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by buglaswritersjournal

Priscilla Magdamo’s “‘Day, Baling Mingawa”

Whenever her name comes up, there is always bound to be someone who will make the remark: “She should already be a National Artist for Music!” One such person was a National Artist for Music herself, Lucrecia Roces Kasilag. In 2002, during a concert at the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium that was dedicated to her, the renowned composer and pianist was given a standing ovation by a very receptive Dumaguete audience—and in turn she gave an impromptu speech, first thanking the crowd, and then delivering this acknowledgment: “If there is someone in the audience right now who deserves the title of National Artist for Music, it should be Priscilla Magdamo.”

And yet, such national honor continues to elude someone of her calibre. There is not even an entry written about her and her contributions to music in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Encyclopedia of Philippine Arts. What gives?

Priscilla Magdamo-Abraham is a pioneer in Philippine ethnomusicology, and the most extensive collection of Visayan folk songs exists today due to her vision and initiative. At the behest of her mentor William Pfeiffer at Silliman University, where she studied, she was designated to carry out The Folk Song Project in the 1950s, the goal of which was to “collect, transcribe, publish, and perform” folk songs from all over the Visayas, which at that time remained largely uncollected and unstudied. In her research, she was able to collect, often for the first time, what are now timeless classics, including “Ili Ili Tulog Anay,” which she stumbled upon while doing field work in Banga, Aklan in 1956. Her efforts were published in Folk Songs: Songs of the Visayas, published in 1957. Even after this initial project, she continued on with her ethnomusicological research, later able to collect “’Day, Baling Mingawa,” a folk song from the hills of Valencia town in Negros Oriental. Its simple lyrics—which alude to women living in the foothills of Cuernos de Negros calling to each other over significant distances, their voices echoing in the mountains—goes this way:

‘Day, baling mingawa!
Ako bay muanha, ikaw bay muanhi? Ouy!
 ‘Day, ngano man gimingaw ka?
Wa man akoy mahimo, anhi magasulti ta.
Unsa man atong isulti?
Anhi lang, dalì. Di ka ba maluuy? Aduy!

Translation:

‘Day, how lonesome it is!
Should I go over there or will you come here? Ouy!
‘Day, why are you lonely?
I have nothing to do, come let us talk.
What shall we talk about?
Just come over. Don’t you pity me? Aduy!

This folk song, significantly arranged, has become a staple in choral music.

When she started her research, ethnomusicology was virtually an unknown field in the Philippines, and systematic training in the techniques of field work was unavailable. Nevertheless, Priscilla and brother Leonardo (her electrical engineer-recording technician-chaperon), supported by a Rockefeller Foundation grant, set out in 1956 to record these Visayan folk songs. When asked why she embarked on the project, she’d reply: “Nobody else was doing it.”

The Folk Song Project resulted in a compilation of some 400 recorded songs, and transcribed selected samples published in six slim volumes. These songs were performed throughout the Visayas and Mindanao by the Silliman Folk Arts Ensemble, a first of its kind in the Philippines, giving free concerts in areas where the songs had been collected. Their aim was to demonstrate the beauty, importance, and value of their songs, ending the project with success beyond their highest expectations.

By 1959, with a Smith-Mundt/Fulbright grant in hand, Magdamo formally studied ethnomusicology at Indiana University, and worked in its Archives of Folk and Primitive Music, rerecording field tapes from all over the world.

On a break from The Folk Song Project, she stumbled on the music of an ethnic group in Mindanao and for the first time, heard indigenous Filipino music, sensational, intricate and intriguing, often akin to the traditional music she listened to in the Archives. Over the years, she would return to the Philippines and visit other tribes to record music and learn about their culture.

Considering herself a singer first, she enrolled in the renowned vocal program of Indiana University’s School of Music, completing a Master’s degree with concentrations in vocal performance and ethnomusicology. In the world of the professional musician, as soloist or chorister, she easily became a valued member of all groups she joined. “Here was someone who had the complete package: a beautiful, classically-trained voice, with flawless sense of style, and the skills of a highly experienced sensitive musician,” singer, teacher, and conductor Lisa Jablow once said of her.

Of all the many professional groups she’s worked with, The Gregg Smith Singers, known as champions of contemporary music and winner of five recording awards, stands out. In 1985, joined by two other traditional music specialists Mauricia Borromeo, Frank Englis, and psychologist Frederick Abraham (her husband), she formed Ilian, which toured six Asian countries presenting Philippine music. Four years later, she ran the Workshop for the Exchange of Asian Traditional Music, in collaboration with The United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia. Twelve leaders in traditional music from seven Asian countries assembled in Bali, Indonesia, to make music, learn, and exchange ideas.

Although she has retained her Filipino citizenship, Magdamo has been listed on the Vermont Touring Artist Register, and has presented “Philippine Music, Myths and Folk Tales” all over the U.S. After earning a certification to teach techniques in healthy singing, she returned to the Philippines to teach singing again and do free vocal workshops for classroom teachers, church choirs, choruses, and students in public schools in Negros Oriental, Cebu, Siquijor, and Mindanao. To remedy the scarcity of Visayan folk song material suitable for amateur choruses, she has created and published arrangements, which were distributed to many schools.

In 2002, she was recipient of the Outstanding Sillimanian Award in Ethnomusicology. This is so far the only honor of its kind accorded to her in her homeland—and she deserves better.

by buglaswritersjournal

Vicente G. Sinco’s Education in Philippine Society

The first two weeks of April is an important time to commemorate the educator, lawyer, diplomat, and writer Vicente Emilio Guzman Sinco—the founder of Foundation University. He was born, after all on 5 April 1894 in Bais, Negros Oriental, and died on 8 April 1987 in Manila.

In those 93 years, he became adviser and confidant of five Philippine presidents, and molded a reputation as a great educator, which led him to establish Foundation College on 4 July 1949. He would also become Dean of the College of Law of the University of the Philippines in 1953, and on 18 February 1958, the Board of Regents of the UP elected him to the Presidency of the University, the eighth in that roster, and he served in that capacity until 1962—becoming, in retrospect, one of UP’s finest presidents. He served in a pivotal time. According to the University of the Philippines website, in an article consolidating its history: “The 1950s and 1960s saw the transformation of UP from the brainchild of American hopes and dreams for the Philippines into a bastion of intense nationalism, [and] Vicente Sinco preserved the University’s integrity from communist paranoia and partisan politics…” On 28 January 1969, Foundation College, the Dumaguete school he founded, was granted a university charter.

Dr. Sinco graduated with a BA degree from what was then Silliman Institute in 1917, and pursued his law studies [including his master’s degree] from the University of the Philippines. He became the first Dean of the Arellano University School of Law, serving from 1938 to 1940. After World War II, he served as Commissioner of the Office of Foreign Relations from 1945 to 1946, and launched the country’s involvement in world affairs as the representative of the Philippines, signing the United Nations Charter in 1945. He was also a delegate to the Constitutional Convention representing the first district of Negros Oriental in 1971. Such was a storied life he led that his biography, Vicente Sinco: In Memoriam, was written by no less than the writer and National Artist for Theatre Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio, published in 2001.

