Jet Propelled Verse

Angelo Suarez is 19 and a senior Literature major at the University of Santo Tomas (UST). His book of poetry, The Nymph of MTV (UST Press), bested entries by 24 poets from 15 countries (including three other Filipinos) in the Best First Book category of the first Struga Bridges Poetry Awards sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (unesco).

He is the youngest of the competitors for the Struga Bridges prize.

His verse is jet-pro-pelled by the intensity and unstoppable energy of youth; his craftsmanship embraces the mundane and lifts it up to poetic heights few dare to scale.

After several weeks of fundraising by the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (ncca) and writers who have promised to help him out, Suarez has gathered part of the money he needs to pay for plane fare to and from Macedonia so he can receive his award come August 24.

If the efforts to get him to Macedonia succeed, Suarez will represent the Philippines as he receives his award at the same ceremonies that will posthumously honor Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda.

Before this, Suarez distinguished himself as one of the youngest winners of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Literary Awards in the Poetry in English category, having bagged his first place Palanca prize at the age of 17.

His poetry has also been included in the recently launched anthology Father Poems edited by STAR columnist Alfred Yuson and Gemino Abad and published by Anvil Publishing.

Suarez, who resembles the character Broken Sword in the Jet Li movie Hero, melds the verve of a young child with sublime artistry and a well-developed mastery of wordcraft.

One of the first poems that brought Suarez to the attention of the Philippines’ small and tightly-knit circle of literati was published in the erotic poetry and art anthology Eros Pinoy edited by Yuson, Virgilio Aviado and Ben Cabrera. Suarez was 16 when he wrote that poem for Eros Pinoy, which also carried the works of the late National Artist for Literature Franz Arcellana and many of the country’s best-known writers and visual artists.

As a senior in high school, Suarez decided to be a writer after reading the novel Great Philippine Jungle Energy Cafe written by Yuson–a decision his parents supported.

"(My parents’) encouragement was not really that blatant," he says. "Maybe they just saw my inclination. My father has always been a language person." His father worked for various wire services, including the Associated Press and Agence France Presse, before taking up work as a consultant for the Department of Education (DepEd).

"I sometimes wonder about other (writers) who do not get any support from their parents," he says. "I know it’s common and it’s a good thing that did not happen to me."

Suarez added that his parents even challenged him to have his poetry published in magazines that have literary sections. "They said they would give me money if my work got published," he says with a smile.

In 2000, Suarez submitted a poem to then Philippine Graphic Magazine literary section editor and National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin.

"It was accepted," Suarez said of the poem, "but, a few months later... they canceled the literary section. Then Nick Joaquin left the Graphic." The magazine’s literary section was eventually reinstated, as was Joaquin.

That poem, Suarez said, was written when "the Allen Ginsberg influence was still heavy upon me."

After reading Yuson’s novel, he said, "I wrote because it was what I wanted to do. It was no longer a hobby."

However, Suarez did not start out immersed in literature. Surprisingly, he started out much like other "regular" kids. He loved watching television, particularly cartoons. He was also a voracious reader–of comic books.

"I was never one of those types who grew up reading James Joyce in grade school," he deadpans. "I suppose my liking for comic books and cartoons account for my taste for the fantastic and the absurd."

Poetry became such a passion for Suarez that once, he literally ran out of the shower dripping wet to write down a line that later grew into a poem.

He says he cannot write anything else but poetry right now. "I can’t. When I try to write something else, I start cutting it up" and the cut-up lines become the seeds of poems.

Suarez’s poems belie his youth and they present the imaginative honesty of a child with the complete control of language only master wordsmiths can achieve.

In 3 Portraits, Suarez does a brief sketch of your everyday taong grasa and, perhaps unconsciously, makes a cutting social commentary: "Between the fingers of his fist/ peeped the twin heads of heroes: Mabini and Bonifacio on a rutted/brown bill, soiled and stolid/as his own skin."

Suarez’s pieces are breathtaking –in more ways than just the literary –for they are difficult to read out loud unless one has a good set of lungs that can bellow out his poems.

