26 Filipino poets in English

Giving the metaphorical digit to that cliché that says lists can only be odious, I join the welcome chorus in these pages for the 26th anniversary of this wonderful paper.

My honorable assignment is to laud the best of our poets — 26 to be exact, three more than that mystical number I share with Michael Jordan, David Beckham, Jim Carrey, and LeBron James before he turned miasmic.

But again, contrary to the Sufism that at any point in world history there can only be 64 good living poets (as there are squares in a chessboard), I contend that excellent Pinoy poets come close to a veritable hundred, at present. If you count ’em all, that is, those that truly matter. And I only speak of the living.

That’s because our poets write exceedingly well in more than just the adopted language and the mainstream native one of Filipino. We have poets excelling in verse in Cebuano, Bicolano, Iluko, Pangasinense, Hiligaynon, even in Zamboanga Chabacano.

Obviously, alas and alack, we can’t list them all down here. We have to exercise, if with a degree of arbitrariness and unilateral judgment, some measure of pruning, with the simple objective of coming up with this year’s hallowed number of 26!

And so we limit our list to Filipino poets writing in English, and who are living, and residing here. And who have produced at least one book that is a collection of her/his poetry.

How’s that? Unfair enough, you might say. Well, make your own list. This is mine, for the moment — in a bow to this momentous occasion for my privileged venue.

I’m also sure I will miss out on a few names — for which, forgive me, dearest. Deadlines and looming Alzheimer’s make for a deadly combo; together they play music that only manages to fry memory’s pancakes to a crisp.

And so, without much further ado, tan-ta-ra-ran, is my list! It runs alphabetically:

Gémino H. Abad, Merlie Alunan, Cesar Ruiz Aquino, Juaniyo Arcellana, Cirilo F. Bautista, Conchitina Cruz, Simeon Dumdum Jr., Marjorie Evasco, J. Neil Garcia, Ramil Digal Gulle, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta, Marne L. Kilates, Francis Macansantos, Edgardo B. Maranan, Virginia R. Moreno, DM Reyes, Victor Jose Peñaranda. Danton Remoto, Myrna Peña-Reyes, Ramon Sunico, Angelo Suarez, Anthony Tan, Joel Toledo, Ricardo M. de Ungria, Ruel S. de Vera, and Lourd de Veyra.

Okay, I counted them again. Yes, that makes 26 all right — nine more than the traditional number of syllables in a Japanese haiku, three less than those required for a waka. Wahaha!

No, wait, seriously, I can’t stop at 26, let’s make it an odd 37 — with the inclusion of Jose Marte Abueg (Bird Lands, River Nights, and Other Melancholies, which won the Gawad Likhaan: The UP Centennial Literary poetry prize; Adam David (The El Bimbo Variations, winner of the 9th Madrigal Gonzalez Best First Book Award in 2009); Khavn de la Cruz (Guhit ng Talampakan; Shockbox); Carlomar Arcangel Daoana (The Fashionista’s Book of Enlightenment); Ralph Semino Galán (The Southern Cross & Other Poems); Paolo Manalo (Jolography); Arvin Mangohig (Bloodflow); R. Torres Pandan (Days of Grace), Allan Pastrana (Body Haul, 2011), Dinah Roma-Sianturi (Geographies of Light, 2011); and Lawrence Lacambra Ypil (The Highest Hiding Place, 2009).

Even with that expansion, I’m still disappointed with my lengthened list, as it still leaves out many other exemplary contemporary Filipino poets.

First off, there are those who have migrated abroad, like my bosom friends Andy Afable, Merlinda Bobis, Albert Casuga, Luis Cabalquinto, Fidelito Cortes, Luis Francia, Felix Fojas, Eric Gamalinda, Luisa Igloria, Fatima Lim-Wilson, Oscar Peñaranda, Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez, and Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas, among those who affixed their thumb marks to the diaspora rather late in life.

Then there are the Fil-Am poets who were either born in the USA or were taken by their parents when still very young. And that list would include Nic Carbo, Sarah Gambito, Jessica Hagedorn, Antonio Jocson, Joseph Legaspi, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Jon Pineda, Patrick Rosal, Bino Realuyo, Barbara Jane Reyes, and Eileen Tabios. Each one of these poets has at least one book of poetry, and I’d wish the same of Marie LaViña and Naya Valdellon,

Bromance poets across the seas: Patrick Rosal, Joel Toledo and Kael Co at the old Ride ‘n Roll

Hmm, come to think of it, if you put all those names together from the preceding paragraphs, they’d add up to 26, too! How’s that for a Fil-Am or Fil-foreign or expat poets’ list? (Naya’s in Canada, while Merlinda’s in Australia.)

But wait, there’s more! I also wish for poetry books for Ramon Bautista, John Labella, José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes, Angela Narciso Torres, and Fran Ng.  

But even with them, that list would still be deficient, missing out on the likes of many other upcoming or veteran poets in the States — mostly in the New York area and in California — whom I have yet to meet (like the now cyber-active Vince Gotera, editor of North American Review and poetics prof at University of Northern Iowa), or may have no personal knowledge of.