He established Foundation as a fulfillment of what he thought Philippine education should be like—which should, above all, be a uniquely Filipino university: Filipino in philosophy, Filipino in objectives, Filipino in orientation, and Filipino in culture, with its curricular offerings explicitly geared to national development, and its cultural programs clearly directed to the promotion, development, and enrichment of the cultural heritage of the Filipino nation.

Sinco’s books are mostly about the law and government, and his thoughts on Philippine education are elucidated deeply in his most notable book, Education in Philippine Society, which was published by the University of the Philippines Publication Office in 1959. A review of the book by James J. Meany published in the April 1960 issue of Philippine Studies tells us that Sinco, in the book, was “against the overemphasis on vocational or technical training in the schools and colleges, against proliferation of courses and the weakening of the liberal arts program, and in general against the neglect of the primary objective of formal schooling which is the development of the intellect of the student.” Sinco, Meany noted, also “rejects the theories of ‘progressive education’ and the ‘life-adjustment’ school and urges a return to sanity.”

Meany also noted that the book is a collection of the Sinco’s speeches since his inauguration as president of the UP—thus “a fair portion of the book is naturally devoted to a delineation of that university’s important role in the life of the nation.” He continues: “One of the best written speeches in the collection … treats of the importance of regional universities. President Sinco concedes to private universities in the provinces an important role in the formation of the nation’s leadership, likening them to England’s ‘Red Brick’ universities as compared with the very few ancient institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge. He discreetly urges these provincial universities to maintain the highest scholastic standards, not lowering them because of their geographical remoteness from the metropolitan centers. Let them avoid deceit and dishonesty, let them strive not merely to attain student success in bar and board examinations and in civil service ‘quizzes’ but primarily to form cultivated minds and inculcate high moral standards.

“It is encouraging to read President Sinco’s protest against the laws and regulations of the Government of the Philippines prescribing details of curricula and the subjects which should be included in the schedule of courses. He appeals for freedom from outside control not only for the University of the Philippines—which has suffered comparatively little from government interference—but also for all institutions of learning, especially those devoted to higher education. ‘Standardization is desirable in factories and machines. It is detest-able in institutions of higher learning.’ Before he became president of the state university, Dr. Sinco was noted for his firm and well-reasoned defense of the liberty of the private schools from government control. It is good to know that he has not changed his opinion… President Sinco advocates a well-administered academic program as the best means for character education. He discounts the value of so-called ‘character’ courses or the effectiveness of stories about ‘saints and heroes,’ and insists instead on the value of daily repetition by the student of responsible acts in doing his school chores, his class lessons and his extra-curricular assignments. ‘In the last analy-sis,’ the author writes, ‘the improvement of educational standards and the test of sound educational performance inevitably involve the development of discipline and character.’”

Lastly, Meany noted: “Especially noteworthy are [the book’s] exposition of the nature and importance of liberal education, its discussion of the relationship of schooling to experience, its plea for an increase not in the number of years of schooling but in the number and intensity of class-weeks and class-hours, its insistence on the need for combining both research and teaching. It is most heartening to find such solid educational doctrine in the influential president of the state university.”

by buglaswritersjournal

Edith Lopez Tiempo’s “Bonsai”

In the 23rd December 1972 issue of Focus Philippines Magazine—the Christmas issue of a publication that was only a month old and which sprang right in the aftermath of the declaration of Martial Law in the country—a new poem by Edith Lopez Tiempo appeared. This was “Bonsai,” and the piece would go on to become one of the most anthologized poems by the soon-to-be National Artist for Literature. It is rightly celebrated today for its stark imagery, its personal details, its exquisite craft, its well-earned insight, and its sheer power. I also would like to contend that the poem demonstrates a remarkable shift in sensibility for a writer previously known for pieces that were rigid exemplars of formalism in poetry … cerebral and often daunting. In this essay, I would like to dive deep into the meaning of “Bonsai” and provide some context for its making.

When Edith Tiempo graduated from Silliman University in Dumaguete in 1947 with a BSE degree in English, she was part of the wave of people who thronged to complete their interrupted education because of the Japanese Occupation of the country during World War II. She was already writing poetry by then, writing very much in the Romantic tradition that Filipino poets in English gravitated to in that period of Philippine history, and admitted awareness of Filipino female poets like Angela Manalang-Gloria and Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido. But when she got accepted into the Iowa Writers Workshop in the same year, together with her husband Edilberto Tiempo, her notions of what made poetry were challenged. And it was then that she was introduced to the tenets of New Criticism which was popular in the American writing landscape at that time. It was a painful transition for her but soon grew to master the formalist discipline, although she would later admit: “It was necessary for the writing, but I found that it robbed me of other things as a person. Inevitably it does. It’s not just a matter of using it for your writing. It gets to you as a person.”

This ambivalence would come to play when she would finally pen “Bonsai” more than 20 years later.

In the meantime, after graduating from Iowa in 1949, she would go on to make a name for herself in both fiction and poetry, and was included in the 1954 anthology Six Filipino Poets, edited by Leonard Casper. In 1960, her poems would be published by the prestigious Poetry Magazine in Chicago, and in 1964, she would publish her first book, a collection of her short fiction titled Abide Joshua and Other Stories.

In this period of prolific writing, she also began crafting poems in an exercise of what she called … “a passionate patience,” with work that gunned for the intellectual, something which she noted as being in affinity with the works of Elizabeth Jennings. This phase in her poetry would culminate in her publication in 1966 of her first poetry collection, The Tracks of Babylon and Other Poems, published by Swallow Press in Denver, Colorado. The book would collect only 20 of her poems, which included another much-anthologised piece, “Lament for the Littlest Fellow,” first published in the Sands and Coral in 1950. These works were crafted in the most exquisite demands of New Criticism, and the collection won her the Palanca Award for Poetry in 1967.

She would publish two novels in the late 1970s, but would only sporadically publish her poetry in magazines and journals during that time, which would eventually lead to her hiatus from writing in the 1980s, perhaps beset by the horrors of Martial Law and most definitely impeded by administrative problems at Silliman University where she was teaching with her husband. “Bonsai” would become one of those rare pieces she would send out to the world during this turbulent period of her life. She would finally collect all the poems from this period—including “Bonsai”—into her second collection, The Charmer’s Box and Other Poems, published by the Dela Salle University Press in 1993. What immediately sets them apart from the poems in her first collection is their personal feel and accessibility to emotional details, and a looseness in tone and construction that you could say signals a defiance against the tenets of New Criticism.

Let’s take a look at “Bonsai” in that regard, and read it in increasing order of complexity… Let’s read:

Bonsai

All that I love
I fold over once
And once again
And keep in a box
Or a slit in a hollow post
Or in my shoe.

All that I love?
Why, yes, but for the moment —
And for all time, both.
Something that folds and keeps easy,
Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie,
A roto picture of a beauty queen,
A blue Indian shawl, even
A money bill.

It’s utter sublimation,
A feat, this heart’s control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hand’s size,

Till seashells are broken pieces
From God’s own bright teeth,
And life and love are real
Things you can run and
Breathless hand over
To the merest child.

It’s helpful to begin offhand with the title and the central image—although this is not necessary. A central image is the image given by the poem that is pervasive throughout, becoming the engine of meaning in the long run. In this case the title and the central image are the same: the bonsai. One must take note however that the literal bonsai is only found in the title, but the resonance of it—you can say its spirit—is everywhere else in the poem.

