Sungazer recommends "Book of Names" :)

One of my favorite writers, Eliza Victoria, just finished reviewing  Philippine Speculative Fiction VI, and recommended my story, "From The Book of Names My Mother Did Not Give Me," as one of the volume's stand-out stories. Thank you, Eliza!

Some "Abundance and Grace" in Kritika Kultura

A few poems I'd written for a class under Gemino Abad are up on Kritika Kultura. Thank you to the editors and staff of Kritika Kultura (especially Mark Cayanan) for considering, and publishing, these very young verses.

I miss you guys!

Kritika Kultura is a refereed electronic journal on literary/cultural and language studies published by the Department of English (School of Humanities), Ateneo de Manila University.

A special shout-out to my classmates at the University of the Philippines: Corin Arenas, Dominique Santos, Pipay Warren, Naomi Cammayo, Nexus Renaissance Mina, Francis Aguilar, Nolin Adrian de Pedro, Jov Almero, Arlene Yandug, Dino Pineda,  and Suzette Quesada, who beta-read these works, and always told the truth.

International SF interviews Charles Tan and squeeeeeeee from my end

Charles Tan,  also known as The Bibliophile Stalker, is current (and recurring, actually) World Fantasy nominee, and the editor of Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Anthology of Speculative Fiction. He was gracious enough to feature my story, "Dimsum", in that volume.

In the interview, he talks about the anthology and the advocacy work he does for speculative fiction in general, and Philippine speculative fiction in particular. He also talks about Filipino-Chinese (though I'd say Chinese-Filipino!) speculative fiction, and the ways in which it differs from the usual speculative fare. Naturally, he discusses his anthology and describes how certain themes have been tackled in its featured works.

Quite an honor to find that Charles mentioned me during the interview--an honor to find my name beside those of some of my favorite authors: Kristine Ong Muslim, Yvette Tan, Crystal Koo, Gabby Lee, Margaret Kawsek, and Erin Chupeco.

Completely unexpected. So, big thank you, Charles.

As for you, dear reader: Go buy that book! Available as an e-book and in dead-tree format.

Yesterday

1. Shoptalked with teachers - 3

2. Completed draft assignment (index poem) -1

3. Issued meeting notices -3

4. Napped - 1

Today

1. Hot meals cooked - 1

2. Spanish verbs learned - 5

3. Sunday rites attended - 1

4. Further repairs discussed with architect - 6

5. Important things lost (still) - 2  found (1); replaced (1)

6. Menu and meal plan prepared - 1 (printed - 3)

7. Kitchen counters cleaned - 1/2 (It was yucky.)

Today

1. Movie watched - 1 (Brave)

2. Fish sticks eaten - 2 (Bonchon)

3. A.P. questions propounded to S - 20

4. Writing exercises (almost) completed  - 1.25

5. Origami lotuses made - 3 (success)

6. House repairs completed - 3 (parts that needed to be welded; doorbell; signage for street number)

Today

1. Important things lost - 2

2. Car cleaned (interior) - 1

3. Assignments completed - 4

4. Origami lotuses received - 3

5. Origami t-shirt received - 1

6. Friend rendered speechless by the horror that is my attempts at "poetry" - 1

7. Lasagna eaten - 1

8. Iced tea drank - 1

9. Minutes waiting for a parking slot - 20

10. Friends helped - 2

11. Wonderful husband - 1

12. Daughter who missed me - 1

Today

1. Refrigerator cleaned - 1

2. Story summary and comment - 1.5

3. Hot meals cooked - 2

4. Stories researched - 3

5. Call from friend - 1

6. Origami butterflies - 2

7. Origami jumping frogs - 2

8. Dining table cleared and cleaned - 1

Today

1. Friends rescued from flood: 2 (Thank you, #rescuePH!)

2. Origami cranes: 2

3. Origami "flapping birds": 2

4. Revised draft: 1 (not yet done)

5. Bathroom cleaned: 1

6. Leaks (roof): 4

7. Rooms cleaned: 2 (living room, sala)

----------

In the course of finding help for a cousin and a secretary trapped in Sitio Olandes, Marikina, and helping my husband match someone who wanted to send some eggs to Sitio Olandes/Industrial Valley Subdivision, I learned that some neighbors and friends from Barangay IVS have organized some kind of system for assisting stranded residents from the area. They are distributing food (lugaw) and clean water, wading through mud and muck to get to the residents. They aren't politicians or community leaders--as far as I can tell (or, more accurately, gather from Ricky Olivares on Twitter). I'd mistakenly thought they were conducting relief operations on behalf of the community or the city government--but was quickly corrected. God bless you, anonymous volunteers at Industrial Valley/Olandes, Marikina. You guys are awesome.

