Georgette Anna S. Gonzales, who once called Sibulan home before migrating to the United States, never set out to become a romance writer. In 2003, while working in Manila, she was simply looking for extra income when her best friend suggested they try their hand at romance novels in Tagalog. Five thousand pesos per manuscript, she recalls with a laugh: “Less taxes, that was still a big boost for our wallets.”
But what began as a pragmatic hustle quickly turned into a calling. The romance formula—boy meets girl, they fall in love, conflict ensues, and they live happily ever after—became her gateway into storytelling as a deeper, more resonant act.
Gonzales, who grew up in Quezon City surrounded by books, credits her imagination to childhood days spent devouring Nancy Drew mysteries and, later, the double rows of Mills & Boon novels owned by her godmother. “I just loved how two people found ways to love each other,” she says. Those well-thumbed paperbacks shaped her early sense of narrative rhythm and emotional honesty. She was drawn not to the artifice of love stories, but to their insistence on possibility—the idea that affection could flourish even amid life’s cruelties.
Her debut novella, Tulungan Mo Akong Lumimot, was written by hand in a notebook, and fragments of dialogue and scenes then stitched together on an old desktop. When her manuscript was accepted for publication that same year, her alter ego “Edith Joaquin” was born—named not after literary greats Edith Tiempo and Nick Joaquin, as some would assume, but after a nickname and a street in Frisco, Quezon City. That small beginning would lead to an enduring career in romance, where she would craft stories filled with kilig and complexity, and with women who are never mere recipients of affection but architects of their own desires.
For Gonzales, romance is both easy and difficult. The formula may be predictable, she admits, but its success lies in the execution: “How do you draw the same intense emotions in your readers as your characters are experiencing?” She writes her scenes like cliffhangers, each one pulsing with anticipation. Her measure of success is not awards or money, but when readers fight over her characters “as if they were all in The Bachelor.”
She has since built a body of work defined by her unwavering faith in the romance genre—not as escapism, but as a map of emotional truth. One book in particular—her 2016 collection of short stories, Of Love and Special Things—was inspired by the songs of Barry Manilow, and amply demonstrates how love stories can be lushly sentimental yet anchored in the grit of human vulnerability. Across four tales—“When Broken Hearts Find Love,” “No More Goodbyes,” “Memories and Our Song,” and “Undercover”—she turns familiar tropes into windows through which we glimpse the complexities of longing, resilience, and tenderness.
“When Broken Hearts Find Love” begins, as many romances do, with heartbreak and alcohol. A betrayed woman and a jilted man meet at a bar, their conversation a duel of cynicism and wit that slowly transforms into an unexpected intimacy. Gonzales deploys the classic rebound-meets-redeemer setup, but what saves it from cliché is her meticulous pacing and ear for emotional rhythm. The dialogue crackles with wounded humor—“That bad, huh?” he asks, to which she retorts, “Ass is an understatement”—and in those exchanges, Gonzales reveals her deft control of tone, moving effortlessly from bitterness to warmth. When their one-night solace becomes something more lasting, the story reads like a quiet argument for second chances, one that eschews irony for sincerity.
“Memories and Our Song” is perhaps the emotional centerpiece of the collection, a melodrama steeped in music and memory. Here, Gonzales takes the Manilow lyric “Weekend in New England” and spins it into a full-bodied narrative of lost love and miraculous remembrance. Elise, a singer, must rekindle her husband’s memory after an accident robs him of their shared past. The motif of song becomes both narrative engine and emotional metaphor—music as the vessel of memory, melody as the shape of love enduring against amnesia. It’s an unabashedly romantic conceit, but Gonzales writes it with conviction, balancing sentiment with restraint. When the final reunion comes—when the husband remembers her as she sings their song—the catharsis feels earned, not contrived.
In “No More Goodbyes,” the emotional temperature shifts darker. A police officer and his fiancée are caught in a tragic dance between duty and devotion, sacrifice and loss. Gonzales uses the language of action and urgency—a gunshot, a moment of fatal decision—to contrast the quiet ache of love unfulfilled. It’s her most cinematic piece, one that stretches the romance form into something approaching tragedy, reminding readers that love’s purity often survives only in its ruin.
Finally, “Undercover” provides a change of tempo—a smoky, sensual story of two lovers working together in the nightlife scene, navigating desire under the guise of pretense. Here, Gonzales flexes her command of atmosphere, mixing humor, danger, and erotic charge with the playfulness of a writer utterly at home in her genre.
Across these stories, Gonzales’s prose is polished, brisk, and unpretentious. She embraces the conventions of romance—the meet-cute, the misunderstanding, the grand gesture—but reshapes them with emotional intelligence and feminine agency. Her women are not damsels but survivors; her men are not saviors but equals. In Of Love and Special Things, Gonzales proves that the romance genre, in the right hands, remains the most sincere chronicle of what it means to be human: to hope, to hurt, and to love again.
She has not written in a while, she tells me. Today, however, even as she juggles office work and editing stints, Gonzales dreams of returning fully to writing. Her stories endure because they speak to something elemental in us: the human need to love, to hope, and to begin again.
This is the inaugural issue compiling the City of Literature columns, a regular feature on Dumaguete MetroPost, which celebrates the vibrant literary culture and heritage of Dumaguete City, in anticipation of its bid to be designated as UNESCO City of Literature under the Creative Cities Network. This column is produced by the Buglas Writers Guild, a network of literary artists from Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, and Siquijor. Each week, we will focus on the work of one local writer. For this month, the guest editor of City of Literature is Dumaguete fictionist Ian Rosales Casocot.
* * *
Each one of us has a crazy dream. To climb Mount Everest, for example, or to write a complicated symphony. Or to bake the world’s largest pizza, if that’s more your thing. In my quiet moments, when I ponder about the things I have written—or plan to write—I think about how wonderful it would be to write a good YA novel, in the vein of The Perks of Being a Wallflower or The Fault in Our Stars, but with a Filipino context and sensibility, something I have yet to really see from a Philippine author.
I have been writing for most of my life, and so it is not exactly out of left field for me to dream of big things that are literary. What is a little bit audacious, however, is an even bigger dream: to make Dumaguete a UNESCO City of Literature. This is part of UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network, which it launched in 2004, to answer what it perceived to be a need to foster appreciation for cultural diversity around the world. The aim is to “promote the social, economic and cultural development of cities in both the developed and the developing world,” through literature, music, film, media, gastronomy, crafts and folk art, and design.
To be approved as a City of Literature, cities must satisfy a number of criteria that mark its affinity to the written word, where literature must be seen to play an important role in city life: this includes the quality, quantity, and diversity of publishing in the city; the quality and quantity of educational programs focusing on domestic or foreign literature in schools at all levels; the hosting literary events and festivals which promote domestic and foreign literature; the existence of libraries, bookstores, and public or private cultural centers which preserve, promote, and disseminate domestic and foreign literature; the involvement by the publishing sector in translating literary works from diverse national languages and foreign literature; and an active involvement of traditional and new media in promoting literature and strengthening the market for literary products. A tall order—but the benefits of being accorded the honor are huge.
To date, there are only 53 Cities of Literature all over the world, which include Edinburgh, Scotland (2004), Melbourne, Australia (2008), Dublin, Ireland (2010), Reykjavík, Iceland (2011), Norwich, England (2012), and Kraków, Poland (2013).
