Filipiniana subject matter, or famous Filipino authors. A first edition of the Noli Me Tangere in good condition, signed or inscribed by its author Jose Rizal is a prize any collector would love to have. However, at well over half a million pesos it would be out of reach for most. Despite the destructive effects of the tropical climate, earthquakes and wars, many works by other Filipino writers, politicians and illustrious men and women are available at much more modest prices. Manuscripts, letters, pamphlets and photographs are also valuable additions to book collections. At the Ortigas Foundation Library, we collect photographs and maps as well as books, periodicals and personal archives relating to Philippine history. Internationally, collectors specialize in just about every subject imaginable. Early medicine and science, travel and exploration, military history, erotica, ethnography, cook books and local histories are a few of the most popular subjects. Subject collecting here usually focuses on a particular period of Philippine history. Only the richest collectors or institutions can afford to collect early European travel accounts or maps of the Philippines going back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A fifty-two page anthology published in Venice in 1536, including the first accounts of Magellan’s voyage by Maximilianus Transylvanus and Antonio Pigafetta, was recently offered by a New York dealer for US$375,000. Seventeenth and eighteenth century illustrated books, atlases and Friar accounts of the islands can also fetch very high prices. The Spanish Era in the Philippines lasted until 1898 and there are thousands of books, pamphlets and newspapers here and in Spain documenting this period. The revolution against Spain and the voluminous writings of the early “propagandists” and nationalists like Jose Rizal, Apolinario Mabini and the editors of La Solidaridad newspaper are very collectable. The arrival of the Americans and subsequent Philippine American War was well documented, although mostly from an American view of point. World War II and the war in the Pacific are also eagerly collected by military buffs and historians. One of the windfalls of the fortythree year American occupation of the Philippines was books. The Americans were obsessed with documenting their “new possessions.” Dozens of books were written about the Philippines and thousands of pages of government reports were published along with invaluable sets of photographs. From the late nineteenth century onwards, photographs became an increasingly important part of documenting history, culture and personal lives. If there is one priceless legacy both the Spanish and the Americans left the Philippines it is their love of books and libraries. Budding book collectors can start out buying in-print books in their field of interest and work back in time to out-of-print and rare books as there budgets permit. Used book stores offer many wonderful finds and the internet and E-bay open up an entire world of possibilities for collectors. Avoid the more trivial coffee table books and overnight commercial publications. Try to ferret out works by serious writers and recognized scholars in their field, and get to know the high quality publishers and book dealers as well. If you travel abroad head for the book stores and buy books. Books may be heavy to carry home but if you buy wisely they will give you lasting pleasure and a lifetime of continuing education. Jonathan Best is senior consultant at the Ortigas Foundation Library in Pasig. The Ortigas Foundation Library is located at the 2nd Floor of the Ortigas Building, Meralco Avenue, Pasig City. Visit their website at www.ortigasfoundationlibrary. com.ph. 25 The Poem Is The Real: A Poetics T he real is the poem. To write the poem is to get real. The real is what we call “our world.” But our world is only our experience of it. If so, the world is only, for each one, that little time-space where we “ex-ist” or stand out as conscious beings; the world is only our consciousness of it in our experience of it. It is our only world; we have no other. A cat’s world is its own; we have no access to it: the living of it. What we call reality is only, and forever, a human reality: what we are able to perceive. The world of matter is our science; the world of spirit is that of our world’s religions. And who are “we”? – Not I, not you, not the other, it is in their interconnectedness that we are: thence, you and I and the other, and thereby we are. “To experience” anything, in consciousness of it, has from its etymology in Greek, enpeiran, and Latin, experiri, both an active and a passive sense: