“Pagpupugay” to honor National Artist Edith Tiempo today

The first and only female National Artist for Literature, Dr. Edith Tiempo, will be honored today via Pagpupugay: Pambansang Alagad ng Sining sa Literatura, an event brought to Cebu by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, FIT, UP Likhaan: Institute of Creative Writing and the Arts Council of Cebu Foundation.

Taking place this February 7, starting 4p.m. at the Marcelo B. Fernan Cebu Press Center, DECS Compound in Lahug, Pagpupugay serves as one of the major highlights of the 2008 Philippine Arts Month, which beginning last year, had simultaneous commemorations in the regional level.

According to project director/coordinator Vim Nadera, Pagpupugay hopes to close in the gap between Filipinos and the National Artists for Literature through a series of enlightening and valuable lectures covering the genre for which they are widely recognized for. Other National Artists who will grace separate Pagpupugay events in other cities of the country include F. Sionil Jose, Alejandro Roces, Virgilio Almario and Bienvenido Lumbera. 

The Dumaguete-based poet-novelist-educator, who sits as director of the National Summer Writers Workshop—the longest-running creative writing workshop in Asia which she founded with husband and fellow literary genius Dr. Edilberto Tiempo in 1962—said in a presscon yesterday at Casino Español de Cebu that her lecture today will delve on how to enhance poetic content.

“Not to reduce attention to craft, but I hope the lecture will make clear what we should look for in poetic content that goes beyond the poem’s meaning,” said the 88-year-old Tiempo, whose poems have already been translated to several languages such as German, Korean, Russian and Romanian.

Aside from the lecture, a production of the artist’s work will be staged during the program, said Marlinda Angbetic Tan, Arts Council trustee and immediate past NCCA Central Visayas Coordinator of the National Committee on Literary Arts. She revealed that for Tiempo’s Pagpupugay, the Ballet Center will interpret two of her most famous poems. 

Ms. Tiempo has a storied and bejeweled literary career, having notched several awards from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature: Tracts of Babylon and Other Poems, first prize, poetry in English, 1967; “The Black Monkey,” third prize, 1951, and “The Dam,” second prize, 1955, both in the short story in English category. Her novel, His Native Coast, won the grand prize in the CCP Literary Contest in 1978, while her short stories “Chamber of the Sea,” 1955, and “The Dimensions of Fear,” 1959, both won first prizes in the Philippine Free Press literary contest. She was a recipient of the Elizabeth Luce Moore Distinguished Asian Professor Award in 1978, L.T. Ruiz Professional Chair in English, 1981- 1989, and with her husband, the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas Award from the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL), 1988. She was conferred National Artist for Literature in 1999.

Ms. Tiempo looms large as mentor figure as well, the highly esteemed “mother to hundreds of literary children” who became part of the National Summer Writers Workshop in Silliman University, Dumaguete. 

Asked why poetry remains relevant even in the time of multi-media, Tiempo, a charismatic storyteller in pen and person, said, “Poetry takes us to the realm of the spiritual and non-tangentials. Without poetry, we will smother in mechanics.” 

Pagpupugay sa Pambansang Alagad ng Sining sa Literatura is actually on its second year of promoting and propagating the merits and beauty of Philippine literature. Last year, these National Artists were feted with “homecoming tributes” as Pagpupugay brought them to their hometowns. For more information, please call the Arts Council of Cebu office at 233-0452/233-0236 or email at [email protected].