What is a bonsai? A bonsai is an ornamental tree or shrub grown in a pot and artificially prevented from reaching its normal size. So we can have a bonsai acacia or a bonsai narra — all very easy to keep because of their small size in a pot. And they are real trees, not fake trees — but their smallness make them pocket representations of their full-sized cousins. In doing the process of bonsai with trees, and in keeping them in pots, they become living mementos of the larger trees in the outside world which of course we cannot keep.

What I like about “Bonsai” is how it makes our interpretations of it relatively easy to do because the four stanzas of the poem seem ready-made to be interpreted variously via the literal level, the metaphorical level, and the metaphysical level.

It’s always good to start with the literal level. Going over the first stanza of the poem again, we take note of that first line: “All that I love.” What do you love and cherish the most in your life? When I ask people this question, they give various answers: family … friends … God … travel … food … pets… The things that we love are very precious to us. They occupy a large place in our lives, and in our hearts.

Take note of the next two lines: “I fold over once / And once again.” All that you love … that can be folded? This does not seem to make logical sense: this something that you love, in the poem, which can be folded twice over. You love your family. Can you fold your family? The answer is no. You love your friends. Can you fold your friends? The answer is no. You love God. Can you fold God? The answer is also no. You love travel. Can you fold travel? The answer is also no. You love food. Can you fold food? The answer is sometimes, well … yes. You love your pets. Can you fold your pets? The answer is again no.

So what does folding all that you love twice over mean? It’s a paradox, and we will get our answer very soon…

Let’s go to the next lines: “And keep in a box / Or a slit in a hollow post / Or in my shoe.” The answer to our befuddlement becomes gradually clear. You realize that in our lives, we have storage paraphernalia to keep precious personal mementos in: a shoebox … a jewelry box … a bamboo pole … a trunk … or a scrapbook. And what do we keep in these storage paraphernalia? Letters, jewellery, photos, old clothes, your wedding gown, your precious linen, postcards, and various souvenirs from all your travel…

The second stanza underlines this story: it gives us a list of things—we call this technique as “cataloguing” in poetry — that are examples of these mementos that we keep in these storage paraphernalia…

For example, your son’s note…

It’s written in crayon or pencil, and in kiddie grammar and spelling, it reads: “Dear mom, thank you so much for being my mom. If I had a different mom, I would punch her in the face and go find you.” And your reaction would be to glow and be happy and go awwww. You keep the letter which now has sentimental value for you. Maybe you will put it on the refrigerator door. After that maybe you will hide it in a shoebox or in a scrapbook…

This letter is a small memento which can be “folded once and once again, and keep in a box.” It’s just a letter, but it symbolizes something bigger — your child’s deep and innocent love for you.

Another example, your Dad’s one gaudy tie…

It’s not stylish, and looks freakish in fact. And your dad is normally a stylish man. But you gave him this tie on his birthday when you were ten years old — and your dad proceeded to wear the gaudy tie every Monday to work. And then he suddenly died because of COVID-19. And all you have left of him, aside from other unmemorable things, is this gaudy tie he wore every Monday to work because you gave it to him. Do you throw it away? No. You keep it in a box.

This gaudy tie is a small memento which can be “folded once and once again, and keep in a box.” It’s just a tie, but it symbolizes something bigger: your bond with your beloved father.

Another example, a roto picture of a beauty queen…

Let’s say you’re 90 years old, and you’re a great-grandmother. The younger members of your family only know you as an old woman, and they have no conception whatsoever of your youth, your beauty, and your vitality.

So you take out this photo from one of your albums, and you show it to your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. You tell them, holding this evidence, that you were young once. That you were known for your vitality. That your beauty made you a title holder like Miss Philippines. Do you throw this photo away? No. You keep it in a scrapbook or album.

This old picture of a beauty queen is a small memento which can be “folded once and once again, and keep in a box.” It’s just a picture, but it symbolizes something bigger: your youth, beauty, and vitality.

Another example, a blue Indian shawl…

Let’s say that during your honeymoon, your new husband—a handsome and good man—brought you over to India to see the Taj Mahal because of its romantic connotation. You loved the trip. When you visit the shops of Agra later, he bought you this blue Indian shawl, as a souvenir from your honeymoon. Later you would store this blue Indian shawl in your trunk, taking it out only once in a while for special occasions. And then he suddenly died because of COVID-19. When you go through your things days after the funeral, you find the blue Indian shawl in your trunk. It’s old. Do you throw this shawl away? No. You keep it in the trunk still, taking it out often when you go out.

This old blue Indian shawl is a small memento which can be “folded once and once again, and keep in a box.” It’s just a shawl , but it symbolizes something bigger: your late husband’s love for you.

They’re all mementos [or symbols] of bigger and more important things in our lives. Those things are too big to keep, but mementos of them are easier to keep and cherish.

With the third stanza of the poem, it’s easy to go to the deeper metaphorical level. Something “sublime” is something of such excellence, or grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe. But what exactly is “sublime”? According to the poem, the act of memento-keeping is actually sublime. When you keep things in boxes because these are mementos of great sentimental or personal value, that is sublime. The poem calls this act, quote unquote, “a feat.” It is an achievement that requires great courage, skill, or strength. It is exactly that because it is the human heart that drives it, “moment to moment” … “scaling down all that we love / to a cupped hand’s size,” to something small like a memento.

The small memento becomes a metaphor for the things that we love that are big. A lot of what we love are big in terms of the importance we give to them. But our mementos of them are small.

Here’s more…

Your love of travel is big. Heck, the destinations that you love — Paris! London! Tokyo! — are big. But you can scale down that love to a postcard you keep in a scrapbook! Your love of family is big. But you can scale down that love … to a locket with the photos of your mom and dad. Your love of friends is big. But you can scale down that love … to a photo of you and your friends you keep in a shoebox. Your love of movies is big. But you can scale down that love … to collectible figurines of beloved movie characters that you can store in a cabinet!

We already get the theme of the poem here … the only way to understand or keep the big things in our lives is through … small things. This, by the way, is a great paradox!

The poem also offers us a metaphysical way of reading. Is there any? In the final stanza of the poem there’s a mention of God and seashells. God is … big. Seashells are small and easy to keep. What is the biggest thing in the world to cherish? GOD! And the poem says we can begin to understand God just by looking at the smallest thing like a seashell. It’s beauty in miniature. It’s the complexities of the universe in miniature. It’s an idea of God in miniature.

Life and love are big things, but we can understand them best through small things. And small things are so simple that the poem says you can give them to a mere child, and the child can easily comprehend even things as complex as life and love.

by buglaswritersjournal

Catalina of Dumaguete

We have many folk tales from all over the province of Negros Oriental—a bulk of them are collected in Mga Sugilaon sa Negros, edited by Elena Maquiso and published by Silliman University in 1980, but has long been out of print. One of my favorites, however, is the folk tale of “Catalina of Dumaguete.”

This is obviously is based on the veneration of Dumaguete’s patron saint, St. Catherine of Alexandria, who is transformed in this folk tale into a local girl of sixteen who escapes capture by marauding pirates and becomes the saviour of the town from constant Moro raids—with the help of wild bees.