it is “to try or attempt, to pass through, to undergo.” The word in both Greek and Latin is associated with going on a journey, faring, meeting with chance and danger, for in setting forth nothing is certain. Such the meaningfulness of our English word “experience.” But then, it is only with words and words that, after the event – that “fundamental entity,” the experience – we again try and remember, undergo and pass through what we call our world. This other journey is verbal; it may end nowhere, the trial fail, the experiment pall. But working our language – soil and fallow of all human thought and feeling, our only ground – we invest our words with a power to evoke, to call forth, to our mind and imagination a meaningfulness that we seem to have grasped in that human event or experience: indeed, whether that event did happen, or had only been dreamed or imagined, or is only an inextricable conflation of fact and fiction; indeed, too, that we call an “event” or experience may only be a thought that seeks a clearing or a feeling that haunts. And in that finished weaved of words – the very text – our aim is to apprehend, to understand, the living of it, the full consciousness of the event or experience: its very sensation. When we speak, write, or read a word, we begin to create our world again – our world in our image, in or from our language; this is so because it is with words that we connect to reality with each nerve of perception – a filament of feeling, a spore of thought: we have no other means for connection but our words; with our words, we give a meaningful form to the feeling or thought that pulses with our grasp or apprehension of the world in our experience. And that apprehension sows our mind with images of the encompassing reality and thereby reforms our language and shapes us, forms us within. We are informed, we are formed within. To understand our experience then is with words and words to stand under a cloud broken by shafts of light from a makeshift sun. To understand, to stand under, for the immense Reality of creation is essentially, infinitely mysterious. Here is the poem, this poem, and that poem: we journey form sun to sun, then pass to night again. What we understand is not a meaning, fixed and stable, but a meaningfulness of the living of it: the very sensation of it. Yet the living of it is only one human being’s memory of it: as Eduardo Galeano says, “to remember is to pass through the heart.” And the reader, another human being, also remembers what he may have lived or passed through: the living of it as he now imagines it himself. And thus, as he reads alive, he dwells where all things live – that universal plane where his humanity always achieved, for that moment, as he reads, as he is also read. Here, indeed, on that plane, is that vibrant interconnectedness of the human community: each one immersed in a history, a culture, and a natural environment – all change, transformation, energy. The words chosen, to convey that vibrancy of interconnectedness, are cathected: that is to say, invested with mental and emotional energy. Poems are forms of thought and feeling wrought form language by an individual mind and imagination. Feeling is deeper and wider than thought: it is also the most honest part of oneself. And, as Derrida suspects, peut-etre, “perhaps, there may be forms of thought that think more than does that thought called philosophy.” The poem leaps over Derrida’s perhaps; for what is wrought there is what has been lived as imagined. We may see only what our words permit us to see, and yet, with * ICW Panayam Centennial Lectures series, UP Faculty Center, 5 December 2008. This lecture sums up earlier essays: “Poiesis: Toward the Lyric – A Way to Hear,” Tomas 10 / The Literary Journal of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies, March 2006: 54-59; “Creativity and Philippine Literature” in the University of the Philippines Forum, vol. 7, no. 3, May-June 2006; 1-3; “As Imagined as Lived: Sense for Language, Sense of Country,” Bookwatch / Quarterly Publication of the National Book Development Board, Apr-Jun 2008: 14-17 (from my Centennial Fellow lecture, in U.P. Mindanao, 29 Feb 2008) 26 imagination, we are enabled, also with words and words, to see beyond them the infinite possibilities of invention and innovation; we perceive other words, other possibilities. A POETICS So here then is my own poetics, in response, it may be, to present and future critics: Poems are forms of the imagination. The imagination has infinite possibilities of apprehending a human experience in the very living of it. Thus, my critical standpoint seeks to engage with the varicolored