Today

1. First draft, poetry assignment (index of terms)

2. Sent out at least 80 text messages today

3. Comforted someone who reminded me of myself under different circumstances

4. Tutored daughter, religion, reading

5. Taught a good class on positivist legal theory, common law, and the Nuremberg Trials.

Today

1. Revised poem, sent to workshop. (No clear turn; already expecting critique. Sigh.)

2. Tutored S (I hope she does well)

3. Made dinner (tinolang pang-tamad)

4. Got rid of the piles of books cluttered by the shelf.

5. Restrained self, enforced boundaries. Hopefully, pleasantly.

Two new spec-fic anthologies from the Philippines (e-books!)

Hoping you'll consider downloading these wonderful anthologies:

1. Philippine Speculative Fiction, Volume VII (edited by Kate A. Osias and Alexander M. Osias), which is available only in e-book format.  Amazon carries this title.

I attended the e-book launch today at CBTL Shangri-la Plaza Mall, and it was hilarious (as always!) Thank you Kestrel DDM, Flipside Digital Publishing, and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, for making this day special for all the authors. And thank you, Kate and Alex, for finding "What the Body Remembers" worth publishing. :D

2. Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology (edited by Charles Tan), now available on Smashwords. I made my first international sale (a story called, "Dimsum") to this publication. (Yay!) Thank you, Charles, and Lethe Press!

News, news, news

It's been awhile. Life (mostly grad school; academia; some legal work; motherhood) has gotten in the way of faithful blogging (and, alas, writing!), but we'll try to rectify that.

1. A short op-ed piece I'd written for Rogue Magazine's features editor, Clinton Palanca, showed up in Rogue's July issue (Iza Calzado on the cover, yo).

2. Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 7 will be launched on Saturday, 28 July, 2 pm, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at the Shangri-la Plaza Mall. I have a very short piece there, "What the Body Remembers", which I now think can be expanded into a lengthier piece of work. Thank you, Kate and Alex Osias, for accepting the piece-now-new-work-in-progress. I can't wait to see the PSF faithful gathered at the launch. PSF book launches are always so much fun.

3. Speaking of book launches. I was at Rosario Cruz-Lucero's launch of La India, or The Island of the Disappeared yesterday afternoon. It's an awesome, awesome book (boy, I do like saying 'awesome', don't I? :P), with a beautiful cover by Peque Gallaga. I'm a big fan of Chari's, and so had dropped by UP University Press last Friday to preview the book. My goodness. I couldn't wait to get a copy (but wait, I did, to avail the P50 discount enjoyed by everyone at the launch).

All copies at the launch were sold out by early evening. Goodness.

Publishers' Weekly reviews 'Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology'...

...and my contrib, "Dimsum", gets a wee mention. :D It's a positive review overall, and I can't wait to read through the volume myself.


Big thank you to Lauriat's editor, Charles Tan, for the head's up. And congrats to Crystal Koo, Fidelis Tan, Kristine Ong Muslim & Paolo Chikiamco, whose works were mentioned in the PW. 


'Lauriat' will be available August 2012. 

Thoughts on Taludturan sa Tag-araw

The Natividad Galang Fajardo room was filled to the rafters, so to speak, yesterday afternoon for the first Taludturan sa Tag-araw poetry reading by Ateneo alumni who (continue to) write poetry. Thank you, Boyet del Prado, for inviting us to the event. Maraming salamat, Kagawaran ng Filipino, for organizing the event.

By and large, it brought back the 1990s poetry scene at the school. What was that like? Back then, the school offered no course on Creative Writing. So if you were interested in literature, you took up Filipino (as did GF) or English literature (TF) or IS (CP) or Comm (JC and RV) or Philosophy (me) or a business course  (TS), or a science course (MM, in the beginning and KD, at one point)-- pretty much anything. It seemed like a level playing field, with none of us thinking we were imbued by our course with any special knowledge or advantage (to begin with, none of us looked upon writing as a competitive field; it was something we enjoyed enjoying together). If  you were really interested, you joined Heights, the college literary magazine--and then you got some rudimentary idea of literary criticism, simply by observing what the elders in your staff did or said. (It was maddening though: Some of us would ask, but what makes a poem good? No one gave any hard and fast answers. You had to figure out your own poetics as you went along, observing how the others explained theirs.) So even that--membership in Heights, that first exposure to literary criticism of a sort--didn't make one's love or prowess any greater than any other student's.

