Odette and Maningning - Mabuhay!

Our favorite people have been going ahead of us. Aieee! Simplistically, we shake our heads and ask how come some bullies, intimidators, killers, bejeweled or bemoustached plunderers are still walking among us, while those who do good depart so much ahead of wished-for schedule.

Farewell to Odette Alcantara, much beloved by everyone, Mother Earth, Green Goddess, Arts Avatar, and Chess Warrior & Muse all rolled up into one effervescent mind and person.

She has been and will continue to be synonymous with Heritage, all in caps perhaps and not just associated with the landmark art gallery that’s become a long-time haven for poets, painters, pawn-pushers, divos and divas and raconteurs ’round one grand piano.

She handed me a Golden Shower seedling once, and I was loath to tell her a year later that it hadn’t survived the peeing depredations of certain peons working on a construction site next door. But that tree has grown and blossomed time and again in my worshipful memory of the story of O.

Last Wednesday and Friday at the daily/nightly visitation at Heritage House, an endless procession of friends paid tribute with songs and cheer and seedlings. We’ll all be back, time and again, hoping to have even just half a handful of Odette’s ashes with which to boost all the greenery in our hearts and on real earth. That way we may say that while we’ve sadly lost her earthly presence, we’ve been blessed to gain her spirit forever.  

Here’s some info on the rest of the nine-day novena of devotion her countless friends are conducting for Odette. Visits are ongoing till Sept. 30, at 43 Hillside Loop, Blue Ridge A, Katipunan Ave., Q.C. On Oct. 1, Odette’s birthday when she would’ve turned 69, a party will be hosted by the Alcantara family. The following day, the family enjoys private time. On Oct. 3, Earth Day Network Philippines Inc. (ENDP) will lead a Tree Planting Activity at Odette’s farm in Tanay.

“Please help spread the word to other friends and comrades. Food donations and tree seedlings and saplings are welcome. ... Let us all remember Tita Odette in our prayers and more importantly in our renewed commitment for Mother Earth.” — Voltaire P. Alferez, executive director, ENDP, National Ecology Center, East Ave., Brgy. Central, Diliman, Q.C. Telephone: 510-0836 Fax: 647-1181 Mobile No.: +639178658222 Web Address: www.earthdayphils.org

There, Odette, you would’ve liked that sort of dissemination for your angelic advocacy. We are sure to join you, now and sometime. 

Last Thursday, Sept. 24, the Maningning Miclat Art Foundation, Inc., founded in 2001 to honor the memory of Maningning Miclat (1972-2000), a published author, multilingual poet, prize-winning artist, interpreter and teacher, conducted the 2009 trilingual poetry awards rites in conjunction with a musical concert billed as “Mabuhay! Banaue at Abelardo.”

China-born Banaue Miclat, Maningning’s sister, who recently earned an MFA in Acting from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, performed magniloquently at UP’s Abelardo Hall, along with the Mabuhay Singers. Showcased were arias from operas and Broadway musicals, popular kundimans and best-loved Filipino songs.

Interspersed with the concert was the awarding of prizes for the winners of the biennial poetry contest in Filipino, Chinese and English, which is open only to poets 28 years old and under. Three finalists were declared for each division, with the Grand Prize winners receiving P28,000 each, as well as a wondrous trophy sculpted by no less than that genius Julie Lluch.

The awards were handed out by National Artist Virgilio S. Almario, whose residence I happen to have photographs of, in case anyone’s interested. Onstage too for the awards-in-English portion were my fellow judges Dr. Gémino H. Abad and Mookie Katigbak — who, per her own eventual recounting, “burst into a jampacked Abelardo Hall (if tardy) like a woman with a mission, hair windblown, dress by Zara.”

The finalists were Joseph de Luna Saguid, Benedict “Ned” Parfan and Mikael de Lara Co for English; and Kristian Sendon Cordero, Carlos Piocos III, and Charles B. Tuvilla for Filipino, with Co and Cordero as the Grand Prize winners, respectively. Chen Liang from Fujian province won in the Chinese division. Ms. Alice Chang Chi donated the winner’s round-trip flight ticket.

Following are the remarks I voiced with regards the English division:

Of the significant number of entries, over 40, in truth there were many remarkable collections — remarkable not just because they were written by relatively young poets no more than 28 years of age, but on their own displayed multifarious elements of strength in establishing a distinctive poetic voice.

We have known for sometime how our young poets have become increasingly precocious. While in their late teens, not a few have exhibited a talent that belies their years. And more and more we’ve seen how Filipino poets in their early 20s have been winning prestigious literary awards, and moreover, authoring collections that go on to gain merit as first books.

We who had not enjoyed such opportunities and venues for early maturation in our poetry — forged as that had been in times much simpler if less advantageously configured in terms of widespread and quick dissemination of influences and models — appreciate the surmise that our own efforts paved the way for the initiation of numerous platforms of poetic conduct for the generations that followed us.  

