See you at the bookfair

The first nine days of September should see droves of book lovers ascending the escalators of SM Megamall Bldg. B to get to the Megatrade Hall on the fifth floor, where the annual Philippine Bookfair holds popular court. Here too serial and mass book launchings are conducted daily. Yesterday, the University of the Philippines Press introduced 26 new titles. Marvelous!

On the penultimate day, Saturday, Sept. 8, the Manila Critics Circle presents the 20th National Book Awards for the most outstanding books published last year. This will start at 6:30 p.m. at Function Room B of the Megatrade Hall.

Copies of the books that have been shortlisted as finalists will again be displayed, but under a protective net or plastic cover. We wish to avoid a repeat of last year’s unfortunate incident, when a marauding frenzy undertaken by certain low-life characters deprived Dr. Isagani Cruz of many of his personal copies.

We’re also hoping to minimize the entry of too many professional gatecrashers who attend the awards rite not because they’re related to the authors whose books have been nominated as finalists, nor for the vicarious honor of seeing these authors up close, but for the buffet treats once all the glass plaques are awarded.

Over 30 of such plaques, designed and produced by Nemie Bermejo, who’s more associated with the Palanca literary awards, will be handed out on Saturday. For these we have to thank the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, or NCCA, and the National Book Development Board, or NBDB, the two major sponsors for this year’s awards.

While we’re at it, let me issue some errata with regards last week’s column citing the National Book Awards finalists per category. Our final deliberations held last Wednesday at the UST Center for Creative Writing & Studies set things right apropos some of the nominees.

The Milflores Guide to Philippine Shopping Malls, edited by Antonio Hidalgo, was pulled out of the Anthology category and correctly classified under Special Interest. The same was done with The Sea-Gypsies Stay by Rowena Torrevillas, which we had a problem classifying since it comprises poetry, fiction and essays. We decided to re-categorize it under Personal Anthology.

Among the finalists listed for Biography, inadvertently omitted was Antonio Hidalgo’s The Life and Times of Pio Pedrosa. We’ve rectified this, and have officially included the title as a nominee for the genre. That brought the total of finalists to a round 80 spread out over 24 categories, with Poetry having the most number at 11, and Fiction and Children’s Literature garnering eight apiece.

Some categories wound up with more than one National Book Award winner. But that’s the most I can tell you. Mum’s the word, till Saturday, on which books have bagged this prestigious annual honor.

At the bookfair, you might try looking for the following titles that come highly recommended, but which I’ve failed to review properly in this column. The first two wound up as nominees for Fiction and Poetry, respectively, while the rest were published in 2001, and may only join the NBA nominees next year.

Happy Endings by Luis Joaquin M. Katigbak, published by UP Press, is a delightful collection of short stories by a young, engaging writer who’s already gained praise from some of his credible elders in the world of Philippine fiction in English.

Brief, back-cover blurbs include Butch Dalisay’s "Insidious humor, delivered with a fine sharp wryness." Another is Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo’s "All good writing has these essentials: mastery of language and a lively imagination. The effect of both on the reader is astonishment and recognition. With these stories, Luis Katigbak achieves both."

Having read three of the ten stories in this collection thus far, I would already agree with these assessments. I particularly liked the cosmologically whimsical "Postcards," where a young lady who’s a Math major discovers the wonders of "flexagon travel" until she meets up with her Other Self. Flexagons are "paper polygons folded from straight or crooked strips of paper which… have the property of changing their faces when they are ‘flexed.’"

After receiving a mystifying series of unusual postcards, Anna decides to turn one into a flexagon, until she winds up with a "workable trihexaflexagon," that is, "A hexagonal mathematical plaything with three different faces that could be brought into view."

What follows is the sheer magic and triumph of fiction, in terms of both the imagination and the craft of writing.

"Anna sat down and started flexing the thing idly, pinching two of its adjacent triangles together and pushing the opposite corner of the hexagon towards the center. She did this over and over, in a state of mild fascination. She did not notice when the edge of her loose T-shirt got caught in one of the folds.

"Flex, flex, flex. With each successive flex, more of her shirt disappeared into the flexagon. By the seventh flex, Anna had vanished entirely."

She reappears, of course, but in another, incredibly delightful dimension, where she eventually meets up with the other Anna who’s been sending her the postcards.

The other stories in the collection are equally playful and all very "now," as in engaged with DOC files and contemporary bohemianism, laundry days, graphic logos and computer systems for the ADB.

Katigbak is a UP Creative Writing graduate with an evidently incandescent future as a writer. Together with Lakambini Sitoy and Angelo "Sarge" Lacuesta, he gives us cheery hope that our fiction is taking steps to keep pace with our brave, bold, magical reality.