Back then, I was involved with what used to be called, "socially oriented organizations", and in these orgs, there was a great love for poetry too, with members (like myself) joining the Heights Filipino staff and the culture in those orgs crossing over to said staff. There was no monopoly on poetry readings and other such activity, not even on the publication of poems--some of which were published by Matanglawin (the college's Filipino-language magazine). None of that mattered. The scene seemed quite permeable, encouraging, rather than discouraging, particularly (now that I look back) the quiet and shy. But it was also a scene that tended to look inward, toward the community that nurtured it, and toward the 'self', both in terms of content and practice.

That is how I, at least, remember it to be.

*

So there we all were: The  teacher who taught the only creative writing course I'd attended in college-- a summer seminar 20 years ago--Rofel Brion, who read three poems from his newest book of poetry (May Nagsabi sa Akin); Beni Santos, whose works inspired me back in the day, mused half-jokingly about Ateneo poetry being all about "hawak-kamay" and "ulan" and "diwata", in addition to reading three of her recently published/written poems; Boyet del Prado (whose poem, "Pusa" had recruited me into Heights), reading his translation of a poem in English written by Cathy Babao Guballa (as well as Cathy herself, reading the original version); Club Dredd princess Karen Kunawicz, who read (with feelings!) one of the two or three poems that made the audience laugh (and in her case, laugh out really loud: i.e., "You are the lava in my lamp."); Imo Quibilan (former editor-in-chief of Heights, now based in the US--it was he who interviewed and accepted me into Heights 22 years ago), whose work was read by Mitch Cerda (who delivered Imo's crowd pleaser); Emman Velasco (cheered on by his former org-mates from Gabay, the scholars' organization), who read three poems from his new book, "Dalawang Pulgada at Tubig", which made all of the audience sigh and sigh and sigh (and, if they were of a certain age, yearn and yearn and yearn for the poetry of their youth)--the poems were so pure and innocent and perfect; and the legendary Jim Agustin, now based in South Africa, reading poem after poem after poem (in English and Filipino) from his two new books: Baha-bahagdang Karupukan (beautiful title!) and Alien to Any Skin. There was award-winning author and former classmate, Bong Oris. And then there was me, who had looked up to, and had tried to learn as much as I could, from all these writers.

"Ang kaunti lang natin noon," Beni Santos recalled. "Ngayon, ang dami na." 

For there, too, were the generations of writers that came after, represented at the reading by: AILAP's Dr. Egay Samar (who read a poem about, well what do you know,"hawak-kamay"--it was a pleasure to hear him read); Filipino Department's Dr. Jason Jacobo (I loved that the poem he read had Bikolano words! That I understood!); Alyza Taguilaso, whose  "Examination" (and the reading thereof) made appreciative eyes (including Karen Kunawicz') follow her as she made her way back to her seat; and the youngest reader of the afternoon, Ma. Amparo Warren, who will soon be en route to Bacolod for the 12th Iyas National Writers' Workshop.

In the audience were friends and acquaintances from way back, including fictionists Cyan Abad and Christine Bellen; poets Jean Page Tan (another editor-in-chief of Heights); Argee Guevarra; Irwin Cruz; Nikko Vitug; Eva Gubat; Gary Devilles (who was punong abala for the event); singer-songwriter Dawn Bande; Elsa Manansala and Ruby Mamaradlo-Evangelista--both classmates of the hubby; the hubby (who arrived just as I was about to read my work); and the little one. And there were the students enrolled in the school's Summer 2012 Filipino classes. My understanding was they'd been required to attend the reading. But it seemed like they enjoyed it. 

*

It wasn't so much nostalgia, as much as it was the sense that something was being made present which I/we once had thought was past: How we used to appreciate poetry back in the day (something, I gather from my brief conversations at the gathering, most of us--writers or no-- are unable to do as often as we had done, once, or as often as we would like today). "Parang bumalik tayong lahat sa college," Dawn and Elsa said, and I felt myself agreeing with all my heart. They even looked the same (I've fattened up.).  

As it turns out, we all miss it--the poetry we grew up with--even I, who'd spent many years running away from the school's "voice", which some of us problematized (i.e., theorized about; i.e., fretted about--yes, we did this work some time in the early 1990s): the tulang tahimik, the poem that is sigh--silence--sigh. (Perhaps the (perceived?) homogeneity in poetic tone back then was due to the smaller number of people writing, or attempting to write poetry within the community. The school was not so big back then--a single college, where now there are four schools.)

But this isn't about that at all. To me, it's not that the "voice" of a certain era that yesterday became present once more (there was a variety of poems; the younger poets made sure of that, and even the elders among us delivered poems different in tone and texture from the ideal of the tulang tahimik); Instead, what I found interesting was the feedback that there was something different about this reading: "It's much more chill," a young member of the audience said. Less slam, less obviously performance (though standing awkwardly before a mike and reading in a manner that seeks to emulate the contact between page and reader without an external voice mediating/interfering-- is performance too), a lot of people reading quietly to each other--the way my roommates at last year's workshop would read to each other their latest efforts, furtively, but with so much manic glee.