The poetry journals, anthologies and other publications, the literary workshops and seminars held throughout our country on a yearly basis, the national circuit of poetry readings have all helped to attract greater numbers to experiment or fully embark on this blessed foolishness called poetry.

But we cannot lay claim to any provenance with regard to Internet services that have not only made the production of anthologies so much easier and faster, but have also opened a treasure trove of works classic and contemporary, and thus provided further impetus to anyone with an interest in foolishness.

It is to our young poets’ credit however that they are hip and quick to glean the tricks of the trade on their own, and to apply such cleverness to the worthy cause of crafting poem after poem from their breadth — and breath — of consciousness.

Thus, we who sport a 20-percent discount card by virtue of seniority aren’t surprised anymore by the quality of poems in English written by these... uhh, kids. Even the non-discountable challenge of sorting and sifting through competition manuscripts can only gratify us.

First, it is no mess of potage that we encounter. Second, there is always that wildcard surprise that highlights the level of wonderment these young voices are capable of, in more ways than one. And third, superb authority manifests itself generally through the majority of entries, and specifically in the choice of concern or theme, application of diction and tone, reverence for cadence, cognizance of the value of image and metaphor, and ultimately that rather adroit and startling rediscovery of freshness, of saying universal things in a new way or conversely, pioneering in an insight in an old-soul manner.  

In brief, we the judges had a difficult but re-energizing time in pruning down the entries to a longlist, grappled mightily with our respective daemons of bias and predilection to come up with a shortlist, and eventually had to draw straws to resolve our differences and come up with the top three winners.

Naah, just kidding. It was tough, but with the presence of a fifth columnist of sorts, in the person of the wonderful 20-something poet Mookie Katigbak, that old man Jimmy Abad and I settled our differences at no recourse to dueling knives, after being told that we were arguing for the exact same choices anyway.

The curmudgeonly cantankerousness out of the way, we realized that our vote was in fact unanimous. And that three gentlemen stood in the forefront of excitement generated by this edition of what is becoming a hallowed sporting contest.

 All three winners share the capacity for quiet eloquence and quivering brilliance. Elegance of language matches that of thought. And the very titles of the top three collections, as you may note, unveil that admirable ken of contemporary spirit.

The finest individual poems themselves are all of a rainbow range of delectation and passion. They remark on “The Wonders of the Body” as much as those of domestic and nocturnal relations, the “Exodus to Zero” and the grief of fishermen, and that radiant radius of silence that may reek of gravitas but can also be light as a feather.

Darkness or darkenings, distances reckoned and gathered, that many-feathered light: Why, these are planetary wellsprings made faithfully cosmic yet turned into a familiar fountainhead by the Filipino poet. 

We say bravo!  

* * *

While we’re on poetry, we should report that for the past few months we’ve been privileged with the Fulbright-grant presence of a most excellent Fil-Am poet from New Jersey: Patrick Rosal, whose recent readings before my class in Ateneo and at Mag:net Katips have drawn stomping ovations.

A much-acclaimed B-Boy of Ilocano roots, Patrick Rosal has authored My American Kundiman, winner of the Asian American Studies Book Award and the Global Filipino Literary Award, and Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive, winner of the Members’ Choice Award from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. His poems and essays have appeared in anthologies and journals that include Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, Columbia, and Language for a New Century. He has performed at hundreds of venues in the US, UK, South Africa and Argentina. He has taught in MFA programs, community centers and prison workshops around the US and is now affiliated with the graduate faculty of Rutgers University-Camden.

Last Saturday, Sept. 26, Patrick was one of two speakers at the Café Scientifique session billed as “An Ode to Words” held at R.O.X. at Bonifacio High Street in The Fort, Taguig. Partnering with him was AdMU professor and cognitive psychologist Dr. Emy Liwag, who’s a member of The Mind Museum at Taguig, which is due to open soon. The science museum project of the Bonifacio Art Foundation, Inc. is headed by Philippine STAR columnist Maribel Garcia. Visit www.themindmuseum.org for details.

Café Scientifique, run by Mitzi Borromeo, is a randomly scheduled roundtable encounter with science and all of its possible influences and affiliations. For “Ode to Words,” the session proposed to “wax poetic in exploring the science of language — how humans developed it and how we hone it.”

On Monday, Sept. 28, I urge all lovers of fine poetry to catch Patrick’s last gig hereabouts before he returns to the US. The Philippine-American Educational Foundation invites everyone to a presentation titled “Remixes: A Reading of New and Selected Work” by Patrick Rosal, 2009-2010 Fulbright Scholar, at 4:30 p.m. at the NGF Conference Room, De la Costa Bldg, AdMU, Loyola Heights, Q.C.

The abstract reads: “At the intersections of dream and fact, language and silence, science and wish lies poetry. Testing the ways a remix of American dictions can accommodate mythologies that cross genre, geographies, and histories, Patrick Rosal will read selections from his previous collections of poetry as well as from his long work in progress. ‘The Lovers of Paz y Pelea Bridge.’”

This will certainly be a treat.