Then there are the non-Statesiders who may or may not still be based where they used to be, to include Jim Pascual Agustin in South Africa, Ivy A. Rosales in Wales, Ella Wagemakers in Holland, and Neal Imperial in Singapore. I know that Jim, a bilingual poet. has already authored several books, the latest being Baha-bahagdang Karupukan and Alien to Any Skin, issued by UST Publishing House last year.

R. Zamora Linmark or “Zack” has been in Manila of late, but his celebrated books have been of prose, albeit his poetry continues to cry out to be collected after Prime Time Apparitions (2005) and The Evolution of a Sigh (2008).  

Now, getting back to home ground, of course there are our premier poets in Filipino, led by no less than National Artist for Literature Rio Alma, a.k.a. Virgilio S. Almario, plus a host of others, among them, in alphabetical order: Reuel Aguila, Rebecca Añonuevo, Roberto Añonuevo, Lamberto Antonio, Teo Antonio, Joey Baquiran, Joi Barrios-Leblanc, Ariel Dim. Borlongan, Rofel Brion, Mike Coroza, Richard Gappi, Ruth Elynia Mabanglo, Eugene Evasco Allan Popa, Vim Nadera, Benilda Santos … All of these poets have not only authored poetry books, but also won national awards.

I still feel bad that certain young poets aren’t included in these lists for want of their first poetry collections, specially since some of them fully deserve laudations as among our first-rate poets, chiefly Alma “Jerri” Anonas, Frank Cimatu, perennial prize-winning bilingual poet Mikael de Lara Co, Alice M. Sun-Cua, Nerisa del Carmen Guevara, and Rafael “Waps” San Diego.

There’s not much space left to dwell at length on each of these individual poets, even those in our supposed main list. Bu let’s see if we can do a partial rundown in hopscotch fashion.

Most of these names, especially of the veterans, are rather well known in the local poetry industry, from Abad through Alunan, Aquino, Arcellana, Bautista, Dumdum Jr., Evasco, Garcia, Kilates, Macansantos, Maranan, Moreno, Remoto, Sunico, Suarez, Toledo, De Ungria and De Vera to De Veyra. Of these, the youngest are the last two, together with Toledo and Suarez — this last rather blessed with precocity, until he turned into a conceptual graffiti artist cum performing ideational ventriloquist, in brief, very deep and complex (with a gamut of gravitas’ shades).

Katigbak-Lacuesta recently came back from prestigious participation in the Medellin International Poetry Festival in Colombia. I hope for a follow-up soon to her book The Proxy Eros.

I like and admire Cruz for her poetic range, from efficacious prose poem variations to clean-cut “I narratives” — in lyrical form — that lift themselves so high away from the humdrum by way of the subtlest tropes of sheer simplicity, rendering these so fresh that they do not appear calculated. Ah, but they are! Cerebrated, too — even the images.  

Then there are her mandates as edgewise permutations, as in “From the collector’s notebook of substitutions”: Say grief: things that wander with the intention to return// Say maybe: things that entertain the possibility of always// Say afterthought: things that haunt rather than invade// Say souvenir: not erasure, but palimpsest// Say disappear: letter, sans serif, white, umlaut// Say collateral: not risk, mere substitution// Say document: proof and signpost// Say never: things that breathe easy elsewhere.”

I look forward to a follow-up to her collections, Disappear (2005); Dark Hours (2005), which won the 2006 National Book Award for Poetry, and elsewhere held and lingered (2008), which I fought for before that same award-giving body, only to see it eclipsed by a Fil-Am’s book that wasn’t that author’s best.

I recently read Mangohig’s Bloodflow (2012), and also look forward to more scintillating poetry from this young ‘un or young gun with an eye out for blood. 

I must also laud, once again, “Jun” Dumdum’s latest collection, last year’s If I Write You This Poem, Will You Make It Fly?, surely the most enthralling book of poetry I’ve read in a long while. 

I look forward to Peñaranda’s upcoming collection of poems, mostly on his experiences and illuminations in Bhutan, to follow up on his Voyage in Dry Season of 1995.

And even closer to us now is what promises to be Kilates’ ominous feast of Lyrical Objects, if the following excerpt from his “End of the World (2)” is any indication:

“Will the world end on December 21?/ If you watched the movie it probably did not/ The way it did onscreen, with a car chase/ And lots of explosions, the way Hollywood// Would usually imagine it. If you’re reading/ This, it probably did, too, as we might never/ Imagine it, but with lots of hints from what’s/ Happening now. Wall Street and the EU are// Confused, why profit and debt simply/ Demand more profit and debt, with war and/ Famine on top, and global warming besides./ If you’re reading this, the world might not end// The way we’d expect. We might not become/ Socialist or Communist. Just compassionate.”

Then of course there’s Dr. “Sawi” Aquino, who might also just be collecting little gems for an erudite mini-box that will put a mini-stop to the world without end that is our poetry. A recent haiku of his to “Eve” reads (& I luv it!):

“She can make day black,/ Night blacker. But her color/ Of colors is pink.”