February 21, 2020 at 11:45 pm (Artists and Writers, Filipino poetry, Filipino Writers, Personal Bookshelf, Places)
Tags: Fridays, Literary Magazines, Manila, poetry, The Philippines
INCANTATION/ A SCROLL
published in Caracoa 18 (April 1988)
The madman and the hypocrite roam this city I didn’t want to die in
I have seen my generation scour the alleys for scraps and sex
have seen the gentlest people throw up in disgust unhappy and
impolite
and the needle piercing the skin and the ooze of impossible
blood
all of them fortify my battlements i.e. not even the leaves
tremble at the thought of decay
and even as this man dies or that one fails I am learned or
am fallen
not defeated but bracing for the next attack
the symmetry of vespers and arrows
now the inner midnight is descending and the fine opens and closes
over someone’s sad mouth holding back the howl
with its immaculate crises and blooms of violets
and always I am he
I burn in the beatified rainbows
I am driven insane by the simplest wind
and when this man fails or that one exults
I am he/I am lessened/I exult
What a poem. That first line.
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February 8, 2020 at 11:31 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino poetry, Filipino Writers, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended)
Tags: Ateneo, causes, poetry, politics, Protests, Saturday, The Philippines
Freedom
After a haiku by Rolando Pangan
(from the collection The Smile on Smokey Mountain, Winner of the Philippine National Book Award for Poetry)
Not having to hear
The guard singing as his keys
Dangle steps away.
Emmanuel Torres was a professor of English at self’s alma mater, the Ateneo de Manila University, and curator of the Ateneo Art Gallery. He received his masters in English from the State University of Iowa and was a member of Paul Engle’s Iowa Writers Workshop from 1955-1957.
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February 5, 2020 at 7:11 pm (Artists and Writers, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Philippine History, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: historical fiction, novel, The Philippines
from self’s novel Camarote de Marinero: Voyages (in-progress, about 90k words at the moment)
Whereupon five of our Spanish warships were sent to hunt for him, but he refit somewhere on the Northern Pacific coast, where he befriended the natives, who sheltered him a month before he struck out again, for the Moluccas, and eventually home.
Stay tuned.
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February 4, 2020 at 4:30 pm (Artists and Writers, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Philippine History, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: AWP, fiction, historical fiction, inspiration, novel, The Philippines, writing conferences, writing process
From her novel Blue Water, Distant Shores, which she is re-naming Camarote de Marinero: Voyages
(Also, self is considering not going to AWP, for it would be such a distraction. No kidding. All she would end up doing is hole up in her hotel room, writing. Which she can very well do at home. But ooops, she’ll be charged a penalty. Aargh)
Trigger Warning: Run-On Sentence
To Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth I
From Martin de Rasa, Viceroy of New Spain
June the 8th, 1579
A Relation of the Circumstances of the Loss of the Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion
80 pounds of gold, 26 pounds of silver, 13 chests of silver coins, and jewels (pearls, jades, rubies, and other precious stones) for which the residents of Manila demand restitution. For that cargo was intended for the Audiencia, and other vital instruments of government in these Islands. And now the soldiers must go unpaid, and are close to mutiny.
But, truly, Viceroy of New Spain, why should Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth I care if Spanish soldiers are close to mutiny? lol
Self has just introduced SIR FRANCIS DRAKE into her narrative.
Stay tuned.
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January 27, 2020 at 6:50 am (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: horror, work-in-progress, writing process
The above was the response of an English agency to self’s horror story, The Rorqual.
It’s taken her years, but the writing of this has been an absolute joy. And, no matter how many changes self makes to the main narrative, this first paragraph is a given:
- The report came from somewhere on the Bering Sea. The pair had left the Black Hills the previous morning. The woman, it appeared, was headed for Baranof, the man for Kuiu. Both were on foot.
BARANOF? KUIU? WTH, self has never been to that part of the world. Nevertheless, that first paragraph came to her whole, some years ago. Not one word has self ever cut. It’s not so much information as rhythm self sought to establish here. And this first paragraph, the rhythm it sets forth, is what has enabled self to proceed.
So many magazines refuse to even take a look: “We don’t do genre.”