It's not the only way of enjoying poetry today (and I wouldn't even go so far as to say it's a better way of enjoying poetry; it's just a different way of doing things)--but I realized yesterday that the old quiet way, this intimate way, the recital or reading of poetry with sincerity, now seems new again.

*
Or maybe it's just me and Dawn and Elsa (both of whom I met, not in Heights; Dawn was my editor at Matanglawin, Elsa, the president of Gabay. We met each other quite often, as we were all members of clubs that formed KADIPA--Kaisa sa Diwa at Pananampalataya--an alliance of socially oriented groups at the college) being happy at the discovery that the love for poetry that nurtured friendships back then, remains, flourishes, in spite of the distances between us, in spite of the passage of time, the sadness and disillusionment that comes after youth, after theory, after irony. That the people who came immediately before us, who had helped nurture a love for poetry--Jim and Emman, for example, are writing, still writing, and still writing beautifully.  The writing and love hinting at the survival of something innocent? pure? eternal? inside us, despite everything.

Taludturan sa Tag-araw, List of readers

Once again inviting everyone to this Friday's Taludturan sa Tag-araw, a poetry reading of Ateneo Alumni writers, April 20, 2012, 3pm Natividad Galang Fajardo Room H Dela Costa Building Ateneo de Manila University.

[From the official press release:]

The readers are:

1. Rofel Brion
2. Benilda Santos
3. Maria Amparo Warren
4. Alyza Taguilaso
5. Cathy Babao Guballa
6. DM Reyes
7. Jason Jacobo
8. Emmanuel Quintos Velasco
9. Jing Panganiban
10. Tin Lao
11. Noel Romero del Prado
12. Edgar Samar
13. Bong Oris
14. Wanna-Jo Ruiz
15. Timi Sytangco (thru a reader)
16. Marvin Aceron
17. Jim Pascual Agustin

There may be a few more surprise readers.

The new books of Rofel Brion, Jim Agustin and Emman Velasco will be on sale during the event and the authors will sign their books.

The event is sponsored by the Filipino Department of Ateneo de Manila University, in cooperation with Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices (AILAP) and Heights, the official literary publication of Ateneo.

The Filipino Department, through its Chairperson, Dr. Alvin Yapan,
hopes to invigorate this tradition of poetry reading in the Ateneo, to
provide a space for its alumni writers to continue writing poetry and
fiction, and introduce Ateneans to Ateneo writers and their works.

For inquiries please call Gary at 09273430791 or email gary.devilles@gmail.com

Taludturan sa Tag-Araw

Will be reading at this event at Ateneo de Manila University along Katipunan Avenue on Friday, 20 April, at 3 p.m. speakinginhushedtones will also be reading a poem. I hope to see you there!

Lauriat: An Anthology of Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction

The Bibliophile Stalker just posted that this anthology of Filipino-Chinese spec fic, edited by Charles A. Tan himself, is available for pre-orders on Amazon.

My story, "Dimsum", appears in it, as do the works of people I admire so very much: Kristine Ong Muslim; Yvette Tan; Andrew Drilon; Douglas Candano; Paolo Chikiamco; Kenneth Yu; Isabel Yap; Crystal Coo; Fidelis Tan; Gabriela Lee; and Margaret Kawsek. I am quite giddy to be in such great company.

A big thank you to editor and speculative fiction advocate and blogger extraordinaire, Charles A. Tan for making this possible.

Accountability report

Many thanks to the editors of the Philippines Graphic for publishing "Josephine's Last Farewell". The March 12 issue, where the poem appears, is available at National Bookstore and 7-11. Thank you, Angelo Ancheta, Shane Carreon, and Jordan Carnice for letting me know about the good news.

"The Last Tango," a story by Kate Aton-Osias, as well as Angelo Ancheta's review of Huseng Batute's "Buhay Maynila Book 2", also grace the issue. 

Finally, for those following the trial of impeached Philippine Chief Justice Renato C. Corona: Joel Pablo Salud's Editor's Note and "The Scarlet Letter" are brief but important reflections on what's happened before the defense began its presentation of evidence.

Accountability Report

So.

Hello, February. Two new poems; pretty solid--though I need to work on one a little bit more.

But the year's first published work is an old (though unpublished, un-workshopped) poem I'd been planning to send out to an international market.

But a friend got to it first.

It now appears on page 7 of the Valentine's issue of the Philippine Collegian. Many thanks to Kule and Glenn Diaz for publishing it. Glenn's poem appears on page 6; and his column about Adele is on page 10.