In November 2008, Iowa City in Iowa, U.S.A. became the third city in the world to be declared by the UNESCO as an official City of Literature. Its Creative Cities Network program cites that “[s]ince 1955, graduates and faculty of the University of Iowa have won more than 25 Pulitzer Prizes in literature. Iowa City has been home to such acclaimed authors as Flannery O’Connor, Wallace Stegner, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. And the world-famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop was the world’s first Master of Fine Arts degree program in creative writing…”
I am specific about my mention of Iowa City as a City of Literature, because halfway around the world, in the heart of the Visayas, Dumaguete is very much Iowa City’s literary twin. Its inclusion in the ranks of these literary cities could prove to be a portal with which we can lay claim to the same distinction.
The writer Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas, a native of Dumaguete and a current resident of Iowa City once called the latter her “blonde Dumaguete.” Indeed, both share between them a wealth of literary developments that have lasted more than sixty years. “In 1946,” she once wrote, “my father [Edilberto K. Tiempo] was offered a scholarship by the Presbyterian Board of Missions, enabling him to do graduate work in the United States, at Stanford. He was readying himself for the scholarly regimen of the classics, and doing a refresher course in Latin, among his preparations, when my father was asked what area he wanted to specialize in at Stanford. ‘Creative writing,’ he said. ‘There are a number of novels I am going to write, and I need to know if I’m writing them effectively and well.’
“’Oh,’ the Presbyterian Board officer told him, ‘then there’s only one place for you to go. Iowa.’ Dad had to look up Iowa in the encyclopedia, and he was a bit puzzled at what he read. ‘Isn’t that where…they grow corn?’”
Iowa, right smack in the cornfields and silos of the American Midwest, indeed grew corn. But Dr. E.K. Tiempo was soon to learn there was a man there. It was a poet named Paul Engle, and he ran what was and still is considered the best creative writing workshop in the world: the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. “And that is how my Dad,” Rowena Torrevillas continued, “took a freighter across the Pacific, then a train halfway across the continent from San Francisco to Iowa City. And one morning, carrying his belongings in an Army-issue duffel bag, he crossed the Pentacrest on the campus to find the postwar temporary quarters in the Nissen huts, the quonset building where Paul Engle was holding the Writers’ Workshop.”
By 1947, Dr. E.K. Tiempo’s wife, Edith Lopez Tiempo, also joined to take part in the writing program in Iowa. When the Tiempos returned to the Philippines in 1951, Silliman University was already abuzz with creative writing. The campus was sprouting literary enthusiasts, among them Aida Rivera-Ford, Rodrigo and Dolores Feria, and Ricaredo Demetillo. The Tiempos made creative writing an area of concentration for English majors in the English Department—and soon that paved the way to preparations in 1961 to hold a workshop similar to the one they attended in Iowa. The following year, it became fully operational, and now it is known as the Silliman University National Writers Workshop.
In 1962, Engle himself visited Dumaguete, and met at the Silliman workshop two Asian writers, Ko Won and Wilfrido Nolledo. These two writers would soon form the nucleus of what was to be the Internatinal Writing Program, which Engle founded in 1967 with his wife, the Chinese writer Hualing Nieh Engle. Rowena Torrevillas, upon returning to Iowa City in the 1980s, would become part of the IWP staff, becoming its coordinator for many years, and editing with Paul Engle the 20th anniversary anthology of the IWP titled “The World Comes to Iowa.” By 2011, nineteen alumni and panelists of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, would go to Iowa as fellows of the IWP, including Wilfrido Nolledo in 1967, Cirilo Bautista in 1968, Erwin Castillo in 1969, Ninotchka Rosca in 1977, Alfred Yuson in 1978, Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas in 1984, Edgardo Maranan in 1985, Fidelito Cortes in 1986, Marra PL. Lanot in 1986, Susan S. Lara in 1987, Rofel Brion in 1990, Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta in 1990, Gemino H. Abad in 1991, Marjorie Evasco in 2002, Charlson Ong in 2002, Sarge Lacuesta in 2007, Vicente Garcia Groyon in 2009, yours truly in 2010, and Joel Toledo in 2011.
In 2005, writing fellows from the Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa, under Robin Hemley, also took part in the National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete, with Angela Balcita, Elizabeth Rae Cowan, Matthew Davis, Bernadette Esposito, Brian Goedde, Jynelle Gracia, Bonnie Rough, and Alex Sheshunoff. The program also sent visiting writers from Iowa to Dumaguete during the workshop’s 50th anniversary in 2011.
It has been a rich literary relationship between two cities. But does Dumaguete have what it takes to be City of Literature? Do we have diversity of publishing in the city? Not exactly, but that can be done, if only we can get visionaries to see the value of a city that publishes books. Do our educational programs focusing on domestic or foreign literature in schools at all levels? They do, but perhaps a sharper focus—with attendant assistance by those in the know—is in order. Do we host literary events and festivals which promote domestic and foreign literature? By God, yes, and plenty of that. Do we have libraries, bookstores, and public or private cultural centers which preserve, promote, and disseminate domestic and foreign literature? Our public library needs help, we can do more than just have National Bookstore in our midst, but we do have cultural centers that do a fine job of literary dissemination. Does the local publishing sector help in translating literary works from diverse national languages and foreign literature? None of that, as yet. Is there an active involvement of traditional and new media in promoting literature and strengthening the market for literary products? It can be done—but we need to do the work.
The Philippine UNESCO Commission has just endorsed Dumaguete as its aspiring City of Literature for 2025. We can do this. It will be an audacious undertaking necessitating a complete overhaul of how we think of this beloved city. But it can be done.
A national magazine once posed this question to Dumaguete writer and National Artist for Literature Edith Lopez Tiempo: “What makes you stay in the Philippines?” Her answer was short: “The Dumaguete shoreline.” The response is perfectly emblematic of the pull of place in the life of writers, and how important where one comes from is in the life of the imagination.
Dumaguete is a singular place of importance when it comes to literature in the Philippines. For many, it is the hometown of Philippine literature itself, having been the nurturing ground for many of the best writers in the country, and the literal hometown to some of our most important contemporary writers, many of whom have helped shape the country’s literature.
For this inaugural issue of the City of Literature series, we celebrate one such Dumagueteño who is helping shape local literature. A young poet, Lyde Sison Villanueva graduated with a degree in Mass Communication from Silliman University in 2008. He was a fellow for poetry for the 2013 Silliman University National Writers Workshop. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at De La Salle University. His works have appeared in various publications like Sunday Times Magazine and The Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. His first poetry chapbook entitled Made Easy was published in 2019. This year, he won Second Prize for Poetry at the Palanca Awards.
We share the title poem from that award-winning collection:
La Muerte de la Luz
In this Museum of Bones, the study begins with light.
Fragments of a cranium are arranged like an unnamed constellation,
attempt to replicate the shape of the head.
Small patches of discoloration— a tinge of sepia—approximate the time it lived.
A thousand years before Christ, maybe. Or even older than fire.
The caliper used to measure its age is the same period it takes half the carbon
in the specimen to naturally decay. The other bones are missing
or maybe left unexcavated, or the body was buried elsewhere.
The label says it is an early human— unknown gender—but the first to walk
upright and migrate; a race belonging only to the past.
Its identity is the number of prey or enemies it defeated only to survive,
the distance of the land bridges crossed, how did it get here, did it miss home?
With only a few fragments, conjuring its body—where flesh and organs
used to be—is a near-impossible task
Mr. Villanueva wrote most of the poems in the collection for the creative exercise in his comprehensive exam for his MFA course: “My proposed thesis project is a collection of ekphrastic poetry and I was tasked to write a suite of poems based on the artworks of a Filipino master. I’ve always been interested in the intersection of various forms of art (literary and visual) that’s why I’ve chosen to take on this project.”