forms of the imagination because, for me, what is most imagined is what is most real. I would much rather go by what Wallace Stevens says of “the nobility of the imagination.” The word “criticism” and its kin, “crisis,” both come from Greek krinein, “to divide and judge”: that is, to discriminate, to perceive distinguishing features, to use good judgment. Thus, in any critical approach, from any standpoint, it is in fact much simpler, and more honest, to say just what you mean. It is also much more exciting to be free to draw from all sources of possible enlightenment: for revel and revelation. You need only choose your words with care and respect for their freight of meaningfulness. This is why I would much prefer for my standpoint not to be pinned by any label on the critical board. All labels are constrictive: formalist, feminist, Marxist, deconstructive, poststructuralist, postmodern, postcolonial, other “posts.” My chief care and concern is to rescue the living experience from the discombobulations and borborygmus of theory and ideology – to rescue the experience, as lived as imagined, even from the words that would evoke it: just as though the words themselves were a hurdle to leap over. One aspires to that state of contemplation where no words break – where one no longer has even any need for words. Only for convenience of overview, I here encapsulate certain assumptions about language, about the literary work and its form, about the writer’s playing field, and about a country’s literature as its image. The “field work” in research – that is, the reading of the poetic texts themselves over the last century, our poetry from English since Man of Earth through A Native Clearing to A Habit of Shores; our short stories through English, 1956 to 1989 so far in my field work, from Upon Our Own Ground to Underground Spirit – all that field work enabled me to clarify to myself, chiefly by the inductive method, those assumptions. The argument is as follows: About Language Particularly when the work is literary, linguistic usage is essentially translation. The word, “translation,” is from Latin transferre, translatus, meaning “to carry or ferry across.” When we write, we ferry across our words our perceptions of reality. Such working or tillage of language is work of imagination: it makes things real to the mind, for it is the mind that has imaginative power. This implies that one’s sense for language is the basic poetic sense. It is intimately bound with one’s sense of reality. As Albert Camus says, “When the imagination sleeps,” says Albert Camus, “words are emptied of their meaning.” The same tillage or cultivation of language implies that the meanings of our words do not come so much from the words themselves as from lives lived. This is why, in the critical response to literary works, the stress falls not on meaning but on meaningfulness. We translate a thought, a feeling, or an impression into the words of a language; the translation could fail. We try and choose the right words in the right order, we invent or even reinvent our words, or transform or even subvert their accepted syntax, in order that we might ferry across them our own soul’s freight without hurt. I might note here that English is already one of our Philippine languages, not regional, but national. We have used it for our own purposes for over a century now, and it is chiefly through that language, in speech and writing, that we are understood in the world outside our shores. English is already a national language like Tagalog, Cebuano, and Ilocano; that cannot be helped, it was simply inevitable, for their speakers live all over the archipelago, and even globally. Only by legislation is Tagalog-based Filipino the national language. This certainly is not to assert that Filipino is adventitious; it is an inherent aspect of our aspiration to be our own country, one people. That aspiration should be rooted in respect for all our languages and their cultivation in literature because our literature presents our image of ourselves. Personally, I believe that there is no English, no Tagalog, no Filipino: there is only one language – language itself. And that language is most manifest in our finest writers, whatever the provenance of their idiom. 