There are many versions of this tale. One version appears in John Maurice Miller’s Philippine Folklore Stories, which was published in 1904. Little is known of Miller, but he is also credited as the author of The Workingmans Paradise, an Australian labor novel. Below is the tale as published in the book:

There is no one on the great island of Negros who does not love the name of Catalina. Even the wild mountain men speak it with respect, and down in the coast towns at night, when the typhoon is lashing the waters of Tañon Strait, and the rain and wind make the nipa leaves on the roofs dance and rattle, the older people gather their little black-eyed grandchildren around the shell of burning cocoanut oil and tell them her story.

Many years ago there lived in Dumaguete a poor tuba seller named Banog, who made his daily rounds to the houses just as the milkman does in far-off America. But instead of a rattling wagon he had only a long bamboo from which he poured the drink, and in place of sweet milk he left the sap of the cocoanut tree.

The bad custom of mixing tuñgud, a kind of red bark, with the sap, and thus making of it a strong liquor, had not yet been known, so Banog, though poor, was respected, and the people tried in every way to help him and his daughter Catalina.

Catalina was a beautiful girl of sixteen and very good and industrious, but with many strange ways. She scarcely ever spoke a word and spent most of her time in looking out over the sea. Sometimes she would suddenly stand erect and, clasping her hands, would remain for a long time looking up at the sky as if she saw something that no one else could see. On account of these strange manners the people thought her a wonderful girl and she was supposed to have mysterious powers.

One day many ships came up from the island of Mindanao and hundreds of fierce Moros landed. Shouting and waving their terrible knives, they fell upon the peaceful people and killed many, among them poor Banog. Then they robbed and burned the houses and, seizing all the women they could find, set sail for their great southern island. Among the prisoners was Catalina. With her eyes fixed on the sky she sat very quiet and still in the bow of one of the boats, and though her companions spoke often to her she made no reply.

Suddenly she sprang into the water and a wonderful thing occurred, for, instead of sinking, she walked lightly over the waves toward the distant shore. The Moros were so astonished that they did not try to stop her and she reached the land safely. 

Many people who had hidden in the forests ran out to meet her but she spoke to no one. With her eyes still fixed above she walked through the burning town and along the road to Dalugdug, the Thunder mountain, that lies behind Dumaguete.

On Dalugdug there lived a terrible Sigbin. Its body was like that of a monstrous crow, but just under its neck were two long legs like those of a grasshopper, which enabled it to leap great distances without using its wings. It ate any one who came near its home, so when the people saw Catalina start to climb the mountain they begged her to come back. She paid no heed to their cries, however, but went up higher and higher, till her white dress seemed merely a speck on the mountain side.

All at once she seemed to stop and raise her hands. Then a fearful shriek was heard, and the fierce Sigbin came rushing down the mountain. It appeared to be greatly frightened, for it took tremendous leaps arid screamed as if in terror. Over the heads of the people it jumped, and, reaching the shore, cleared the narrow channel and disappeared among the moun tains of the island of Cebu.

When the people saw that the Sigbin had gone they ran up the mountain and searched everywhere for Catalina, but they could find no trace of her. Sorrowfully they returned to their homes and busied themselves in building new houses and in making their town beautiful once more. 

Several years passed in peace and then again the Moro boats came up from Mindanao. The men hurriedly gathered on the beach to meet them, and the women and children hid in the cocoanut groves.

This time the Moros had no quick and easy victory, for the Visayans, armed with bolos and remembering their lost wives and sisters, fought furiously, and for a time drove the enemy before them. But more Moro boats arrived and numbers told against the defenders. Slowly but surely they fell fighting until but a few remained.

Suddenly a bridge of clouds unfolded from Dalugdug to the town, and across it came the lost Catalina holding a beehive in her hands. Then she spoke and thousands of bees flew from the hive to the ground. Again she spoke and waved her hand, and the bees changed into little black men with long sharp spears, who charged the Moros and killed every one of them.

Then Catalina, the hive still in her hand, went back over the bridge and disappeared once more in the mountain. 

The people came out of their hiding places, crowding around the little black men and questioning them, but they received no answer. Instead the little warriors gathered together and ran into the forest and up the mountain side, where they were soon lost to view.

Such is the story of Catalina. Since that time Dumaguete has been safe from the Moros. The Sigbin has never returned to Negros. It still lives in the mountains of Cebu and the people are so afraid of it that they lock themselves in their houses after dark and can hardly be induced to come out. Up in the mountains of Negros live the little black men. They are called Negritos and are very savage and wild.

The savior of Dumaguete still lives in Dalugdug and is worshiped by the people. And in the town, now grown into a big busy city, the old people for years to come will tell their grandchildren the story of Catalina.

by buglaswritersjournal

Nick Joaquin in Dumaguete

The six days—virtually a week—between April 29 and May 4 is sacred to the memory of National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin. Thoroughly a Manileño, he was born on 4 May 1917 in Paco, and he died on 29 April 2004 in San Juan—and the middle of that week, the first of May, is emblematic of his most famous short story, “May Day Eve,” which is set in Intramuros in the waning days of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines.  

To be sure, when one thinks of Nick Joaquin in terms of “place” in literature, there is only one such place to consider: Manila. Nick Joaquin is the foremost chronicler of Manila, and it is no wonder then that he signed his journalistic pieces with the pen name “Quijano de Manila,” and is rightfully considered the poet laureate of that city. In early 1988, then Manila Mayor Mel Lopez invited him to write a popular history of Manila that young Manileños would enjoy, and Joaquin complied with gusto and came out, in 1990, with Manila, My Manila.

Nicomedes Márquez Joaquín was the singular Filipino writer who perhaps embodied the best of Philippine writing in English, having published true classics in almost all the genres of literature. When you talk about the Philippine novel, there is no denying the eminence of The Woman Who Had Two Navels, published in 1961, or Cave and Shadows, published in 1983. When it comes to the short story, several of his vie for the top spot as the best by Filipino writers—the aforementioned “May Day Eve,” for example, or “The Summer Solstice,” or “Three Generations”—many of which have been collected in Prose and Poems, first published in 1952, and Tropical Gothic, first published in 1972. As noted, he also wrote poetry, collecting his verses under two books, The Ballad of the Five Battles (1981) and Collected Verse (1987). His stories and poems would later be collected in assorted fashion in many volumes, the most recent one being the celebrated Penguin Classics edition of The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic, published in 2017, which ushered Joaquin to the ranks of literary world classics.

His essays and journalism, the latter under the name of Quijano de Manila, were always topnotch, and this would include works such as “A Heritage of Smallness,” an engaging diatribe about Filipino mentality and the culture that it engenders, and “The House on Zapote Street,” a gripping true crime narrative involving a mass murder of a family by its patriarch. His journalistic pieces would later be collected in assorted thematic books, including Reportage on Lovers (1977), Reportage on Crime (1977), Reportage on Politics (1981), and Reportage on the Marcoses (1981). His more showbiz-heavy writeups would end up in Amalia Fuentes and Other Etchings (1977).

 When it comes to children’s literature, Joaquin published a series of children’s books in 1979, under the banner of Pop Stories for Groovy Kids, which included such classics as Johnny Tiñoso and the Proud Beauty and Lilit Bulilit and the Babe-in-the-Womb. [Another children’s book, Gotita de Dragon and Other Stories, would be published post-humously in 2014.]