Asked how he feels about winning the Palanca, he says: “I’ve always found value in the Palanca awards not just on the national literary scale, but more so on the personal level. I consider the award as a validation of my work as a writer. But most importantly, I treat the Palanca as a production deadline. Every year, since 2018, I’ve tried to come up with a writing project or revise an old one for the Palanca. This is the first time I submitted this collection in the Poetry category and thankfully it won. But I also believe this is the Universe reminding me to finally finish my MFA thesis.”
If there is one poet from Negros Oriental whose book I am most eager to get my hands on, it will be the Siaton poet Grace R. Monte de Ramos—a resolutely feminist writer who has her pulse on the issues that continue to bedevil the Filipino woman, and renders these concerns in acutely observed verses that not only take these issues with bravery and humor, but also conflates them with the nuances of the female body and the female experiences. In other words, she has always been political, but centers that with a wry female gaze. In 2003, for example, her poem “Brave Woman” was chosen for inclusion in the book Poets Against the War, edited by Sam Hamill for Nations Books—a pathreaking collection of anti-war poems by international writers opposed to the American war in Iraq. Alas, while she has been published widely—in Caracoa, in Ani, in Sands & Coral, in Likhaan, in Philippine Studies, etc.—and is much-anthologized, she has yet to gather her poems together in one volume. Someday, we hope to persuade her with some finality.
Ms. Monte de Ramos, who is married to the poet Juaniyo Arcellana [son of the National Artist for Literature Francisco Arcellana] and now lives in Mandaluyong, earned her degree in Creative Writing at Silliman University, where she studied under the guidance of Edilberto K. Tiempo and Edith L. Tiempo, one of the country’s most distinguished literary couples. She first taught literature at Silliman after graduation, then worked at the Cultural Center of the Philippines before deciding to be a full-time mother and caretaker of cats. But she persists in her literary inclinations by writing, reading, editing other writers’ manuscripts, and translating works into Binisaya [she has translated Alice McLerran’s beloved children’s book The Mountain That Loved a Bird into Ang Bukid nga Nahigugma sa Langgam], while also spending time solving Sudoku puzzles.
In the middle of the pandemic, she wrote this poem for a national publication that eventually chose not to publish it—in fear of the powers that be:
Filipina Nude in Quarantine
I need a Brazilian wax for this horsehair growing rampant around my crotch but the salons are all closed, damn this lockdown, and my lover anyway can’t go to where we used to meet, bookstore, bar, even church, where briefly we rehearsed postures of body-worship. Why did Harry have to be gleefully triumphant about it? He might not have kulasisi like Duterte, but I am secretly one, a very horny one whenever my period is done. I bought two panties to please my married man, one red, one black, and now they have to wait until it’s safe to traverse EDSA to get to the next tryst. My groin needs whitening, my nipples are shriveling from lack of licking and sucking. Even phone sex is out, as my husband is working from home, dispensing legal advice on Zoom, and my mewling and moaning would surely reach him through these thin walls. O I miss the windowless rooms where I could be imperious like a queen or as slavish as a bitch in heat. But I am prisoner instead. Tell me, generals of checkpoints and protocols, what do I do with all this hair?
Of this poem, Grace has this to say: “When Duterte became president many people wrote angry poems about him. I did not, as I was not in the mood for rage-filled or anguish-laced poetry. Indeed, Krip Yuson had to ask me if he could include ‘Brave Woman’ in the anthology, Bloodlust. I hadn’t sent anything. ‘Been there, done that,’ is what I said to him. I wanted to move on from anger to satire, I wanted my poems to laugh in their faces, make them look ridiculous. This poem was obviously written during the Covid lockdown, when we were subjected to many ridiculous rules.”
In 2005, the theatre artist and playwright Dessa Quesada-Palm, a stalwart from Philippine Educational Theatre Association [PETA] came to visit Dumaguete to do a theatre workshop for a bunch of young people interested in theatre—and came to stay. The workshop had ended in a high note, and feeling that something significant was at play with the participants’ heady embrace of the process, she asked them: “Would you like this to continue?” She did not expect the immediate response to be ecstatic. Thus, Youth Advocates for Theatre Arts or YATTA was born.
Among the original participants of that fledgling group that has become a powerhouse of Dumaguete community theatre was a young Mass Communication student from Silliman University named Earnest Hope Tinambacan, son of pastor parents and originally from Oroquieta City, but with roots in Negros Oriental.
Hope would later on become the lead singer for HOPIA, and one of the founding figures of the Belltower Project and the CuadernoSS Singer-Songwriters Collective. In 2019, he would earn a diploma in acting at the Intercultural Theater Institute in Singapore, and right after graduation, founded D’ Salag Theater Collective in Dumaguete. But aside from his preoccupations with music and theatre, he would also write balak—but writing plays is his foremost creative expression. His latest creation is the original Bisaya musical, Pulang Langob. He currently serves as assistant secretary of the Committee on Dramatic Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
In 2015, he wrote the short play Alkanseng Alkansiya for YATTA, an advocacy piece tackling poverty, which has just been invited to the Asian Youth Theatre Festival 2024 in Chiang Mai, Thailand under the title Piggy Heist. An excerpt from the original play in Binisaya:
Mogawas si Girlie nga nagmud-ok dala ang iyang cellphone.
Kapitana Honesta: Oh, naunsa naman pud nang nawonga, ’nak? Unsay problema.
Girlie: Ma, akong mga classmates lagi naay iPhone, naay iPad. Pero ako, bati kaayo og cellphone, dili man lang Android. Ma, nganong datu sila, kita pobre?
Kapitana Honesta: Ah, kalisud pud tubagon na imong pangutana. Pero abi nimo, ‘nak, dili man ‘ta pobre. Makakaon man ka katulo sa usa ka adlaw, naa kay balay, naa kay sinina, naa kay cellphone.
Girlie: Pero nganong ang uban mas dako ang balay, naay sakyanan, ug mga mahal nga butang?
Kapitana Honesta: Tinuod na, anak. Ang atong katilingban karon di gyud makiangayon. Naay pobre, naay datu. Sa atong kahimtang, wala na si Papa ninyo, ako lang ang nagtrabaho og gamay ra ko og sweldo sa akong pagka-kapitan. Igo lang nga makakaon ‘ta, og maka-eskwela mo. (Motan-aw sa nawong sa anak nga nalibog gihapon.) Masabtan ra unya na nimo samtang magkadako ka. Ang ako lang nga ‘di nato usikan ang kwarta, ug dapat ma-antigo mo tigum. (Ngadto kang Millet) Millet, palihug ko og kuha sa atong piggy bank!
Millet: (Kuhaon ang piggy bank, og magdalagan pabalik) Nia ra ma! (Madagma)
Girlie/Kapitana Honesta: Bantay!
Millet: (Mobakod ug mongisi kay wala ra mabuak ang piggy bank) Wala ra mabuak! Sorry!
For Hope, this scene has personal resonance: “This part of the play is actually based on a real conversation between me and my mama when I was a little kid. A conversation that has opened my mind to the realities in the society. I had asked her why we were poor, and she told me: ‘Dili ‘ta pobre, ‘nak. Middle class ‘ta.’ I asked her: ‘Unsa ang middle class?’ She replied: ‘Dili man ‘ta dagkong yutaan ug wala ‘tay dagko nga negosyo ,so di ta matawag og dato. Pero propesyonal man mi ni Papa nimo, og naay ginagmay sweldo. Dayon maka-kaon man ‘ta katulo sa usa ka adlaw. Mao nga dili pud ‘ta pobre. Naa ‘ta sa tunga. Magpasalamat ‘ta sa Ginoo nga dili ‘ta pobre, pero dili pasabot ana nga ato silang ipaka-ubos. Maayo pa atong tabangan.’ I finally asked her: ‘Nganong naay pobre naa pud dato?’ And my mother tried her best to explain inequality, injustice, and a system that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer. She ended it with. ‘Sige ra. Makasabot ra unya ka ana.’”