Another important first book by a young writer is Hunos: Mga Tula by Allan Popa, published by Artista Publications. The book is lauded by the acknowledged dean of Filipino poetry, Virgilio S. Almario: "Kinatawan si Allan Popa ng bagong henerasyon ng makatang Filipino – mga makatang gumagamit ng wikang Filipino ngunit may sinilangang daigdig na hindi Tagalog at malayang pinadadaloy sa wikang pambansa ang mga makatuturang salik mula sa nilakhang daigdig. Bukod sa ganitong maligayang ambag mulang Bikol, hindi rin maitatatwa ang pambihirang talino ni Popa sa paghuli at pagsasataludtod ng talinghaga."

A sample stanza, the concluding one, from the first poem in the collection, titled "Signos": "Dito tayo namumuhay:/ sa lilim ng bagwis ng mga lalang/ ng langit. Binabasa natin/ ang pahiwatig sa pagbabagong-/ hugis ng kanilang anino sa lupa./ Kinikilala natin ang mga hangin./ Pagkat nasa mata lamang tayo/ ng bagyo sa panahong payapa."

Popa, a UP graduate in Creative Writing in Filipino, is admirable for managing to summon striking imagery and metaphor. His passion for language seems to emanate from a genuine care for words and ideas from whatever provenance.

He is equally adept in English, for instance. Proof of this are the scripts he has written for the Lakbay TV travel docus, which I have admired for rising head and shoulders above most of the other attempts at playing textual xenagogue along with visual footage of scenic spots. Obviously, Allan Popa is going places with his consummate devotion to the properties and spirit of sensitivity, aye, poetry.

Another poetry book that deserves collectibility, if for a manifestly different reason, is Glimpses of Love Life and Beyond: Poems by Virgilio A. Yuzon, published by Tower Book House.

For one, it’s a coffee-table book, with all of the poems facing a parallel and complementary photographic rendition. For poetry readers who can’t quite be satisfied with generating independent appreciation of pure verse, here the photos by Pancho Escaler offer further manifestation of what the poet Yuzon shares by way of his personal and passionate avocation.

I have been asked many times if Gil Yuzon and I are related. My reply has been an unfortunate "No," by virtue alone of the distinguishing middle consonants in our surnames. My paternal lineage may be traced to Lingayen, Pangasinan, while Gil’s is decidedly more illustrious. He’s the son of the Pampango poet and orator Amado Yuzon, whose name was synonymous to "poet laureate."

But Virgilio Yuzon has also made a name for himself as an advertising magus, having founded an ad agency that is now known as Hemisphere Leo Burnett, of which he has become chairman emeritus.

It is but proper then for his poetry book to have an Intro penned by UMPIL chair emeritus Adrian E. Cristobal, who writes of Yuzon’s verse: "They are not just glimpses, as he modestly announces, but a sensitive man’s tribute to love, life, and beyond." Cristobal cites "memorable images and lines (that) haunt me even through casual reading: ‘…deft angles of meaning… cinders of meaning/ …mute bondage of sleep’s phantom death // like mouthless maidens/ hiding behind perfumed fans...// here we are,/ shopping for the right religion//..."

Shopping for poetry books now allows for a wide range of formats and takes. This 98-page collection of mostly poems in English, but with the last three in Filipino, deserves a rightful place beyond the bargain table. In fact I’m even willing to dispose of my bias against verse printed in italics. Perhaps it’s Escaler’s "haunting" black-and-white images of Giselle Toengi, Mylene Dizon and Maureen Larrazabal that predispose me to a further lift of appreciation for this book.

A recent release is the excellently produced softcover coffee-table book Dreamweavers, with text by Ma. Elena P. Paterno, Corazon S. Alvina, Rene B. Javellana, S.J., and Sandra B. Castro, photographed by Neal Oshima, and published by The Bookmark, Inc.

It is no less than a magnificent documentation of the "legendary dreamweave" called t’nalak, the prideful craft of the T’boli people of Lake Sebu. Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan’s Foreword notes:"T’nalak was fast becoming a dying art. This book project was a salvage operation." Well, all the more we’re indebted to Bookmark for calling attention to the weaving genius of the T’boli.

All of the "active weaving communities" are identified, as are all the known t’nalak weavers, while the traditional patterns are catalogued – "whether it was handed down by a previous generation or gifted to them in a dream."

Which explains the book’s title. Unfortunately, however, it gives the premier poet Marjorie Evasco rightful reason to complain, as her first collection of poetry, of over a decade back, was titled Dreamweavers. Perhaps to avoid cataloguing confusion in libraries, authors and publishers should take pains to check if their working titles might have already been used. Or was it the National Library that proved remiss in considering this responsibility? In this case, the simple addition of a subtitle, such as "The T’nalak of the T’boli," would have set things right.

In any case, I hope the contretemps doesn’t quite detract from the marvelous qualities of this collectible. As usual, Neal Oshima’s photography is luminous. As usual, Felix Mago Miguel’s design is similarly exemplary.

Publisher Lory Tan writes further: "This book is our tribute to the artists of Lake Sebu who continue to sing, and chant, and dance, and cast bronze from wax. Who ride the hills with their horses and sound their gongs. Who silently paddle the graceful owong over the placid waters of their lake. Who gracefully work the abaca, while communing with the spirits that fill their days, transforming dreams, both past and present, into wondrous works of art."