 And if there is one Filipino play that has been staged ad infinitum in the country—and would come to embody the Filipino soul in the crossroads of the country’s history—it would be Joaquin’s Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, which was staged for the first time on 25 March 1955 at the Aurora Gardens in Intramuros. The play would later be adapted into film in 1965, starring many of the principals in the original staging, by Lamberto Avellana, who would later become National Artist for Cinema. It would also inspire many translations, especially a 1988 musical version, Larawan, with libretto by the late National Artist for Theatre Rolando S. Tinio, and music by National Artist for Music Ryan Cayabyab. That musical version would also be adapted to film, Ang Larawan, in 2017, by Loy Arcenas. [He also came out with an anthology of four of his plays, which he called “Manileno theatricals,” in Tropical Baroque, published in 1983.]

He mostly abandoned fiction and wrote histories, essays, and commissioned biographies after Martial Law was declared in 1972, foremost of which would be A Question of Heroes (1977), Almanac for Manileños (1979), Language of the Street and Other Essays (1980), Joaquinesquerie: Myth A La Mod (1983), The Aquinos of Tarlac: The Making of a Subversive (1983), Discourses of the Devil’s Advocate and Other Controversies (1983), and Culture and History (1988). As a much sought-after biographer, he wrote the life stories of Carlos P. Romulo, Jaime Ongpin, Leonor Goquinco, Doy Laurel, Rafael Salas, E. Aguilar Cruz, Ruben Torres, Estefania Aldaba-Lim, Ed Angara, Alfredo Lim, Nicanor Reyes, D.M. Guevara, Dakila F. Castro, Elang Uhing, and Jaime Cardinal Sin, among others. This would include biographies of institutions, including Malacañan Palace and Philippine Women’s University.

All these cement Nick Joaquin as not just the grand storyteller of Manila, but also the foremost Filipino writer in English. In one of his self-confessed mission as a writer, as chronicled by Silliman writer Carminia Yaptengco in an early study of his work, Joaquin considered himself a sort of “cultural apostle” whose purpose was to revive interest in Philippine national life through literature—and provide the necessary drive and inspiration for a fuller comprehension of their cultural background. She wrote: “His awareness of the significance of the past to the present is part of a concerted effort to preserve the spiritual tradition and the orthodox faith of the Catholic past—which he perceives as the only solution to our modern ills.”

So what does Dumaguete mean to him, as befits the purpose of this column? We scarcely know, because he has never written about it, although, from testimonies of some of his contemporaries and acolytes, he loved the city, primarily because of his enduring friendship with the Tiempos, Edilberto and Edith, the two stalwarts of Dumaguete writing for most of the twentieth century.

His enduring legacy to Dumaguete literarature is his position as founding panelist of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop in 1962, which he mentored together with the Tiempos and [soon to be fellow National Artist for Literature] Francisco Arcellana. That workshop would actually be one of his last, altogether foregoing being a panelist soon after.

But Dumaguete writers would always take note of his influence in their writings. The Dumaguete poet and fictionist Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas, in Face to Face with Missing Pieces of Myself, would write of two encounters with Nick Joaquin, one in 1962 in Dumaguete when she was 11, and then a few years later, in Iowa City in America: “I was thirteen then … an ugly age to be, and I was designed to walk at wrong angles with the universe. He looked down at me and said, why it was the best age, he wished he could be 13 again. I didn’t believe him. I am sure he remembers none of this incident; the skill with which he launched into that tiny proto-flirtation proves that he must have performed the same act of kindness and gentility countless times, and with people who were more in need of it than I. When grateful little girls grow up to be instructors in literature, they learn to give a name to the sort of generosity of spirit such as Nick Joaquin spent on me that evening. They call it ‘insight.’

“He opened doors for me, and saved the seat next to him, and extracted my gauche opinions with such skill that I was only vaguely aware of what was happening; but by the time we were driving home with him I was completely intoxicated. The long, snow-laden rolling Iowa hills on either side of the road streamed by, touched with a pearly grey purity I seemed not to have seen in them before, even the bare branches were part of the inarticulate poetry that had something to do with the sound of the big gruff voice.”

by buglaswritersjournal

F. Jordan Carnice’s “The Electorate Weighs In”

The 2025 election is over, and the results have come in. Can we reflect poetically on the elections? Dumaguete-based poet F. Jordan Carnice has done just that with the following occasional poem:

The Electorate Weighs In

After Andrea Cohen’s “The Committee Weighs In”

I tell my mother a farmer
and a fisherman won.

Another? she says. Which
province this time?

It’s a little game
we play: I pretend everybody’s

got a chance, she
pretends she isn’t hopeless.

Mr. Carnice lives in Dumaguete, but hails from Tagbilaran City, Bohol. A creative writing graduate of Silliman University, he is also a visual artist, and currently works as a researcher for the National Museum of the Philippines in Dumaguete. His works, both prose and poetry, have been published in the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Ani, NCCA’s Ubod, Santelmo, Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature, Philippines Graphic Reader, Philippine Speculative Fiction, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Manoa Journal, among others. He has also authored two poetry chapbooks, Weights & Cushions (2018) and How to Make an Accident (2019). He is also a recipient of fellowships from national writing workshops in Dumaguete, Iligan, and Bacolod, and has served as a panelist twice at the Taboan Writers Festival. He was recently hailed as Poet of the Year at both the 2023 and 2024 Nick Joaquin Literary Awards, the first poet to have ever won that award twice in a row.

I asked him what what occasioned him to write this poem. He tells me: “In the hours between work, social media, and the demands of daily survival, I challenge myself to sit still and write about anything. It could be something as significant as world-breaking news or as trivial as the lint on my shirt. After fulfilling my civic duty in the midterm elections on May 12, I felt the urge to write about it. I do not shy away from sensitive topics, and yet for this one, I didn’t know where to begin.

He says he watched on television how the country once again voted in many of the usual politicos—those who organize beauty pageants and basketball leagues, or who showcase TikTok performers and the same-old street dance competitions funded by taxpayer money. He says: “These are the politicians we see regularly at ribbon-cuttings and opening programs, often flanked by celebrities or singing and dancing at town fiestas, all while rehashing slogans and hollow promises of ‘asenso’ and ‘ginhawa.’ I let go of the idea of writing a poem.”

But the next day, he woke up with a complete text fully formed in his head. “Before it vanished,” he says, “I grabbed my phone, typed it out, and sent it to a few friends. I titled it ‘The Electorate Weighs In,’ clearly inspired by Andrea Cohen’s piercing poem, ‘The Committee Weighs In.’”

He credits Cohen for obvious reasons. “How her poem’s structure made its way into what I wanted to say about the elections wasn’t clear to me,” Mr. Carnice said. “Maybe I had reread it the day before, which was Mother’s Day. Maybe my subconscious, still reeling from the election results, simply latched onto it.”

But he acknowledges that the times are changing. “On Sibuyan Island,” Carnice says, “Nanding Marin, one of the protesters who formed a human barricade to stop mining trucks in 2023, was elected municipal mayor of San Fernando, unseating the incumbent. We also saw the likes of Ronnel Arambulo, a tricycle driver and fisherman, and Danilo Ramos, a farmer and long-time human rights defender, garner as many as three million votes each in the senatorial race. They trailed behind flashier names, but those three million votes were cast by people who believed in ordinary candidates without massive billboards or expensive TV ads, candidates who are fueled solely by the desire to serve honestly.