27 About the Literary Work The literary work itself, without Theory, isn’t mute. The word “theory” is from Greek theoria, meaning “a way of looking.” Any theory then is only a way of looking, and essentially heuristic; none has monopoly of insight. Now then, for me, a literary work’s chief appeal is to the imagination, and the basic requirement for intimate engagement with a work of imagination is a sense for language. There in any literary work a human action, a human experience, as imagined as lived, is feigned or mimicked in language; be that human action or condition only someone’s mood or train of reflection, as in a lyric of poem, if it is then shaped or endowed with form, it becomes meaningful. Not a fixed meaning, but meaningfulness. That meaningfulness is its moral or ethical dimension. And that moral dimension raises it to a universal plane. That plane isn’t the site of eternal verities, it is the clearing of everlasting questioning. Granted a fair enough sense for language, to read an essay or a poem is first to interpret the text on its face, to deal with it by and on its own terms. The text, after all, has come to terms with itself. That close reading, attending to the form of the literary work, is the antidote to the text’s predestination, that is, the privileging of Theory over text such that text is read to conform to the theory one prefers. Such theory-bound dealing with the text is eisegesis: that interpretation of the text by reading into it one’s own ideas. The critic aspires to a reading of the text that isn’t beholden to any theoretical or ideological commitment. “To interpret” is from Latin interpretari, from interpres, agent, negotiator, interpreter. To interpret then is to present in understandable terms, as when you interpret a dream. You might say that the literary text is the dream on the page. To interpret is also to bring to realization by performance or direction, as when you play a role in the theatre. You might say that the literary text is a stage on which a moment or a life is lived. What I have in mind is first-level interpretation, for the literary work is already interpretation of a human experience, it already represents that experience by means of art. First-level interpretation then means that you present that experience again in understandable terms. You bring to realization in your mind – and in the reader’s mind – that experience as already interpreted 28 and realized by the means of art. You have to deal with those means of art. The human experience in the literary work has already been performed and directed in the text by those means of art. This is what is meant by close reading of the text. When we read a story or poem, we need to imagine the human action, the human experience, that is mimicked or simulated there. That is the form of the literary work. It is that which must direct and validate the interpretation of its content. For the form that has been wrought is that by which the content is achieved, that is, endowed with a power of meaningfulness by which we are moved. Form is the matter of art, content the matter of interpretation. When Jose Y. Dalisay, Jr. was asked whether his stories are true, he said, Yes, of course, because “on the page,” where the story is, “is the life that matters.” That life is achieved by the story’s form. In practice, it may be useful to distinguish the literary work as a work of art from the literary work as discourse. In my view, the work of art precedes the discourse. There is no meaningfulness without form; but form is achieved content; in discourse, the focus is on cultural and ideological content, but in a literary work, content is achieved by the means of art. About the Writer’s Playing Field The writer’s playing field is the field of imagination. For the writer, poem or short story is only a convenient label; when they write, they do not adhere to any fixed criteria or theory of the literary work. They only aspire to creating something unique in their playing field: they make things anew or make new things. Without the masterful use of language, no literary work can rise to the level of art. For that thing made anew, or that new thing, is the very form of human experience as imagined as lived that has been simulated by a particular use or deployment of language, a particular style. Albert Camus speaks of such style as “the simultaneous existence of reality and of the mind that gives reality its form.” We shouldn’t forget that the word “poem” is from Greek poiein, “to make.” The poem or short story is a thing made of words, an artifact. It may sometimes be claimed that “in English, we do not exist.” But of course, nor indeed in any language, except in and through the poem, where – as the poet Isabela Banzon says – “the lights mutate from artifice to real.” About a Country’s Literature as Its Image A country’s literature is its own imagination of how its people think and feel about their world and so, justify the way they live. In short, its literature is its lived ideology. In that light, our writers and scholars create our