The next thing he remembered was his parents making him play with the children of their Badjao friends. “They exposed me to families of farmers,” Hope said. “I saw how my father organized sikad drivers and laborers in Ozamiz. I saw how my mother organized small vendors and jobless church women. They made me play with our neighbors, one of them a family of at least eight children. The fisherman father arrives late in the afternoon with his catch. The big ones they sell, while they feast on the small ones which they even willingly shared to me. My parents made me and my brother experience selling fish around the neighborhood.”
He continued: “If there’s one thing I clearly remember seeing all these as a kid is this: I never saw laziness among these people, only lack of opportunities, inequality, and injustice. My father was a farmer and my mother was a lab-asera [or fish vendor] before they went to the seminary as working students at Silliman University. They were products of what some politicians call ‘Sipag at Tiyaga,’ a slogan that makes us all think hard work and perseverance are the only way to escape poverty. But my parents made it clear to me that ‘sipag at tiyaga’ aren’t enough to alleviate the situation of the poor people, who comprise the majority of the population of this country. It is an entire anti-poor and pro-rich system that needs to be changed, and only a united force of people with a common understanding and goal to change it can make it happen.”
Poets writing about the craft [or the life pursuing the craft] is nothing new, but there is something compelling—and also, sadly, foreboding—about this 1968 poem about being a “mid-career poet,” written by the Dumaguete writer Artemio Tadena. When he published this, he was still really at the beginning of prolific career as a published poet, also at the cusp of winning various national awards, and nine years before he would die:
Poet in Mid-Career
And wherever I go, there would also go Spirals of roses, enameling of songs, Birds on golden boughs—there, with them, is where I belong. Angels and bell buoy weather, denominations and Powers: these, too, to my triumph will be witnesses, Not merely tides and cliffs — or pinioned land.
Circling now the spirals of the sun, he saw That flight did not bring him any farther from his home: Nor any graduate level from that which hovered into view: Momentarily he hung — then plum — metted into the foam: — Content at last with what he scaled to bring After repeated circling and circling: His own self it was he wanted to, But, alas, could never escape from.
Tadena was only 37 [on the eve of turning 38] when he died on 5 December 1977, just a day before his birthday on December 6. We could let this past week of December pass then without at least commemorating his memory.
A popular literature teacher at Foundation University, Boy [as he was called by friends and family] was serious about his poetry—he was a fellow at the Silliman University National Writers Workshop in 1969 and had trained, if briefly, under the Tiempos, and later he won three Palanca Awards for his efforts: second prize in 1969 for his collection Northward Into Noon, another second prize in 1972 for The Edge of the Wind, and finally first prize for Identities in 1974.
Three years after his last Palanca win, he would be dead. He was such a young man when he succumbed to a fateful cardiac arrest—and one might say, robbed of further attaining poetic heights that were well within his grasp. Today, almost no one remembers this singular poet from Dumaguete.
In 2016, two other poets—Myrna Peña-Reyes of Dumaguete and [soon to be National Artist for Literature] Gemino H. Abad of Manila and Cebu—would try to resurrect his name and poetry, and came up with an anthology of his poetry, This Craft, As With a Woman Loved: Selected Poems, published by the University of Sto. Tomas Publishing House.
From the biographical afterword of that book, Peña-Reyes writes: “We realized [in 2010, during a break in the Silliman Writers Workshop] that hardly anybody now knows the young Dumaguete poet of our generation whose outstanding work earned prestigious literary awards before his untimely death… Except for a few poems in some anthologies, his work is not available, all of his books having been out of print for decades.”
Together, Peña-Reyes and Abad set to gather Tadena’s poems from several collections, as well as take inventory of the ones in miscellaneous publications—mostly school papers and journals—housed at both the Foundation University Library and the Silliman University Library. Abad would edit and annotate the poems, and Peña-Reyes would endeavor to write a definitive biographical essay of the man.
Because of the book, we now know that Tadena’s mother, Eufrecina Maputi, was a Dumaguete native, and his father, Eugenio Tadena Sr., was an Ilocano who had settled in Dumaguete after finding work as a foreman in a road construction company in Negros Oriental. Eugenio’s first two wives died in childbirth; Eufrecina would become his third wife, and she would bear him three children, Artemio being the eldest. All in all, Eugenio would sire sixteen children with four wives.
We know that Tadena would matriculate at West Central School [now West City Elementary School], where he displayed an uncanny intellect even as a child, and a hankering for the arts. In 1951, for example, a watercolor painting of his earned worldwide recognition in an arts competition sponsored by UNICEF. He would later attend the high school at East Visayas School of Arts and Trade [or EVSAT, now the Negros Oriental State University]. He edited the school paper, and won prizes at various declamation and oratorical contests.
We know that he was a parttime college student at Silliman University, where he wasted no opportunity to publish his poems and essays in the two student publications—The Sillimanian and Sands & Coral, the prestigious literary folio of the university. The staff of The Sillimanian found him “strange,” “weird,” “aloof,” and “proud”—and he would sulk and go on a tantrum when his poems would not get published.
We now know that his first publication, in 1957, was with the Sands & Coral, with the poem “What is This Life We Lead and Lead?” And even then, his singular poetic style made him stand out. “I didn’t understand completely what [the poem] meant,” Peña-Reyes writes, “but instinctively, I recognized the voice of a genuine poet and became a fan.” She also recalls having serious conversations with him—“It was always serious, no bantering or frivolous talk, and I thought he took himself too seriously. He was brimming with ideas and information about poets and their work… No wonder he made people uncomfortable—he just had too much he wanted to share, and with such passion and earnestness.”
We know that he truly flourished at Foundation College [now Foundation University], where he eventually transferred. He was on the honor roll and edited the school paper, and when he graduated with an A.B. degree, he was recipient of the Presidential Pin award. Later, Foundation would hire him to teach English and literature. There, he would become a professor, chair of the dramatics guild, and adviser and editor of several campus publications. At the time of his death, he was head of Foundation’s English Department, as well as its Office of Publications and University Research.
We know that he married the Cebu writer and dancer Gemma Racoma in 1967, and had two boys, Ireland Luke and Adrian Gregory. The marriage did not last. Gemma would leave for a life abroad with their children, and Artemio returned to Dumaguete to live with his family.
We know that he published independently five books of poetry: aside from the aforementioned Palanca-winning collections, he would also come out with Poems (Volume One) in 1968 and The Bloodied Envelope in 1973. That last title won him first place in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Award for Poetry, also in 1973.
We finally know that he had just passed the Bar exam when he died—alone in his room, in the process of tying his shoes, ready to go to work.
Remembering his poetry, we know that he went where there will be “spirals of roses, enameling of songs / Birds on golden boughs—there, with them, is where I belong.”
Here’s an excerpt from the Palanca-winning short story “Pamalandong ni Antigo Mokayat” by the Dauin writer Michael Aaron Gomez:
Kon akoy pangutan-on di man nimo kinahanglan mobasa og daghan. Tan-awa: ang akong basahon dires balay ang karaang Bibliya sa akong lola, mga basahon sa pangadye, mga karaang dyaryo. Di bitaw ko mobasa pero maminaw ko. Maminaw kog radyo mabuntag, balita mahapon, balita magabii. Mga istoryas mga amigo bahalag puro binuang. Bahalag puro inamaw, puro binastos. Mga hunghong sa katigulangan. Day kabalo ba ka nga si…si kuan biya kay…Gaw tan-awa ra god nas kuan, morag… Kabalo ko ana, mas insakto pa nang akong mga madunggan kaysa akong mabasahan. Pero lagi kuno art man kuno nang iyang gibuhat, kinahanglan niya magtigom og libro.