“Some say it will take another generation before people like them hold real power in our government. But I think the shift is already happening. If we can only keep the momentum, move forward, and finally break the cycle. It is true that literature can only do so much, and no poem has ever stopped a tank or a bullet, but I believe nothing goes to waste in writing about it.”

by buglaswritersjournal

T. Valentino Sitoy Jr.’s “Dumaguete in Historical Perspective”

Right up to the very end, the historian Tranquilino Valentino S. Sitoy Jr., who passed away last 8 June 2025, was conscious about finishing some of the many historiographic projects he had meant to accomplish in his lifetime, an indefatigable figure of scholarship and local history. But for what he had already accomplished, his work is already more than enough, a lot of which have contributed to a greater understanding of not just local history but also church history.

Bill to friends and family, Dr. Sitoy was a theologian, a teacher, and a historian who wrote extensively about church history in the Philippines. He was born on 5 July 1939 in Claveria, Misamis Oriental, where he graduated valedictorian from Misamis Oriental National High School in 1954. He soon attended the University of the Philippines in Diliman, earning a degree in electrical engineering in 1957.

He was, however, fascinated with theology, and soon moved to Dumaguete and studied at the Divinity School of Silliman University, graduating in 1963. He began teaching at Silliman University, but pursued further studied abroad. He would eventually earn his M.A. in Religion from the Andover Newton Theological School in 1965, and his Ph.D. at The University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1972.

Between 1963 to 1991, he would become Dean of the Divinity School at Silliman University, and also OIC Vice President for Academic Affairs—a period of time in his life that was of extraordinary ferment, a time when he would manage to churn out important books on church history, including British Evangelical Missions to Spain in the Ninetheenth Century [1972], A History of Christianity in the Philippines: The Initial Encounter [1985], and Comity and Unity: Ardent Aspirations of Six Decades of Protestantism in the Philippines (1901-1961) [1989], becoming an important voice chronicling Protestantism in the country. He would also write, together with fellow literary giants Crispin Maslog and Edilberto K. Tiempo, a new history of their alma mater, Silliman University 1901-1976 [published in 1977], in celebration of the university’s diamond jubilee.

In 1996, after leaving Silliman University, he began teaching at Trinity Theological College in Singapore. He would also become visiting professor/scholar to Overseas Ministries Study Center in Ventnor, New Jersey.; International Christian University in Tokyo; Parkin-Wesley Theological College in Adelaide; and the Union Theological Seminary in New York, as well as Calvin College and Theological Seminary in Seoul. He was Area Dean for the Philippines of the South East Asia Graduate School of Theology. Then, after his Singapore stint, he became Graduate School Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Negros Oriental State University in 1999-2004, until his retirement. He was Metrobank Foundation Inc. Outstanding Teacher of the Philippines (College Division) Awardee in 2002.

Other books include Several Springs, One Stream: The United Church of Christ in the Philippines [1992], and an unpublished history of the Silliman University Divinity School, which he finished in 2022. These works clearly show that the bulk of his scholarship was on church history, but he actually also made a name for himself as a passionate historiographer of Dumaguete City and Negros Oriental. For the publication of Kabilin: Legacies of a Hundred Years of Negros Oriental, edited by Merlie Alunan and Bobby Flores-Villasis in 1993, he contributed a long history of the province from the pre-colonial period until the 1990s. For the Hugkat Journal, he contributed another long piece, this time on the history of Dumaguete, where his assertions about how Dumaguete got its name is probably most interesting, as it differs from the more popular version.

Below is an excerpt from that article, titled “Dumaguete in Historical Perspective”:

It is the general assumption that Dumaguete derived its name from the Visayan verb dagit, meaning “to snatch,” or better yet, to “swoop down and seize,” as when a hawk swoops down and seizes a prey. This same line of thought assumes that “Dumaguete” was derived from the presumed fact that it was where Moro raiding parties used to seize local inhabitants into slavery. The common belief is that its original name was Dumaguit, which the Spaniards transformed into “Dumaguete.”

There are at least three reasons, however, which pose serious difficulties with this idea.

Firstly, according to Spanish records, there were only three villages in Dumaguete in 1565, two along the shore, one with about 25 houses, and another with 50. The third was situated on an elevation visible from the sea and had another 50 houses. With about 100 houses in the area and about 400 or at most 500 inhabitants, who were so situated as to easily escape into the interior, the area did not seem a likely place for habitual seizure of captives. In any case, if it was a place where raiders were wont to snatch local inhabitants, why was it not rather more appropriately called dalagitan or dagitanan.

Secondly, the term dumaguit is an admiring ascription to the actor of the verb dagit. Was it in honor then of the valiant Moro commander, whoever he was, whose process his Christianized victims decided to celebrate with a glowing epithet? At best, this is unconscionably inappropriate; at worst, it is unfathomably absurd.

Thirdly, there is the presumption that there were frequent recurrent raids, so that in time the place came to be given this name as a result. But a Spanish Augustinian record says that one of their members, a Fray Francisco Oliva de Santa Maria, O.S.A., was assigned in “1599” to “Dumaguete,” though later that year he was transferred to the Augustinian’s Panay missions when Negros was handed over to the secular clergy from the cathedral of Cebu.

Yet the Moro raids against Christian settlements in the Visayas and Luzon began only that very same year, 1599, when a Maguindanaon force—3,000 strong—in more than 50 large vessels, attacked the Visayas in revenge for Spanish incursions into Islamic territory in Mindanao. The same marauders returned in 1600, and again in 1602. In annotating Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, Jose Rizal stated that the 1599 raid was “the first piracy of the inhabitants of the South recorded in Philippine history.”1 How can Dumaguete be named as a result of Moro raids, when the Moro raids began in 1599, and in 1599 Dumaguete was already known by the Spaniards as “Dumaguit” or “Dumaguete”?

But there is a Spanish document of 1582, the Relación de las yslas Filipinas written by Captain Miguel de Loarca,2 the Spanish encomendero of Oton, Panay, which mentions the personal name of “Dumaguet.” The pertinent passage reads: “[Q]uando los prinçipales desçendientes de dumaguet … muere El principal de aquella mesma muerte matan a un esclauo el mas desuenturado qe pueden allar para qe los sirua en el otro mundo y siempre procuran, que sea este esclauo estranjero y no natural porqe Realmente no son nada crueles.”

In English, this 16-century Spanish passage reads: “When the chiefs descended from Dumaguet die, a slave is made to die by the same death. They chose the most wretched slave they can find to serve the chief in the other world. They always chose a foreign, not a native, slave, for they are really not at all cruel.”

The phrase prinçipales descendientes de dumaguet (“chiefs descended from Dumaguet”) seems to imply that Dumaguet himself was a great Visayan chief, who seems to have been a folk-hero honored by the epithet “Dumaguit,” and this perhaps because of his prowess in attack with such fury and swiftness that he always succeeded in seizing hapless captives for slavery.