sense of country. Our writers and scholars do not proclaim their nationalism, their love of country; their works proclaim it – but of course, as with everyone else, not only their writings, but all the other things that they do. Let me make myself clearer by stressing the obvious. The things that a people do make their country. Writing is also doing, and more: those who write create a people’s sense of their country. In their writing is a people’s memory, and a people is only as strong as its memory. For one’s sense of country is basically how one imagines her; essentially then, a poetic sense: an imaginative perception of our day-to-day living in the very element of our history and culture. While it may be shared through education, the mass media, the art, and other means and institutions, our sense of country is, in the first place, personal and subjective, but that doesn’t make it any less real. It is more image that concept, more feeling than thought. Which of course is why that sense is more readily apprehensible in the artistic media – painting, film, theatre, song, the literary text. The literary text, as language purposefully worked, may be the clearest expression of one’s sense of country; in that light, a poet’s sense for language – whatever the language he has mastered – may be his most intimate sense of his country’s landscape and his people’s lived lives. For the writer, one’s country is what one’s imagination owes its allegiance to. Gemino H. Abad 20 October, 19, 30 November 2008 U.P. Faculty Center, Rm. 1062 Dr. Gemino H. Abad delivered this lecture as part of the University of the Philippines Institute of Creative Writing Centennial Panayam last December 5, 2008 at the Pulungang C.M. Recto, Bulwagang Rizal, College of Arts and Letters, UP Diliman, where Dr. Abad is professor emeritus. He edited the landmark anthologies of Philippine poetry Man of Earth, A Native Clearing, and A Habit of Shores. Dr. Abad also edited Upon Our Own Ground (Volumes 1 and 2), which collects the best short stories written by the country’s finest writers in the 20th century. HOT OFF THE PRESS Walong Diwata ng Pagkahulog (Anvil Publishing) By Edgar Samar “Binubuksan ng nobelang ito ang panibagong yugto sa pagsusulat ng nobela. Malayo na ito sa tradisyon ng mga romantisista at modernista, na laging mabigat sa dibdib ang paglalahad ng naratibo. Sa akdang ito wala nang imposible sa materyal at maging sa pamamaraan ng paglalahad nito. Tinatangka nitong lampasan ang wika ng isipang malay, at wala o hindi nangyari. Ikinakatuwa ko ang mga akdang tulad nito na nangangahas magpakilala ng pagbabago sa paglalahad ng naratibo.” -Jun Cruz Reyes The novel won the 2005 Writers Prize and is published by Anvil Publishing. Available in major bookstores. The Promise of the Nation: Gender, History, and Nationalism in Contemporary Ilokano Literature (Ateneo Press) by Roderick G. Galam The Promise of the Nation examines the construction of the nation in contemporary Ilokano literature in the intersections of gender, history, and nationalism by tracking Ilokano literature’s political, material, and socio-cultural connections and examining its intervention in Philippine socio-political discourse, history, and historiography. It attends to and addresses the limitations, contradictions, and potential constituting Ilokano writers’ efforts to (re)make a Filipino nation, efforts made in the context of Spanish and American imperialism, neocolonialism, martial law, militarization, urban squatting, patriarchy, migrant work, and the marginalization of ethic peoples. Finally, the book argues that the writers’ project of realizing what Caroline Hau has evocatively called the nation’s “promise of community” may be more powerfully imagined and grasped were nationalism transformed by feminism; indeed if we dream this nation, see and seek its promise and possibility with a feministcommunitarian imagination. “Roderick Galam offers a though-provoking and profoundly feminist critique of the formation of the ‘Ilokano nation’ in the imagination of the best contemporary novelists and poets writing in Ilokano today. Those who dare speak authoritatively of the “Filipino nation” now must engage with these writers’ vision of nation and nationhood and their contribution to a truly nationalist discourse on Philippine society, culture, and history” reviews Lilia Quindoza Santiago. For details on how to order, call the Ateneo Press at (63-2) 4265984, 4266001 ext 4612. SineGabay: A Film Study Guide (Anvil Publishing) By Nick de Ocampo Filmmaker and author Nick Deocampo recently added another first in his growing list of groundbreaking publications with his new book SineGabay: A Film Study Guide. Published by Anvil Publishing, the book is the first major publication on the subject of film literacy in the Philippines, which focuses on the subjects of independent and alternative cinema, Filipino film history, and early cinema in the Philippines and in Asia. SineGabay contains a compilation of 100 Filipino films that Deocampo had featured in his numerous film screenings and lectures. Included are titles of classic feature-length films like Bata, Bata… Paano Ka Ginawa?, Burlesk Queen, Himala, and Oro, Plata, Mata, as well as documentaries, animation, experimental films, and even propaganda movies. The book serves as an excellent teaching module containing valuable lessons and informational data about the chosen films. Listed inside are the films’ synopses, filmography, audience suitability and MTRCB ratings, recommended study areas, guide questions, and a valuable resource of contacts where to rent, purchase, or borrow viewing copies. As a guidepost for teachers, historians and film enthusiasts, the book makes for an excellent introduction to the study of the forms and concerns of Filipino film production. It is a useful companion piece to film viewing for teachers, students, critics, festival programmers, and ordinary moviegoers. Reading about the films in the book will help one remember them not just with fondness but also with more intelligence and understanding. Kalahati at Umpisa: Mga Tula (UST Publishing House) by Rebecca T.Añonuevo 29 HOT OFF THE PRESS THE UP PRESS 100 CENTENNIAL TITLES I by Arvin Abejo Mangohig t was already the summer of 2008 when I was asked to help with the UP Press Centennial titles, a project conceived by the UP Press editorial board to commemorate the Press invaluable contribution to the university. I had to say yes, I thought. My own contribution to the project would also be my way of saying thank you to UP, its tradition of excellence and the professors whom I had encountered in my long love affair with the campus and its denizens. After all, it is not everyday that one gets to edit former professors like Rosario Cruz Lucero, who can reduce Haruki Murakami into sashimi slices or J. Neil Garcia, whose three hour graduate studies lectures deserve tomes unto themselves. I had worked for the Press before and must have set some Guinness Book of World Record of sorts, editing six manuscripts in the span of around twenty working days, including those of two authors who would eventually make it to the Centennial list: the legendary Damiana Eugenio and the equally voluminous O.D. Corpuz. But things had changed at the UP Press since I had worked there a few years ago, I soon found out. The printing machines had stopped their grinding; sadly, printing was no longer done inhouse. We were now neighbor to the College of Architecture, its students romping across our windows like birds in punk colors. And the Editorial Section, a roomy and well-lighted space, now had blue modular offices, a legacy of color from former UP Press director Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo. My desk was right beside the office of Director Maria Luisa Camagay, her infectious laughter indicating she was in. My first manuscript was Orville Bondoc’s Animal Breeding, a comprehensive guide from the renowned UPLB scientist. I quickly moved on to other manuscripts like F. Landa Jocano’s Sulod Society, Selected Essays on Science and Technology for Securing a Better Philippines and others which were not really Centennial titles. One manuscript I particularly enjoyed was Priscelina Patajo-Legasto’s Philippine Studies: Have We Gone Beyond St. Louis? Here, Rolando Tolentino discusses dogeating, using the lens of postcolonialism and the theory of abjection to dissect both the cultural practice and the Western cultural practices which attempt to commandeer dog-eating. Francisco Guevara’s discourse ironically matches Conchitina Cruz’s ethereal Dark Hours and does one better, examining both the theoretical and physical in a heady mix of praxis and actual place. The grand launch of the Centennial titles was held at the UP College of Law last December 12. I got to see the actual Damiana Eugenio in her actual flesh. National Arists Virgilio Almario and F. Sionil Jose graced the event, as did the widows of National Artists Francisco Arcellana and NVM Gonzalez, and Letizia Constantino, widow of Renato Constantino. UP President Emerlinda Roman imparted wise words: “There can be no better proof of the originality, creativity and importance of a university’s intellectual and artistic output than the list of the books produced by its publishing house.” They say that one of the few ways to