This, I realize, is the European way of keeping culture alive and constantly refreshed in a time of commercial homogenization – through vigorous personal contacts and exchanges among poets and artists, in such major meetings as those in Mantua in Italy and Struga in Macedonia (where, last year, our very own 19-year-old Angelo Suarez won the new "Bridges of Struga" poetry prize).
Our European Poetry Encounter in Cervara is only in its second year, but it has already drawn attention from an impressive roster of delegates across Europe – plus this lone Asian. In the manner of all such writers’ gatherings everywhere, we exchange poems, books, stories, and, inevitably, toasts, drawing on endless pitchers of red and white wine, into which Italians occasionally dip little fingers of hard bread called cantucci.
I learn about this practice almost as soon as we are checked into our lodgings in the late 18th century home of the Rossi sisters (not related to the mayor, they say; the previous mayor was yet another Rossi, and also unrelated; Rossis here are like our Cruzes and Santoses). They’re actually two sisters and a cousin, and have married into different surnames, but their grandfather was a Rossi, and the home-cum-inn is in his name, and so I think of them as the Rossi sisters – Renata, Fiorella, and Anna – bright and bubbly. I suspect they’re in their 50s until one of them talks about her 46-year-old son; they take my astonishment as a compliment, and everyone is happy.
Renata speaks some English, but the two other women cannot; the Florence-based Iraqi poet, Hassan, will be my housemate for the weekend, and thankfully he speaks both English and Italian aside from his own Arabic, and we all manage by age-old gestures and single words.
When I ask to take their picture, the sisters demur; tomorrow, they say, tomorrow when we have put some makeup on. But when I show them the instant images taken by my digital camera, they express great wonderment, and lose all their inhibitions. Suddenly all want their picture taken.
I show Anna a stored picture in my digital camera of my tomcat Chippy, who’s big enough to be a dog, and she asks "Cane?" No, no, I say, thinking quickly, "Miao-miao!" "Ah, miao-miao!" they laugh, "Gato! Grosso!"
They decide to have some fun with me by offering me not coffee but, well, not-coffee – that’s right, "not-coffee." "My sister make this drink," Renata says with a giggle, "black but not-coffee, maybe you no like?" Feeling gracious, I ask them to bring it on, and Fiorella pours some dark powder into an Italian coffee maker, then minutes later pours me a small cup of the thick black liquid, as opaque as espresso. I think I know what it is but don’t let on, as the sisters watch me bring it to my lips, beside themselves with suspense. I polish it off, and they applaud with pleasure at my feat.
"Very good, not-coffee! More, please!" They can’t believe I’m asking for more of the vile-looking but truly innocuous and rather pleasant brew. "It’s not coffee," Renata tries to explain as she pours me more, "but, uh, uh–" I take out my pen and draw a grain of barley on some paper. "Yes, yes!" I tell them that "In my country, we call this kapeng bigas – but we use rice!"
Later the sisters catch me slurping instant ramen at merienda time and are mystified by its source; surely it is not sold in the only bar-cum-shop in town. I always bring some with me, I tell them, and show them the chopsticks I have slipped into my computer bag. "Eh, bravo!" they say.
During our first lunch, in a small hotel many granite steps down the hill, we are presented with two kinds of grappa – an amber liquid they call "inferno" and the other a black bottle of "paradiso." "Let’s go to hell," I tell my tablemates; of course we try out both, but hell indeed tastes better, paradise being sickly sweet. I had been welcomed by Silvano into his home with a small glass of Macedonian grappa – Balkan firewater – and its clarity and kick reminded me of lambanog. As it turns out, there are many kinds of grappa. With apologies to my new Latvian friends, the special grappa they bring to the table tastes medicinally vile; I should have read the label first – "Balsam" – before chugging the pitch-black brew, which stains the plastic cups we use.
Our days and early evenings are spent on poetry, politics, and music. Every day brings a new concert – a jazz trio one day, a brass orchestra the next, and then a marching band. Whatever their repertoire, all of them know and play one tune with great familiarity and respect – the theme of Morricone’s For a Few Dollars More. On a solitary walk I had played my iPod, looking up at the mountain’s crest and running Heaven on their Minds from Jesus Christ Superstar through my earphones; I’m not surprised when the trio plays it as well for their finale.
Poets are the same everywhere; some always want to read more of their work than the time allows, and Silvano has his hands full managing the reading. Silvano is the consummate diplomat – elegant, unflappable, impeccably dressed and well mannered. Italians are like Filipinos; they love long speeches and introductions, and all is taken in stride.
When it is my turn to speak, on the last day of the festival – with a marching band behind me and the townspeople before me in the small plaza – I promise not to say too much, and choose my words of thanks for the people of Cervara di Roma, who had reached down a mountain and across an ocean to listen to the literature of a distant land.
"Let me congratulate you," I say, "for establishing your community, small as it is, as a bastion of the arts, in a day and age when the arts are under constant siege by the claims of politics and commercialism. Your lofty position, here on top of this mountain, is symbolic of the vigilance you must maintain, for those of us who have to engage in the daily struggles of life in the lowlands, and in the lowlands of life.
"I come from a country in many ways different from, and yet in other ways similar to, yours. The Philippines is an archipelago in the tropics, a place of great natural beauty, with few tall mountains but with bountiful waters. Our weather is warm and humid; our people are passionate about land, love, and politics, for which they will often kill and die. But better than killing or dying, we often sing about them, which gives us our poetry.
"I was born on a small island not far from the water’s edge, and while I grew up and have lived ever since in the metropolis, I have always thought of myself as an island boy traveling to the great world beyond.
"This is the Filipino today – we travel the world as sailors, managers, nurses, musicians, chambermaids, bellhops, cooks – and sometimes as poets. One out of every ten Filipinos is living and working abroad, many of them here in Italy. Exile has become a permanent condition for many Filipinos, and it is their hardship and loneliness that feed us back home.
"And so today I accept this award on behalf of the Filipino poet and the Filipino migrant worker, who are both our heroes – the first for speaking what the second cannot. As all the poets here know, poetry is its own labor and its own form of exile. But it is a less lonely and even more joyful enterprise when it is a personal articulation of the feelings of many others."
Thank you, Silvano, Gezim, and all my other new friends, for allowing me to say those things.