Moreover, he must have lived several generations before 1582 for Loarca to be able to speak of los prinçipales descendientes de dumaguet. If so, then “Dumaguete” does not then carry with it a sense of weakness, ignominy, and defeat. Rather, it is a tribute to the might, valor, and greatness of an ancient Visayan chief who continued and deserved to be long remembered despite the passage of generations.

If so, then Dumagueteños can regard the name of their city with lively disposition and even with justifiable pride, and do not have to paradoxically celebrate the prowess of an enemy chieftain, whoever he was, who had in fact inflicted painful and ignominious defeat on early Dumagueteños.

by buglaswritersjournal

Claro R. Ceniza’s “Philosophy is Learning to Live with Others: A Definition for Our Times”

Can a philosopher be a poet? One Dumaguete luminary exemplified that possibility.

Claro Rafols Ceniza is considered as one of the Philippines’ foremost philosophers—maintaining a fascination for metaphysics, the philosophy of science, analytic philosophy, symbolic logic, and the philosophy of language. Born on 10 May 1927 in Oroquita, Misamis Occidental, he was the third of six children of Judge Patricio C. Ceniza and Vivencia Rafols. He finished high school at Silliman University in in 1947 and, because no school in Dumaguete at that time offered a major in philosophy, he decided to take up Law instead. He made a reputation as a brilliant orator in school, winning first prize for an oratorical contest in 1950 for a piece titled “Big Man.” He would become President of the Student Government at Silliman in 1951-1952. He obtained his LL.B. degree in 1953 and passed the bar examination in 1954, placing 17th among 3,000 bar candidates.

His mind was divided between the practice of law and his interest in philosophy, so he decided to bring together his ideas in 1954, and published, in mimeographed form, The Rational Basis of the Problems of Philosophy—and sent copies to various schools and persons. [He would ultimately receive an acknowledgements from the University of Paris, which stated that the faculty of the school thought highly of his work]. The Review of Metaphysics listed his work as having appeared in 1954 (or 1955).  

In 1958, he wrote a brief summary of his major thesis on existence and had it published in pamphlet form under the title, The Relation of Man’s Concept of Space to Metaphysics. This became the first part of a longer work, which he published in 1965 entitled, simply, Metaphysics.

He would eventually quit the practice of law in 1965, and joined the faculty of the Department of Philosophy at Silliman University, serving as its acting chairman of its. In 1968, Silliman Journal would publish Metaphysics in full.  By this time, he had already been happily married to Riorita Espina Ceniza, with whom he had six children: Manuel, Susana, Cecille, Ana, Vivian, and Gary.

In 1969, Prof. Ceniza and his family would move to Syracuse, New York where the he and his wife would pursue their graduate studies at Syracuse University. He would earn his MA in 1970, with his thesis on “The Argument of Parmenides,” and his Ph.D. in 1972, completing a dissertation titled, “Some Basic Presuppositions of Classical Philosophy.” That year, the family would come back home to the Philippines, stayed briefly in Dumaguete, and then began teaching in Manila. 

By his own admission, he spent some of his happiest years of teaching at the University of Santo Tomas, where he began teaching in 1975. He also taught in various schools, including the Philippine Dominican Center for Institutional Studies and the Philippine Christian University. He also became visiting professor at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, and had also been an exchange professor in Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan.  After his teaching stint at the UST, he would come home to Dumaguete to teach once more at Silliman University until 1977. That year, De La Salle University would hire him as a full-time philosophy professor, where he was the first holder of the Lucian Athanasius Professorial Chair, and and daught at DLSU until his retirement in 1993. As a tribute to him, DLSU would institute the Claro R. Ceniza Lecture Series, which have produced works and philosophical discussions that honor his analytic spirit.

Among his books and monographs include The Relation of Man’s Concept of Space to the Problems of Philosophy (1960), Metaphysics: A Study of the Structure of Metaphysical Inquiry (1984), Elementary Logic (1987), What is Philosophy? (1990), Introduction to Philosophy: Selected Readings (2001), and Filipino Cultural Traits (2005).

But he was also a poet. As a student in Silliman University, he would be published regularly in The Sillimanian Magazine and Sands and Coral, and his poems were cited in Manuel A. Viray’s selected bibliography of the best poetry in the 1950s by Filipino writers. In the spirit of his philosophical inclinations, here is a poem he wrote that tackles that:

Philosophy is Learning to Live with Others: A Definition for Our Times

Philosophy is a conversation
Between two honest people.

It is being myself to the other,
and letting the other be himself to me.

Philosophy is not an intellectual exchange
(although an intellectual exchange
may take place in philosophy).

Philosophy is, in a deeper sense, a sharing
of selves.

A philosopher knows no foes,
for he who has known Being
has discovered the bridge to all other
beings.

And a philosopher should never forget that he is a man.

Philosophy is life,
and life is philosophy.

Philosophy was important to him. In an essay titled “The Problems of Philosophy,” published in 1952 on The Sillimanian Magazine, he explained why this was so: “… The question ‘why’ is asked whenever the fact presented to the mind does to conform with the mind’s preconceived idea of what the fact should be. And the mind continues to feel the disturbance—the unbalance—as long as it does not find the explanation, the cause which would explain satisfactorily the extraordinary phenomenon.  Philosophy seeks the reconciliation of the mind’s preconceived idea of what the fact should be and the fact itself as it is given to the mind.” 

by buglaswritersjournal

Merlie M. Alunan’s “Bringing the Dolls”

What is home? For poet Merlie M. Alunan, the answer is a difficult thing to come by, given the way her life has unfurled. She currently resides in Tacloban City, but was born in Dingle, Iloilo on 14 December 1943, the eldest of seven children of Flavio Alunan and Amina Muyco. She finished grade school at Victorias City, Negros Occidental, and graduated high school at Ormoc, Leyte—and then obtained a bachelor’s degree in education, major in English, at the University of the Visayas in Cebu in 1964. She would later spend a significant number of years being a resident of Dumaguete City, where she earned her master’s degree in creative writing at Silliman University in 1974. She began teaching at Divine Word College in Tagbilaran City, Bohol, and then moved back to Dumaguete to teach at Silliman. Later, she would join the literature and creative writing faculty at the University of the Philippines, both in Cebu and in Tacloban, where she would eventually retire as professor emeritus in 2008.

In a sense, her life is a criss-cross of homes—spanninig the wide stretch of the entire Visayas—which is probably why, among her many books, the one tome that has become a significant summation and culmination of her life as a teacher, as a researcher, and as a writer, is Sa Atong Dila: Introduction to Visayan Literature [University of the Philippines Press, 2015], a thick compendium of literary works—both folk and modern—in all of the major Visayan languages, including Bisaya [often mislabeled as Cebuano], Waray, Hiligaynon, Kiniray-a, and Akeanon.

So, “home” to Alunan is indeed a myriad consideration, but she will always consider Dumaguete as a primary home besides Tacloban: this was where she found her literary voice under the tutelage of Edilberto K. Tiempo and Edith L. Tiempo, and where she finally started writing—and quite a late start at that. While in Dumaguete in the early 1990s, she also co-edited Kabilin: 100 Years of Negros Oriental with Bobby Flores Villasis. It was a pathbreaking coffeetable book celebrating the history, the life, and the culture of Negros Oriental in time for the province’s centennial celebration. In Dumaguete, her son Babbu, a popular local visual artist, has also taken root, where he owns and manages El Amigo along Silliman Avenue.          