Most people who have read her manuscript use the word “ambitious.” One even called it massively ambitious.
But if you don’t go for broke with your writing, why even bother? Sure, she fails about as often as she manages to connect, but the failing is part of her process. Writing is the one activity where self operates without the benefit of a safety net, which is why, in her humble opinion, the activity is so “pure.”
As for genre, self swims in genre. She adores genre.
Stay tuned.
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January 22, 2020 at 9:04 pm (Filipino Writers, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: historical fiction, Philippines, work-in-progress
It opens:
- David Fowler and his wife, Edith, were from Iowa. They were both blonde, blue-eyed, stocky – real, true-blooded, plains Americans. Gusts of a wholesome Midwest freshness came with them on the steamer across the Pacific.
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January 19, 2020 at 4:09 am (Conversations, Filipino Writers, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: historical fiction, novel, Saturday, The Philippines
Camarote de Marinero
“Father, here you go. You have your own room.”
There was a narrow platform which he presumed was his bed. Beneath the platform was a small cabinet.
“Your things here,” the boy said.
Later, he overheard the men talking about him: they called him cochino. Even though Matias was not fat, not even close to, he knew the most well-fed men in the villages were usually the friars. It was new to him, the contempt, the disrespect, because usually men of the cloth were treated with deference. At least, this had been the case in Spain.
Another time, he heard the captain say, “sin experiencia del mundo” and assumed he was the one being referred to.
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January 13, 2020 at 7:23 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Filipino Writers, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended)
Tags: environment, Events, Mondays, The Philippines
In ancient times this was a land-track to Indonesia and even now one can see at night the quivering lights of Borneo towns from some of the Sulu islands. The Batanes Islands, off the northern coast of Luzon, sprinkle 18 tidbits to within 65 miles of Taiwan.
To this close proximity must be added evidence of early linkage with the “chain of fire” that once ringed the vast unbroken continent. One chain of volcanoes leads north from Borneo through Palawan and Mindoro to western and northern Luzon. Another line simmers from the same start but this time through the Sulu Archipelago and western Mindanao into Negros where Mount Canlaon still stands in turmoil after having poured out tons of lava that were to become fertile layers for the growing of sugar.
The eruption of Taal Volcano in 1965, after being quiet for 50 years, showed once more the hold of nature’s wrath on life in the Islands. The volcano, rising on an island in the middle of Lake Bonbon, 40 miles south of Manila, roared for three days, and blasted out untold tons of ash, mud, and glowing pumice. Steam shot 1000 feet aloft, spreading debris so thick that it buried houses and killed 200 out of the 3000 people who lived on the island.
Manuel D. Duldulao was a Filipino journalist and art commentator.
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January 8, 2020 at 2:57 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino Writers, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: essays, news, politics
White nationalists have brought white people together through the idea that white people are endangered, specifically white men — this at a time when 91 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are white men, when white people make up 90 percent of elected American officials and an overwhelming majority of top decision-makers in music, publishing, television, movies and sports.
— The I in the Internet, Essay # 1 in Trick Mirror
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January 8, 2020 at 4:05 am (Books, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Philippine History, Places, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: essays, Filipino food, memories, New Mexico, teaching, The Philippines
Doreen G. Fernandez was self’s Freshman English professor at the Ateneo de Manila University. Her greatness was in her writing. She wrote beautifully about her subject: Philippine food, and its long history.
Recently, self began re-reading her book Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture (Anvil Publishing, Philippines, 1994)
Her Process:
My teachers are all those who give me information about food: market vendors, street sellers, cooks, chefs, waiters, restaurant and carinderia owners, farmers, tricycle drivers, gardeners, fishermen, aficionados, nutritionists, readers of my columns, friends, food critics and historians, fellow researchers, authors of books (and cookbooks), writers of columns, food anthropologists — everyone who eats and cares.
— Doreen G. Fernandez, 13 June 1994
For self, the biggest, most interesting stop in her very brief late December visit to Santa Fe, New Mexico was the Farmer’s Market. It was bitter cold, snow lined the tracks of the railyard just adjacent, and inside a vast warehouse were smells, the indescribable smells of chili, pine, roasted coffee. Oh, heaven.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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