Despite this, Suarez’s work is best read out loud, Spoken Word-style, performed onstage with verve, vigor and the sheer punk energy needed by a rock band on a world tour.

"For me the perfect poem is one that is not easily understood, but it must have impact," Suarez says. "It has to be the kind of poem that can make you cry without you understanding why."

"I look for sound in a poem," he adds. "There are tone-deaf poems that do have impact, but it is mostly on the page. I have a bias in favor of poems that sound really well, so sometimes, even if the poem seems senseless, if it sounds good, it’s okay by me."

Spoken Word–performance poetry which puts emphasis on the impact of sound, rather than written form–is a form favored mainly by young poets in the universities, particularly those from UST and the University of the Philippines (UP) and poets in the United States, where poetry readings have regained popularity.

If one were to speak of favorites, Suarez has his own cache of them, including the works of Yuson, Fil-Am poet Patrick Rosal, poet/painter Sid Gomez Hildawa, Eric Gamalinda’s fiction "especially Planetwaves," Haruki Murakami’s novels Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World and anything that is "far-out, fantastic... even absurd."

"My poetry is a difficult to describe," he says, laughing and blushing. "It’s relative, disorganized. Sometimes there are the quiet poems, although others describe my poetry as perpetually angry. Me? I would like to think there are some poems that aren’t (angry), just quiet."

The depth one finds in Suarez’s work is startling–often even to Suarez himself and he admits that the old writer’s adage that "a poem takes on a life of its own" once it is written "is true. The poem changes form when you read it out loud."

Writers, he says, are not all that strange. "Some people think (writing) is a vocation but, c’mon, as if that really happens. (Non-writers) keep treating writers like they’re priests, like they’re mystics," he says. "In a sense, (writers) are, but sometimes it’s not just that. The more we think (writing is) a vocation, the more we’re not gonna make money out of it. It has to be considered a profession like everything else."

Suarez aims to "bring literature to the people, the way (the government) should be giving jobs to the people. If we always make literature high-brow, it turns people off. They think it is for this select group of elite, but it’s not. It’s for the people."

Thus he and his fellow writers in the Thomasian Writers’ Guild of UST have "taken literature to the streets," he says, even startling commuters by standing up and reading poetry out loud on a train. The writers of the guild participate in every poetry reading they can get into - including poetry slam contests and open mic sessions at bars that host Spoken Word nights.

When you’re a Pinoy writer, you usually just see your books in the Pinoy bookstore huddled with other Pinoy books in the Filipiniana section," he points out. "It would be great if we could see books by Filipino writers placed alongside other books. I think we should get rid of that ‘Filipiniana’ mentality. We have to situate ourselves in the world, not just the Philippines. I want to see Nick Joaquin’s books sitting beside Murakami’s. They should be placed together, not kept apart."

For him, the works of Filipino authors are "just as good as the books (foreign publishers) publish, if not better. I think it’s great being a writer if you’re Filipino because we have a beautiful culture. Our history is a wellspring of ideas. Our mythology is largely untapped to this day. There are so many things we could write that I believe the whole world must hear, but which it does not hear because it is too preoccupied with listening to itself."

And what does it take to be a Filipino writer? "Pakapalan ng mukha. If you don’t believe in yourself and make your opportunities, you won’t get anywhere. Don’t be afraid."

Of course, he believes the government should really support the arts more because "the arts, as a whole, are the soul of a nation."

While there are many writers’ organizations, he said these groups are "awol (absent without leave) or underfunded, if they are funded at all. Normally they just group together but there is no money. The government agencies, on the other hand, also seem to have very limited funds. God only knows where the funds really go."

Despite the dismal state of Philippine literature–with writers needing to hold down better-paying day jobs and the lack of readership among the public at large–Suarez still chooses to follow his heart by continuing to write and perform his poetry. Does he see himself writing for the rest of his life?

"Yes, because it seems like I know nothing else."

Contact Angelo Suarez at [email protected]