Summer meet-ups.

All photos by Alyza Taguilaso

I should be editing two stories for my last class of the semester, but I couldn't pass up the chance to spend time with four friends who happen to write awesome poetry and fiction. The awesome Shane Carreon finished her MA in CW in record time and was in Manila to submit all requirements that would enable her to march at UP Diliman's upcoming graduation rites--including and especially her poetry collection, Travel Book. It's a beautiful collection, accompanied by an equally beautiful account of her poetics (and so well-researched too).  I also met up with fabulous poet/artist Alyza Taguilaso who is studying medicine while writing scary-beautiful poems. Glenn L. Diaz and I read her work and were so happy to see that, despite all her med school-related stress, she is obviously blooming, as far as the writing's concerned. As well as in other things. Hahaha. Glenn, who writes brilliant fiction and poetry, didn't come with his stories and poems, but told us about some little things he'd been working on, which might seem ordinary to him, but seemed interesting and compelling to the rest of us. And at one point, we had a wonderful discussion about erasures, adaptations, and other such things with gifted poet/artist Arbeen Acuna. The 8-year-old sat through it all, and actually shared with the last three of us left at the end of the day, that she had completed a story that she could show "her teachers". Glenn L. Diaz and Alyza Taguilaso graciously offered to "workshop" the piece, and while she demurred this time around, was very curious about the process. Altogether a good day.