Ingon pas Michael, di diay ka ganahan mahinumdoman sa mga reader, bay? Pinasagad man na gaw, maoy akong tubag. Pero kabalo ko oy. Naa ra koy trabaho kay daghan mobasa sa akong mga gipanulat matag adlaw. Kon masipyat gani ko o naa silay di ganahan ingnon man ko nila didtos among FB o di ba kay tawagan nila among opisina kay magbagotbot didto: ngano kunong si kani gipusil o di ba kato siya kay gitulon og bitin, mga ana ba. Ako wala ra pod ko kay kabalo man pod ko nga si bossing ang gabayad sa akong sweldo. Sa ato pa: kon naay reader gaatubang nako karon dire, moando ra ko niya. Morag: gaw, nakit-an tika, nagbagotbot ka, pero wala koy labot, pero salamat pod kay nibasa ka. Kon gusto ka may pa manginom ta aron mawala nang imong problema. Atbanganay ta, morag si Boy Abunda. Tan-awa ning akong “magic mirror.” Unsay imong isulti sa imong kaugalingon?
Wa ko kaila nila—wa sad sila kaila nako. Unta mao kini atong timan-an sukad karon. Ikaw isip reader wa ko kaila nimo; ako isip manunulat, wa ka kaila nako. Ako rang mama ug ang Ginoong Makagagahum sa Tanan ang nakaila nako. Unta makontento na ta ana.
* * *
Is Michael Aaron Gomez, writing in Binisaya, an anomaly among local writers? Here’s the thing: when you are a writer from Dumaguete City—or once trained under the pioneering creative writing program ran by Edilberto and Edith Tiempo at Silliman University—this usual kind of pigeonholing occurs: that you write exclusively in English, and is hopeless in the area of literary writing in the local language, which is Binisaya.
This is absolutely untrue. The closest thing to this might be our popular reluctance to write in Filipino [which is really Tagalog], and this is encapsulated in a retort Edilberto Tiempo once gave. Asked once why he wrote almost exclusively in English and not in the “national language,” he gave this telling answer: “I do not want to be colonized a second time.” Truth to tell, Tiempo, a Waray who has written important works of fiction in English, actually also wrote in Binisaya: many of his wartime reportage published on The Daily Sillimanian, a clandestine publication published before and during the Japanese occupation of Negros Oriental, were written in the local tongue.
But we must grant this pigeonholing some kernel of truth. Oral and folk literature abound, but literary writing as we know it now did not really have a strong foundation in the province even during the Spanish colonial period. Only with the coming of the Americans—and especially the foundation of Silliman Institute in 1901—did a semblance of modern creative writing take place. And because the teachers were American missionaries, this constituted mainly attempts by their students at a literary writing in English. The early issues of Silliman Truth—the first true community paper of Dumaguete—actually had sections devoted to both Spanish writings and Binisaya writings, but these missives were of the journalistic variety. Silliman students, who were taught to read such works by Daniel Defoe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell, followed the form and expression of the authors they read, and wrote mostly romantic literature in the English language in the first quarter of the 20th century. As late as 1925, we still got pronouncements in The Sillimanian, the official school organ, that tried to reckon with the English-only orientation in campus: “We should always bear in mind that if we are learning our own dialects, Silliman cannot help us out and we had better not be here. It is evident that we are here to learn among other things, to read, to write, and to speak in English correctly.”
When the Tiempos founded the Silliman University National Writers Workshop in 1962, the accepted manuscripts were in English—and this continued on for many years, creating the reputation that the workshop was the bastion of English writing in the country. (In 2018, however, the first manuscripts in Binisaya were finally accepted.)
This does not mean, however, that the fellows of the workshop—and especially those who also studied at Silliman University—have written only in English. It is actually quite telling that many of the alumni of the creative writing program at Silliman later went on to establish writing careers that included delving seriously into the so-called “regional literature.” This would include Marjorie Evasco, Leoncio Deriada, Erlinda Alburo, Merlie Alunan, and Christine Godinez-Ortega, who have devoted much of their academic scholarship exploring regional writings. [Evasco is known for her translations of works in Binisaya; Deriada is considered by many as the Father of Western Visayan Literature, championing works in Hiligaynon and Kiniray-a; Alburo was once the Director of the Cebuano Studies Center at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City; Alunan authored the groundbreaking anthology, Sa Atong Dila: Introduction to Visayan Literature in 2013; and Ortega is one of the co-founders of the Iligan National Writers Workshop, most known for its pioneering inclusions of manuscripts in the regional languages.] They have also written significant bodies of work in Binisaya, in Waray, and in Hiligaynon. Other local writers in Binisaya also include Hope Tinambacan, Junsly Kitay, Benjie Kitay, Nicky Dumapit, Grace Monte de Ramos, and Lina Sagaral Reyes. Enriquita Alcaide is known nationwide for being one of the best contemporary practitioners of the balitaw. And to date, we have several Silliman writers who have won the Palanca for the short story in Cebuano, including Shelfa Alojamiento, who won for “Ang Mga Babaye sa Among Baryo” in 2002, and Alunan, who won for “Pamato” in 2007.
Add to that Palanca-winning list the Dauin writer Michael Aaron Gomez. He graduated with a degree in creative writing from Silliman University in 2017, and was a fellow at the Silliman Workshop in 2012 and the IYAS Creative Writing Workshop in 2013. His first Palanca win was in 2016, when he won for the one-act play “Tirador ng Tinago.” In 2024, he won both a special prize for the novel in English for The Republic of Negros, and the first prize in the short story in Cebuano for “Pamalandong ni Antigo Mokayat.”
Of his short story, Mr. Gomez remarked: “I had wanted to try writing in Cebuano for a while but I didn’t have enough confidence I could pull it off for a sustained form like the story. But once I had the character’s name, the voice came after, and then the process became easier.”
Why this short story? “The story is one of the results of my self-examinations about what it means to be a writer not only in the Philippines, but also—and more importantly—in the regions. I wanted to create a direct response or a counter-image to what we commonly interpret as ‘literary writers,’ at least from my various experiences, and see whether there was any fruitful tension between the two, and then explore the idea of the validity of this counter-image as a literary practitioner as well,” Gomez said.
It is almost Christmas time—but if we’re talking about local literature and the holidays, one of the things that come foremost to mind is a tale penned by a Muslim writer. His name was Lugum Lilao Uka, one of the earliest Muslim writers in English in the Philippines. He was from Maguindanao, but studied in Dumaguete, and delved into the local writing scene quite considerably while a student here. He led quite a remarkable life and contributed much to the geopolitics of Mindanao later on, but he is mostly forgotten today, especially as writer—although some of his compositions have found new life in the repertoire of his grandson, the folk singer Rocky Uka Ibrahim.
Uka earned his Bachelor of Laws from Silliman in 1952. As a student, he was involved with campus writing through the Sands & Coral, of which he was editor in 1950 and 1951. Along with fellow Mindanao writer Reuben Canoy, he was also a member of the law debating team from 1951 to 1952. Later on, Uka would play a key role in national legislation. He was appointed as Chairman of the Commission on National Integration on 10 July 1959, and was also selected by President Carlos P. Garcia in 1960 to be a member of the National Committee for the celebration of the 14th Anniversary of the Republic of the Philippines. He was one-time president of John B. Lacson Foundation Maritime University, and was also significantly involved in the drafting of the 1987 Philippine Constitution as the representative of the cultural community of Cotabato and the Muslim community as a whole. Many people claim him to be the unsung “Father of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.”