She is primarily a poet, and her works—in English, in Bisaya, and in Waray—are collected in Hearthstone, Sacred Tree (1993), Amina Among the Angels (1997), Selected Poems (2004), Tales of the Spider Woman (2011), Pagdakop sa Bulalakaw ug Uban Pang mga Balak (2012), and Running with Ghosts and Other Poems (2017). She also recently translated the Binisaya balak of Canlaon poet Ester Tapia in Húbad: Ester Tapia (2021).

Among the anthologies she has edited include Fern Garden: Women Writing in the South (1999), Mga Siday han DYVL (2005), Our Memory of Water: Words After Haiyan (2016), Susumaton: Oral Narratives of Leyte (2016), and Tinalunay: Hinugpong nga Panurat nga Winaray (2017). She also edited The Dumaguete We Know (2011), a memorable anthology of creative nonfiction mining many writers’ memores of Dumaguete.

For her contributions to literature, Merlie M. Alunan has just been announced as one of the Outstanding Dumagueteño Awardees in 2025.

But to go back to her grasping for the meaning of home in her poetry, we turn to a poem she wrote when she was leaving Tacloban with her family for a prolonged stay in Dumaguete, and found that the impending departure has torn her young daughter’s sense of home:

Bringing the Dolls

Two dolls in rags and tatters,
one missing an arm and a leg,
the other blind in one eye—
I grabbed them from her arms,
“No,” I said, “they cannot come.”

Each tight luggage
I had packed
only for the barest need:
No room for sentiment or memory
to clutter loose ends
my stern resolve.
I reasoned, even a child
must learn she can’t take
what must be left behind.

And so the boat turned seaward,
a smart wind blowing dry
the stealthy tears I could not wipe.
Then I saw—rags, tatters and all—
there among the neat trim packs,
the dolls I ruled to leave behind.

Her silence should have warned me
she knew her burdens
as I knew mine:
her clean white years unlived
and mine paid.
She battened on a truth
she knew I too must own:
When what’s at stake
is loyalty or love,
hers are the true rights.
Her own faiths she must keep, not I.

A tender, if heartbreaking, poem that explores the tension between survival and sentiment in the context of forced migration or displacement, we find in the poem the speaker—focused on necessity—denying her child her battered dolls, which symbolize the past and innocence.

Yet the child quietly resists, smuggling the dolls aboard the boat bound for another home, asserting that in upheaval, love and memory must also be carried.

The poem contrasts adult pragmatism with a child’s uncompromising loyalty to what matters emotionally. And in the end, the child’s act becomes a quiet rebuke and reminder that love and belonging cannot be sacrificed, even when life demands painful choices.

by buglaswritersjournal

Dyck Cediño’s Humanized

What happens when literature sheds its reliance on language, when it unspools itself from text and enters the abstract realm of ink and line, suggestion and silence?

This is the proposition of Humanized, a mini art print book of ink and graphite by Dyck Cediño—known in skin art circles as the visual artist and tattooist Deadlocks—created in collaboration with Pinspired Art Souvenirs. The book is a revelation, a collection of twelve surreal black-and-white artworks rendered in Dyck’s signature fluid line work. It’s not a “book” in the traditional sense, because there are no stories, no poems, no essays in it, but it is very much a literary object. It is literature by other means.     According to the artist, Humanized “is an urge to simplify and a move towards gratitude—where the smallest gestures, the simplest words and the tiny details, make the most impact.”

“Be grateful for the small things,” accoding to Dyck, was a gentle reminder given to him by a friend, which pointed himin the right direction. “With a surge of endless information and complex stimulus we often forget that our humanity also exists in the simple and the small: spending time with your loved ones, alone drinking coffee, playing music, drawing, writing, arranging flowers, even just riding a skateboard—one can find a joy like no other.” This urge to simplify, for Dyck, has reflected itself on the images on the book: geometric shapes, repeating dots, lines, a black and white image—which then presents itself as “human” figures.

That’s the book’s story.

To say this type of project is possible in Dumaguete, our City of Literature, is to stretch what we mean by “literature,” but not unjustly. Because Humanized invites reading. It is a kind of silent narrative, where each image is not just to be looked at but entered, read, interpreted, and felt. It is a book that does not dictate meaning but conjures it. And in this era when our relationship with story is expanding—into film, into song, into graphic novels and performance, into tattooed skin— why shouldn’t line art have its say?

Truth to tell, there’s something unmistakably Dumagueteño about Dyck’s work: that marriage of intellect and emotion, of precision and intuition, of the scientific and the spiritual. A Physics graduate of Silliman University turned artist, Dyck does not so much abandon one discipline for another as he allows them to coexist. The algorithm meets the ecstatic. In Humanized, you see this convergence. The meticulousness of line, like the notation of some forgotten music; and the subject matter, with bodies folded into themselves, and with eyes that refuse to gaze back.

What is perhaps most compelling about Humanized is that it is small. It is intimate. Just one hundred copies printed. It is a book you hold not for mass consumption but as an act of curation. This, too, feels aligned with Dumaguete’s literary air, where the best things are often found in the margins: the little chapbooks sold at the back of a poetry reading, the spoken word performance in a garage, the painting hung with no fanfare in a friend’s living room. Humanized enters that lineage, of art made not to be famous, but to be felt.

Some might question: Can this be considered literature? But if literature is, as Barthes said, the question minus the answer, then Dyck’s art is literary. The book does not deliver narratives; it suggests them. It withholds as much as it reveals. There is a piece in the collection—let’s say “Merry” — where the abstract swirls verge on figuration, but stop just short, like a memory you can’t quite name. It is this ambiguity that makes the work powerful. The image becomes a page. The viewer becomes the reader.

And this brings us to Dumaguete as a City of Literature, a City of Stories. If we are to live up to these designations, we must allow our definitions to evolve. We must recognize that literature can be born not just in the typewritten word, but in gesture, in silence, in the gesture of ink on paper, where visuality and poetics merge. In this way, Humanized offers a map of where we could go: toward a literary culture that is not only inclusive of new forms, but hungry for them.

Dyck’s broader artistic practice—from his solo shows like Everlast and Deadlocks, to his surrealist contribution Thalassophilia in the Atoa exhibitions—reveals a sustained inquiry into the personal, the metaphysical, and the ecological. He works not only with media, but with community. His studio is not just a space of making, but of gathering. His earlier exhibitions in his own apartment reflect the kind of grassroots art ecology that Dumaguete has long nurtured: a do-it-yourself ethic born of necessity, yes, but also of conviction.

We are living in a time when the boundaries between the arts are dissolving. Graphic novels win literary prizes. Spoken word becomes canon. Art books become texts. Humanized stands as a beautiful symptom of that fluidity. It is, in its quiet, handcrafted way, a declaration: that literature is not only what is written, but what is felt, interpreted, and held in the hand like a mirror.

In the end, what Dyck Cediño offers with Humanized is a kind of invitation — to look, to wonder, to feel. And what better role for literature in this city of ours, than to call us back to ourselves? Not with pronouncements, but with questions. Not with stories, but with lines. Lines that twist and breathe. Lines that might, if we let them, say something human.

And in this, perhaps, we are reminded: the future of literature in Dumaguete might not be a book at all. It might be a drawing.