become immortal is to write a book. In the face of the Internet, even that alleged immortality a book affords is doubtful; what with the viral spread of electronic formats stealing the royalties and copyright of authors. Against time and technology’s inevitability, only a few things can survive and are worthy of that survival. One hundred years later, one hopes that the UP Press 100 Centennial titles will survive and that the editor sitting at the very spot I am in will also be working on the next 100. This is the complete list of the UP Press 100 Centennial titles: SOCIAL SCIENCES A Study of Psychopathology (1973) – Lourdes Lapuz An Economic History of the Philippines (1997) – O.D. Corpuz Ang Bagong Lumipas (vol. 1 & 2) (1996) – Renato Constantino Cavite Before the Revolution 15711896 (2002) – Isagani R. Medina From Colonial to Liberation Psychology: The Philippine Experience (1992) – Virgilio Enriquez Mabini and the Philippine Revolution (1996) – Cesar Adib Majul Muslims in the Philippines (1973) – Cesar Adib Majul Slum as a Way of Life (1975) –F. Landa Jocano Sulod Society (1968)– F. Landa Locano 30 The Fateful Years: Japan ‘s Adventure in the Philippines , 1941-45 (vol. 1 & 2) (2001) – Teodoro A. Agoncillo The Political and Constitutional Ideas of the Philippine Revolution (1967) – Cesar Adib Majul The Revolt of the Masses: The Story of Bonifacio and the Katipunan (1996) – Teodoro A. Agoncillo The Roots of the Filipino Nation (vol. 1 & 2) (2006) – O.D. Corpuz HUMANITIES Arkitekturang Filipino: A History of Architecture and Urbanism in the Philippines (2008) – Gerard Lico Awit and Corrido, Philippine Metrical Romances (1987) – Damiana L. Eugenio Gongs and Bamboo: A Panorama of Philippine Music Instruments (1998) – Josè Maceda Home Body Memory: The Feminine as Feminist ‘Elsewhere’ (Filipina Artists in the Visual Arts, 19th Century to the Present) (2002) – Flaudette May V. Datuin Protest / Revolutionary Art in the Philippines 1970-1990 (2001) – Alice G. Guillermo Treading Through: 45 Years of Philippine Dance (2007) – Basilio Esteban S. Villaruz Tunugan: Four Essays on Filipino Music (2005) – Ramon Pagayon Santos Wages of Cinema: Film in Philippine Perspective (1998) – Joel David SCIENCES Animal Breeding: Principles and Practice in the Philippine Context (2008) – Orville Bondoc Digenetic Trematodes of Philippine Fishes (1975) – Carmen C. Velasquez Fundamentals of Traffic Engineering (2008) – Ricardo G. Sigua Introduction to Statistics and Econometrics (2002) – Rolando A. Danao Nutrition in the Philippines : The Past for Its Template, Red for Its Color (2004) – Cecilia A. Florencio Philippine Birds and Mammals (1997) – Dioscoro Rabor Philippine Tuna Fisheries: Yellow Fin and Skipjack (1995) – Virginia L. Aprieto Selected Essays on Science and Technology for Securing a Better Philippines (2008) – Caesar Saloma, Giselle Concepcion (eds.) LITERATURE CREATIVE WORKS: POETRY Amado V. Hernandez: Tudla at Tudling. Rosario Torres-Yu (ed.) (1986) – Amado V. Hernandez An Edith Tiempo Reader; Edna Zapanta Manlapaz, et al. (ed.) (1999) – Edith L. Tiempo Asintada: Mga Tula (1997) – Lilia Quindoza Santiago Hairtrigger Loves: 50 Poems on Woeman (2002) – Alfred A. Yuson In Ordinary Time: Poems, Parables, Poetics 1973-2003 (2004) – Gèmino H. Abad Mujer Indigena (2000) – Vim Nadera Pidgin Levitations: Poetic Chroma Texts (2004) – Ricardo M. De Ungria Poetika / Politika: Tinipong mga Tula (2008) – Bienvenido Lumbera Poro Point: An Anthology of Lives (Poems, 1955 – 1960) (1961) – Alejandrino G. Hufana Selected Poems (2004) – Merlie M. Alunan Sonetos Postumos (2006) – Rio Alma The Garden of Wordlessness : Selected Poems (2005) – J. Neil C. Garcia Una Kong Milenyum, two volumes (1998) – Rio Alma CREATIVE WORKS: FICTION (H)istoryador(A) (2006) – Victor Emmanuel Carmelo D. Nadera, Jr. A Grammar of Dreams (1997) – N.V.M. Gonzalez An Embarrassment of Riches (2000) – Charlson Ong Dugo sa Bukang Liwayway (1989) – Rogelio Sicat Etsa-Puwera (2000) – Jun Cruz Reyes Feast and Famine: Stories of Negros (2003) – Rosario Cruz Lucero Ginto ang Kayumangging Lupa (1998) – Dominador Mirasol Jungle Planet and Other Stories (2005) – Lakambini A. Sitoy Mata ng Apoy (2003) – Domingo G. Landicho My Sad Republic (2000) – Eric Gamalinda Recuerdo: A Novel (1996) – Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo Sa Loob at Labas ng Mall Kong Sawi / Kaliluha’y Siyang Nangyayaring Hari: Ang Pagkatuto at Pagtatanghal ng Kulturang Popular (2001) – Rolando B. Tolentino Sandaang Damit: 16 na Maikling Kuwento (2007) – Fanny A. Garcia Selected Stories (2005) – Jose Y. Dalisay, Jr. Selected Works (2008) – Francisco Arcellana The Bread of Salt and Other Stories (1998) – N.V.M. Gonzalez The Undiscovered Country (2004) – Luis V. Teodoro The Winds of April (1998) – N.V.M. Gonzalez Work on the Mountain (1995) – N.V.M. Gonzalez CREATIVE WORKS: CREATIVE NONFICTION Breaking the Silence (1996) –Lourdes R. Montinola Creative Nonfiction: A Manual for Filipino Writers (2003) – Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo Creative Nonfiction: A Reader (2003) – Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo (ed.) Looking for Jose Rizal in Madrid : Journeys, Latitudes, Perspectives, Destinations (2004) – Gregorio C. Brillantes Sarilaysay: Danas at Dalumat ng Lalaking Manunulat sa Filipino (2004) – Rosario Torres-Yu and Alwin C. Aguirre CREATIVE WORKS: PLAYS Almanac for a Revolution (2000) – Nicolas Pichay Apat na Dula (1998) – Rene O. Villanueva Cao Yu: Taong Yungib ng Peking (1999) – Mario I. Miclat (tagasalin) Last Order sa Penguin (2003) – Chris Martinez May Katwiran ang Katwiran at Iba Pang Dula (2001) – Rolando S. Tinio Sepang Loca and Others (1981) – Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio The Heart of Emptiness is Black: A Tragedy in Verse (1975) – Ricaredo Demetillo SCHOLARLY WORKS: LITERARY CRITICISM/ LANGUAGE STUDIES Bukod na Bukod: Mga Piling Sanaysay (2003) – Isagani R. Cruz Emergent Literature: Essays on Philippine Writings (2001) – Elmer A. Ordoñez (ed.) Kilates: Panunuring Pampanitikan ng Pilipinas (2006) – Rosario Torres-Yu Mula sa mga Pakpak ng Entablado: Poetika ng Dulaang Kababaihan (2006) – Joi Barrios Naku, Naku, Nakuuu! (Adarna House) By Nanoy Rafael Illustrations by Sergio Bumatay III Published by Adarna House and the Philippine Board of Books for Young People (PBBY), Naku, Nakuu, Nakuuu!, written by Nanoy Rafael, and illustrated by Sergio Bumatay III is a story that revolves around a young boy’s mysterious problem. Naku, Nakuu, Nakuuu! won the PBBY-Salanga Writers’ Prize and features the winning artworks from the PBBY-Alcala Illustrators’ Prize. Available in major bookstores. Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel: A Generic Study of the Novel Until 1940 (1983) – Resil B. Mojares Panitikan ng Rebolusyon(g 1896): Isang Paglingon at Katipunan ng mga Akda nina Bonifacio at Jacinto (1997) – Virgilio Almario Philippine Gay Culture: The Last 30 Years (1996) – J. Neil C. Garcia Philippine Studies: Have We Gone Beyond St. Louis? (2008) – Priscelina Patajo Legasto Si Rizal: Nobelista (Pagbasa sa Noli at Fili Bilang Nobela) (2008) – Virgilio Almario The Likhaan Book of Philippine Criticism 1992-1997 (2000) – J. Neil C. Garcia Toward a People’s Literature: Essays in the Dialectics of Praxis and Contradiction in Philippine Writing (1984) – E. San Juan , Jr. Women Reading: Feminist Perspectives on Philippine Literary Texts (1992) – Thelma B. Kintanar Writing the Nation / Pag-akda ng Bansa (2000) – Bienvenido Lumbera SCHOLARLY WORKS: LITERARY ANTHOLOGIES A Habit of Shores (1999) – Gèmino H. Abad A Native Clearing (1993) – Gèmino H.Abad Ang Aklat Likhaan ng Dula 19972003 (2006) – Rene O. Villanueva and Victor Emmanuel Carmelo D. Nadera, Jr. (eds.) Paano Magbasa ng Panitikang Filipino: Mga Babasahing Pangkolehiyo (2000) – Bienvenido Lumbera, et al. Philippine Folk Literature: An Anthology (2007) – Damiana L. Eugenio Philippine Folk Literature: The Epics (2001) – Damiana L. Eugenio Philippine Folk Literature: The Folktales (2001) – Damiana L. Eugenio Philippine Folk Literature: The Legends (2002) – Damiana L. Eugenio Philippine Folk Literature: The Myths (2001) – Damiana L. Eugenio Philippine Folk Literature: The Proverbs (2002) – Damiana L. Eugenio Philippine Folk Literature: The Riddles (2005) – Damiana L. Eugenio Philippine Short Stories 1925-1940 (1975) – Leopoldo Y. Yabes Philippine Short Stories, two volumes (1981) – Leopoldo Y. Yabes Sa Ngalan ng Ina: 100 Taon ng Tulang Feminista sa Pilipinas, 1889-1989 (1997) – Lilia Quindoza Santiago The Likhaan Anthology of Philippine Literature in English from 1900 to the Present (1998) – Gèmino H. Abad, et al. The Likhaan Book of Philippine Drama: From Page to Stage 19911996 (2000) – Anton Juan Upon Our Own Ground: Filipino Short Stories in English 1956-1972 [2 volumes] (2008) – Gèmino H. Abad 31 Translation is an exchange, a conversation between two languages, a trading between economies. Because they have different currencies and denominations, and even reserves (of knowledge and experience), there are surpluses and deficits, devaluations and inflations. Either language—translator or translatee, traduttore or tradittore—loses or gains. But both always profit— in meaning and understanding. Photo by Whammy Alcazaren, post-editing by Greg Sabado – poet and translator Marne Kilates 32