In 1948, in the very first issue of Sands & Coral, Uka contributed a Christmas story:
A Deer for Jesus
I can still see the forty-six naked youngsters staring at me with very wide eyes as I spoke of the age-old Christmas story to them one morning. It was in the pagan Bilaan Settlement Farm School in the remote barrio of Malungon; and I, a Moslem teacher, was talking nostalgically of the customs of the Christian world. That in itself was bound to produce the unexpected.
It had been a most lonely life during my first year of teaching. As December approached, I remembered with almost a wave of homesickness Christmas seasons at the Normal School. Then I conceived the plan of introducing a program for the children.
Forty-six pairs of Bilaan eyes snapped and danced as I told them that they, too, were to have a party and a Christmas tree upon which they might hang anything which they wished to give to their friends. And I meant anything, for our mountain school was hundreds of miles away from the towns and sea coast.
Christmas day came and we had prepared painstakingly for the first Christmas program that would be held in that remote Moro-land. We began with a beautifully symmetrical tree no more than two meters high. Our decorations were wild varicolored flowers strung together and arranged on the tree. As the children brought in their gifts, the tree grew heavy with corn, wild honey in bamboo tubes, ripe bananas, corn cakes, roasted camotes. It began to sag alarmingly as the collection of taro, papaya, pineapple, wild fruits, and sugarcane streamed in. The fauna, too, was represented liberally by four parrots perched on the tree, a wild rooster, one small monkey, and a large edible iguana tied to its base. It might not have been the most elaborate Christmas tree, but it certainly was the most unique and naturalistic. Jesus would certainly have smiled to have seen it. At the base of the tree was a last, loving contribution—a baby deer with this tag dangling about its spindly neck: “To Jesus and Mr. Lugum Uka. Merry Christmas to you two! From Mandoen Katuan, Grade III.”
The program that followed reached a hilarious climax as the children began a Bilaan dance. One of the class exhibitionists, a little drunk with glory, tripped over his feet and sprawled headlong on the floor. Violent gales of laughter greeted this spectacle. As the crowd rocked and swayed, almost crying with mirth, sudden hysteria broke out under the Christmas tree. Simultaneously, the deer, the monkey, the lizard, and the wild rooster bolted from the tree, the room, and the Christmas program in wild panic. In complete disbelief, we watched them stamping and tugging at the tree, which with their combined efforts soon gave way. They raced from the schoolhouse, dragging the tree with them at the rate of fifteen miles an hour.
Everyone raced after the tree, but when it was recovered, only two parrots were left of all the animal offerings. The children picked up most of the fruits and vegetables in the bushes on the hillside. The monkey, the lizard, and the wild rooster were nowhere to be seen. Gone, too, was the deer which was addressed both to Jesus and to me. Who knows but that it preferred to be with Jesus alone. I have no regrets.
* * *
On 11 September 1949, Francisco Arcellana [who would later become National Artist for Literature] reviewed this first issue of Sands & Coral, which was edited by Aida Rivera [now Ford] and Reuben Canoy, with Ricaredo Demetillo and Rodrigo Feria as advisers. Mr. Arcellana’s review, found in his column “Through a Glass Darkly” for This Week, appeared on page 27 of the paper, and this is the notice he gave of Uka’s story:
“The second story is a Christmas story. It is called ‘A Deer for Jesus.’ It is by a Moro by the name of Lugum Uka. It is a story that I personally like very much. I like to think that the writing of ‘A Deer for Jesus’ did something for Lugum Uka. Christmas stories are always fun to write. They are such happy things. Christmas is a happy time, the best time of the year. One likes to write about happy things. One likes to remember happy times. And this is the reason why it is such fun writing Christmas stories and also why it is such fun reading them. But sometimes there is something else, something more than fun that you require of the Christmas story. Sometimes Christmas stories are written not only for remembering happy things and happy times. Sometimes they are written to do something, to help one resolve, admit, accept. ‘A Deer for Jesus,’ I like to imagine, resolved the lovely Christmas myth for the Moro, Lugum Uka.”
There are many poems about the holiday season—some beloved Christmas carols, notably “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” started off as poems later on set to song; and “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” by Clement Clarke Moore, remains a classic Christmas Eve read for those who wish to spend a more literary holiday. But if one plunges deep into Philippine literature, one will find a curious dearth of poetry about Christmas or the New Year. Which is strange, because Christmas is so much a part of the Filipino soul, and so much a part of our cultural fabric that we have even come to claim the longest Christmas season of all in the world, starting from the very first day of September until Noche de Reyes [or Night of the Three Kings] in January 6. Notwithstanding the occasional sophomoric poetic drivel young writers publish in the “Christmas Issues” of school publications, Christmas or New Year poetry has never been a staple in our literature. Asked why this is so, the poet Merlie Alunan had this to say: “Pilit kaayo nga topic, lisod badbaron. Handomon, bation, di lang sulaton.”
Pilit kaayo, lisod badbaron—handomon, bation, di lang sulaton. The focus is too narrow, the topic is too difficult to untie, to let breathe. It needs depths of memory, it needs depths of feeling—aside from the fact that it needs to be written well. True enough, but writing about Christmas and the New Year—especially the New Year—can be challenging because it comes with a baggage of themes that are, for the most part, clichés: the New Year often revolves around themes of renewal, hope, and resolutions, and these topics can feel overused or trite, making it difficult to approach them in a fresh or meaningful way. There is also often the pressure of optimism, an expectation of celebration, which can feel limiting, especially if you’re in a more introspective or somber mood that doesn’t align with societal expectations. There’s also the fact that whatever inspiration to write about the New Year deals with something that is, for the most part, ephemeral—the New Year is a fleeting moment, often overshadowed by holiday fatigue or distractions, and capturing its essence poetically requires quick yet thoughtful reflection, which can be hard to balance.
It is also a project that deals with something abstract, since writing about the passage of time or the transition between years often can feel intangible, and conveying these abstract concepts in a vivid or relatable way can take significant creative effort. There is also that battleground of the personal vs. the universal one has to enter when writing about the New Year, which as a celebration can be deeply personal, and as a holiday can be marked by individual milestones and emotions—and yet it is also a collective experience. Striking the right balance between personal authenticity and universal appeal can be tricky. And since New Year happens every year, not unique to anyone celebrating it, writing about it can be challenged by the expectation of novelty: a New Year poem might feel like it demands innovation to match the idea of “newness,” adding pressure to avoid repeating familiar ideas or structures we have already read before.
That said, we still have poets in our midst who do still try to reflect poetically on the New Year. Here is one by the Bais City poet Simon Anton Diego Baena first published in the Winter 2021 issue of The Adirondack Review:
Year End
I wonder if the fuel is enough to reach the island before dawn
but the water is not moving
months go by like the bruised knee of a kneeling child
sometimes God does not listen he only starts the rain
and the city sleeps
the bell tolls someone keeps knocking at the door
the family gathers after a funeral as usual
when there are no fireworks in the night sky
The poem captures so well the somber tone of reflection and inevitability that often accompanies the close of a year, and its themes are woven around mortality, uncertainty, faith, and the absence of joy, all explored with quiet introspection. The opening lines, “I wonder if the fuel is enough / to reach the island before dawn,” evoke a sense of doubt and yearning. The “island” seems to symbolize a place of solace or escape, while the uncertainty about having “enough” to reach it mirrors the speaker’s vulnerability and limitations. This sense of stagnation is reinforced by the line, “the water is not moving,” suggesting a life stuck in place, unable to progress.
Throughout the poem, images of grief and pain are recurrent. The metaphor of time passing like ”the bruised knee of a kneeling child” vividly conveys a sense of prolonged, unhealed suffering. Loss is ever-present, as seen in the gathering of family “after a funeral / as usual,” which highlights the routine nature of tragedy in the speaker’s life. The absence of fireworks in the night sky further emphasizes a lack of celebration or hope, reinforcing the subdued mood of the piece. The “bell tolls” and persistent “knocking at the door” symbolize mortality and unresolved calls for attention, adding an air of inevitability to the poem’s exploration of life’s transient nature.
The speaker’s struggle with faith is evident in the line, “sometimes God does not listen.” This poignant admission reflects a feeling of divine indifference, compounded by the observation that “he only starts the rain.” While rain often symbolizes renewal, here it appears as a force that adds to the city’s stillness, amplifying the sense of desolation. The structure of the poem, too, with its short, fragmented lines and lack of punctuation, creates a rhythm that mirrors the hesitant, reflective tone of the speaker’s thoughts.
Overall, Baena’s “Year End” examines the weight of grief, the cyclical nature of life, and the unfulfilled yearning for movement and solace. It leaves readers with a lingering sense of stillness and resignation, encapsulating the emotional complexity of endings and transitions.
Baena hails from Bais City, Negros Oriental, and is the author of two chapbooks, The Magnum Opus Persists in the Evening [published by Jacar Press] and The Lingering Wound [published by 2River]. He was a semi-finalist for the Tomaz Salamun Prize at VERSE in 2021. A prolific poet, his work is forthcoming in The Columbia Review, South Dakota Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Apalachee Review, Louisiana Literature, and elsewhere. Asked why he wrote the poem, Baena says: “I wrote the poem during the pandemic lockdown. Back then, you get daily updates of COVID deaths and infections. Really, really a surreal time to be alive, as if there was no future, everything we do was in some kind of a limbo. Everything we did was in some kind of a limbo. The title reflects all the uncertainties that await us in the new year. As if everything repeats itself with the ongoing lockdowns back then.”
A somber reflection to start the year with, but here’s to uncertainty. May we face it bravely in the New Year.
To go to Silliman by the Sea after the war, I rode on a rice truck from Bacolod escorted by Mama, not via the sunny route passing San Carlos but through the towns with airy names—Hinigaran, Binalbagan, Himamaylan, Kabankalan—and from thence through dark mountains where lurked guerrilla-turned-bandits or just plain waylayers. We spent a night at a barrio chieftain’s hut, with our buri baskets containing our precious few clothing left out on the bamboo porch, Mama worrying visibly about them, and a Chinese trader whose baskets contained bundles of money nonchalantly putting on an air of calm. Nothing did happen that night. Late the next afternoon, we made it to Dumaguete and the famed Silliman University.
My earliest recollection of Silliman centered on Assembly Hall and the doomsday voice of Mr. Molina; Guy Hall where we could see male clothing hanging on lines (and during a series of earthquakes, sheets tied from the third floor for easy exit); the cafeteria where friendships developed; the thatched-roof cottages underneath huge acacia trees where we visited the Sillimans, the Ausejos, the Utzurrums, the Magdamos, the Horrillenos; the passage between the little chapel and the chemistry building with dark bushes from which occasionally sprang malaria-crazed young men in camouflage uniform and gave the girls a scare; the Amphitheatre with its tall hedges that served as entrance and exit as well as screens for costume changes for operettas and Shakespearean plays; the library to the right and behind the Amphitheatre; Oriental Hall presided over by the Iron Lady, Mrs. Banogon.
I remember being lodged in the third floor of Oriental Hall, with Rachel Cervantes (now a world traveler) as my roommate among those occupying rows of beds and awakening to a piercing shriek. We all groped in panic to see if our clothes were still in place. A thief had climbed up the third floor and carried away the contents of three lockers. This was tragedy indeed!
In April 1946, Miss Abby Jacobs directed the first postwar Shakespearean play, The Taming of the Shrew, starring myself as Kate the Shrew and Honorio Ridad as Petrucchio. Since there was no money for costumes, the play was Filipinized and Mama brought over a haul of prewar ternos on a rice truck, which she herself filled with rice. The cast included Leonor “Nena” Sumcad, now a retired CFI Judge in Davao, and Ed Diago who, many years later, became a PAL steward and died in a plane crash—was it in the late 1950s?
In April 1948, a second Shakespearean play, As You Like It, directed by Mr. William Hamme, was presented at the Amphitheatre. I was Rosalind to Reuben Canoy’s Orlando. This time the forest of Arden had its thespians attired in Elizabethan costumes. Rosalind’s long boots, as she transformed into the page Ganymede, were made-to-order from Davao City where Mama had transformed herself from a judge’s wife to an abaca planter.
Among the cast of As You Like It were Pedro Carag, Benjamin Somera, Jose Jacinto Jr., Enrique Sobrepeña, Amaldy Quizmundo, Nena Ausejo, and Alma Oliver.
In 1948, too, the little magazine Sands & Coral was born with Cesar Jalandoni Amigo and myself as editors. It was conceived over steaming cups of coffee in the living room of Rodrigo T. Feria, our adviser, and his American wife—the critic Dolores Stephens Feria. We had the terrifying job of turning out a purely literary magazine, with these aims: (1) to maintain a higher literary standard among our campus writers, (2) to stimulate genuine creative thinking, and (3) to develop a keener appreciation of the more serious creations of our students. We had no office; we plotted at street corners or at the North Pole where being seen drinking beer made one the talk-of-the town; we worked at cafeteria tables or at the library; we even did some editing at a picnic. For our cover design, Reuben Canoy squiggled a skeletal figure reaching for the top of the sea, strewing sand over coral. This poetic squiggle has managed to be somewhere on every subsequent issue of S&C.
Rereading this first super-slim issue after 50 years, I must say that it contains not much sand but coral streaked with gold. Claro Ceniza in “Of Poets and Philippine Poetry” responds to William Van O’Connor’s comment on the pretentiousness of Philippine literary journals “because Filipinos try to write in a manner appropriate to the minds of Eliot or Yeats before they have learned to write in a manner appropriate to the minds of contemporary Filipinos.” Ceniza maintains that “a poet is individual, not national” although there are “poets who are born with nations in their hearts”; whether their mindstream is Eliotsian or Yeatsian seems beside the point.
Ricaredo D. Demetillo’s “There is a Part of Me Born on Some Battlefield” seems perfectly placed right after Ceniza’s statement. If I may reproduce the poem here, the reader may find the poet to be individual as well as the summary of his nation…and Yeatsian as well?
There is a Part of Me Born on Some Battlefield
There is a part of me born on some battlefield, Unknown save for the hawks that wing across, Screeching and wheeling in ominous design Before they swoop to where the tangled barbed wires Lift pronged fingers heavenward. There soldiers tumbled, Cursed, flinging frantic arms suddenly helpless, Fighting the numbness which precedes cold death. That part of me is stranger to myself; He looks with sad detached eyes at the men Who laughing pass, and sees in each child’s face The Comrade who’d stumbled, singing, into death. He smells the stinging smoke which rises from a field Of rice or sugar-cane, and he re-lives The stench of trench mud and the animal smell Of men bathed in their own sweat and filth.
There is a part of me which, living, is yet dead, Only to rise in moments to haunt my days, To turn my sweets to sour, the sensuous form To sick maciated flesh. Him with my tears I lave; I fondle him, but contrary, He turns away and would not speak; his eyes Are a reproach—his deep, cold, lidless eyes. Him would I drive to wander in the wet; Him would I spurn and call him not my own, And yet so close to me he is, to my sleep And my waking up! The world is full of him— So silent. So helpless seemingly, so potent, he; And where tired hands are lifted, there he turns And men imagine they have seen him weep; And where the young weave dreams upon their days But irreverent hands slash at the fragile web, He turns and looks—is it in sorrow or despair?
Part of my memory of Silliman is the audio-visual image of Rick Demetillo—one eye benign and the other raised in malevolent leer, his distinctive baritone cackling away into the distance. I recall coming to a Silliman Writers Workshop under the Tiempos in a martial year with Silliman a virtual concentration camp enclosed in barbed wire, our luggage meticulously examined at a checkpoint near the cafeteria and one night attending a party at Albert Faurot’s under the dark canopy of hundred-year-old acacia where horror stories of the military barging in on gatherings like ours—faculty members arrested right then and there—and suddenly Rick’s baritone booming into the still, still night. We gasped collectively in fearful expectation of the knock on the door…. It didn’t happen that night. After the workshop, on a plane to Davao where Rick’s “The Heart of Emptiness is Black” was to be premiered by our English Teachers Association Davao with the author as special guest, Rick must have experienced a sudden blackness for he noisily demanded to be let off in Cebu—a stopover. Davao missed its opportunity to listen to the vigorous voice of a sterling poet.
The Tiempos—Edilberto and Edith—what a fiercely combative couple they were! The fun of the Writers Workshop was having the two at loggerheads over works being workshopped … and yet they were so obviously caring of each other.
The 1948 S&C had Edith L. Tiempo scrutinizing Amando Unite’s “Manhood in a House in Cabildo,” a poem of nine lines, from the point of Metaphor as “bound up in the poem’s execution; and the success of the execution as manifested by the accomplished structure is really the basis for the most objective judgment of the soundness of the poem.” Her analysis finds the poem, in spite of its merits, to be less than successful in the use of metaphor as the poet “merely states a situation without proving its existence in the structure of the poem.”
Edilberto K. Tiempo, on the other hand, scrutinizes the same poem in “Objective Correlative and the Meaning of a Poem” and shows exhaustively that “artistic ‘inevitability’ has been achieved by the adequacy of objective correlative.” He therefore deemed the poem to be successful.
Both Edith and Edilberto, however, succeed in giving the reader instructive treatises on Metaphor and the Objective Correlative.
Dolores S. Feria takes upon herself the review of Stevan Javellana’s Without Seeing the Dawn which raised expectations of “The Great Filipino Novel for its vivid warmth and sly humor,” in its characterization not just of Carding, son of Juan Suerte, “the strongest and the most valiant of the village youths” and his wife Lucing, but also the other prewar barrio folk and through them emerges the story of the barrio and the people. However, she finds Part Two with its shift to action-packed incidents an over-ambitious attempt to record the total effect of the war—a task beyond the experience of Javellana as he tackles his first novel. What is astonishing in the first little mag of Silliman University is that it has these enduring names—Demetillo, the Tiempos, Dolores Feria who was among the activist faculty of the University of the Philippines incarcerated during the Martial Law years.
On my part, I felt pressured to write my first story “Bridge to the Morrow” which was based on the war-time experience of the Gurucharri family of Kabankalan, Negros Occidental, as they were badgered by guerrillas. Twenty-eight years later, in the S&C issue marking the Diamond Jubilee of Silliman, this story was fleshed out in “Ordeal in Hacienda Mercedes” where the big house was moved to central Luzon and the romance of Vince and Skit made to blossom in Chicago, USA. The mother-son-wife relationship likewise came into play.
The second issue of Sands & Coral, published March 1949, was thicker and had me as sole editor. The pressure was doubled and I wrote my second story “The Chieftest Mourner.“ It was to become one of my most anthologized stories. Its inception took place in Manila where I spent the previous summer with relatives—the family of the Director of the National Library, Eulogio Rodriguez—my “Tio Lolong.“ Upon the death of the poet “Baticuling”—Jesus Balmori—who wrote in Spanish and Tagalog—his glamorous live-in wife Nena Yance turned to Director Rodriguez to make the funeral arrangements. He was the poet’s good friend and adviser and could be counted on to handle diplomatically the ticklish problem of two widows and protocol in a wake where the President himself would pay his respects. I had a grandstand view of the tense but ludicrous situation! And it was only in death that I met my poet-uncle, he with the somber smile in my story “The Chieftest Mourner.” And I feel flattered that readers assume I really am the poet’s niece.
The 1949 S&C had a short but hilariously memorable Christmas story entitled “A Deer for Jesus” by a Moslem—Lugum Uka—set in a pagan Bilaan school in deepest Mindanao. Over the years, I remember the story of the deer, the monkey, and the lizard doing absolute mayhem on the unique Christmas tree.
Reuben R. Canoy wrote a painfully violent story, “Sons of Darkness,” and a poem on Jesus, “Birth: The Hypothesis,” which counterpoints the simple Jesus with the technological geniuses of the age who nevertheless cannot move mountains. Many, many years later, Reuben would be part of a movement to move Mindanao out of the Philippines.
Demetillo, the Ferias, and the Tiempos were heavy contributors in poetry and criticism: Demetillo’s poem “Tragic Victory” is Villaesque and in his critique “Villa: An Estimate,” he writes on Villa’s “secure place among the world’s great poets…strikingly original artist in design, vocabulary, and thought…one of those few poets who casting the pebbles of their genius upon the pool of literature, change the pattern of ripples on it.”
Our “little mag” adviser, Rodrigo T. Feria, who had worked in America and whose poetry was included in Chorus for America, a Carlos Bulosan-edited anthology, “succumbed to editorial pressure” and submitted his “Madness We Bequeth Thee,” a terse poem written in a hospital in New Guinea during the war. His American wife, Dolores S. Feria, our New Criticism guru at Silliman, who had taught at the University of Southern California, bewails the damaging effect of the war on both the literary output from the years 1941-1947 and the “complete critical drought in the national literary taproots” in her essay “Literary Criticism in Postwar Philippines.” She feels strongly that producing first-rate critics will hasten the flowering of Philippine Literature,
Edilberto K. Tiempo gives a primer on “The Handling of Time in Narrative Fiction” and Edith L. Tiempo reveals the fine working of her poetic mind in her poem “The Pane” through the use of unifying devices as she seeks to prove the paradox of the blind man in her poem “being safer than one who has his sight intact.” Her brother, Francisco “Ike” Lopez, needles the Filipino’s over-niceness in the charming little essay “A Very Proper Gentlemen.”
The 1949 S&C had gained 23 pages from its first issue. I left Silliman soon after graduation in 1949 but I would return time and again to bask in the sands and coral of my literary youth.
[Reprinted from Sands & Coral Centennial Issue, 2001]
Aida Rivera Ford was the first editor of Sands & Coral, helming the literary magazine of Silliman University in 1948 and 1949. She graduated cum laude from Silliman University that year, and pursued further studies abroad on a Fulbright grant, graduating with an MA in English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1954. She received the Jules and Avery Hopwood Award for fiction in 1954. In 1958, Benipayo Press published her Now and at the Hour and Other Stories. Her other published works include poems, essays, operettas, plays, and other short stories. In 1978, she received an East-West Cultural Center Grant at the University of Hawaii. In 1980, she founded the Learning Center of the Arts in Davao City, the first college of fine arts in Mindanao. It was later renamed Ford Academy of the Arts, Inc. in 1993. She received the Datu Bago Award in 1982, the highest honor that the City of Davao bestows on its citizens who have contributed to its development and prestige. In 1984, she was also the recipient of the Philippine Government’s Parangal for Post-War Writers award. In 1993, she was given the Outstanding Sillimanian Award for Literature and Creative Writing. That same year, she was named National Fellow for Fiction by the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center. In 1997, she published Born in the Year 1900, which included the five stories from her previous collection and added thirteen new ones, most of them written in the 1990s.
Buglas Writers Journal 