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.”
The poet and fictionist Cesar Ruiz Aquino—an eternal icon of both Dumagueteño and Zamboangueño writing—have been dazzling readers of Philippine literature for decades now, ever since he surged as a wordsmith of “robust eloquence” [from the words of Alfred Yuson, writing about the author for the Philippine Star] in the 1960s and the 1970s. As a member of a highly experimental group of writers that exploded with prominence in those decades—a generation that included Yuson, Ninotchka Rosca, Jose Lansang Jr., Erwin Castillo, Conrado de Quiros, and Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez—it took Sawi, as he is affectionately called by friends, quite a while to gather his writings together, but finally, in the early 1990s, he gave us the one-two punch showcase of the breadth of his writing prowess with his story collection Chronicles of Suspicion in 1990 and his poetry collection Word Without End in 1993. Both books instantly became classics of contemporary Philippine literature—albeit strangely out of print today—simply because there was no one else writing poetry the way Sawi was writing his poetry, and no one else writing fiction the way Sawi was writing his fiction—strange, musical, and—this has to be noted—highly autobiographical.
He became more prolific in his book publishing from the 2000s and after, coming out with an astonishing regularity with such poetry collections as In Samarkand (2008), Caesuras: 155 New Poems (2013), Like a Shadow That Only Fits a Figure of Which It is Not the Shadow (2014), Fire If It Were Ice, Ice If It Were Fire (2016), and Figures In A Long Ago Mirror (2019), as well as the personal anthology Checkmeta: The Cesar Ruiz Aquino Reader (2003). But aside from that brush with Chronicles of Suspicion, he has never published his fiction again in collected form—not that he was not writing fiction. He was still winning awards for the stories he did publish in various magazines—but only until the pandemic did we get new fictional work in a book from him, with Z for Short, the novel he has struggled to finish for what had seemed like forever. The novel is, of course, of the Sawi vein of fiction—still strange, still musical, and still autobiographical.
Here is an excerpt he is sharing:
Our window overlooked the rich orchard. From a branch of the tallest tree hung a dead bird, Fra Hernani and I discovered one day. How or why it died, there was no way for us to know. And the greater puzzle was how it managed to cling on to the tree branch, upside down, as if by sheer will and even beyond that as if it refused to let go of the tree's branch and plunged to the earth and turn to dust, become the earth. True enough it did not seem to deteriorate all the time I was in Manila. It did, of course, but its feathers continued to shield the bird—as if to hide from our sight, from the rest of the world, the fact of its annihilation.
What is the novel about? Here is an excerpt from it that explains itself: “I can’t write a novel is how I’ve come to decide autobiography is what it’s going to be, if failed nonfictionist as well. Autobiographer manqué. At any rate I will be the book. Or rather the book will aspire to be me. But of course, you will say, what book isn’t the author? I mean some reader, perhaps a French girl traveling in the Philippines, who knows English, will read it in bed on a winter’s night, fall asleep still holding the book, and wake up startled by the sensation of a man lying beside her and talking in his sleep, in a word, dreaming. Paris! Friends will recognize the slouch, the somnambular way of walking, the footsteps. The strange inconsistency in speech, by turns articulate and groping (now running over, now clamming up). The stranger inconsistency with the eyes: at times, from a natural inclination, riveted on—at other times, by habit, averted from—the face of the person he’s talking to. The palms. Which are what really rouse the young girl from Paris, though he’s caressing her only in a dream. His dream.”
The book, only recently published, is sold out and also now out of print.
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.”
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.
“Every man’s memory is his private literature.” ~ ALDOUS HUXLEY
The publication of the golden anniversary of the Sands & Coral brings us nostalgia and inevitably takes us back into our very own period or ambience.
Since the literary folio’s birth in 1948, we have witnessed the growth and development of literary gems by the Silliman writers. The graceful use of the English language in both poetry and prose has never been surpassed, let alone the magnificence, competence, and eruditeness in the crafting of various styles. On a broader scale, we have enjoyed the titillating and eloquent coda of criticisms of various literary genre which somehow prodded some of them to venture into the sensitive and visionary experiments of writing in search of a distinctive Silliman school of thought.
The S&C logo—the figure of a naked ungendered individual rising to the surface of the water with both hands dripping with the grains of sand while the live corals wave nearby symbolizes such noble efforts of the Silliman tale-spinners not to pay hostage to dormant literary standards. It also reflects the visions of the men and women behind the creation of the Sands & Coral who were moved by identical reasons, though diverse in some minor matters, but absolutely absent of material motives.
This memoir is also a tribute to them.
A journey back into the mid-fifties evokes fond memories of the bumper of literary pieces crafted mostly by the mavericks, whose only instruction was their urge to write, which was the only soul of their pens. This may sound strange or even preposterous but this was the reality of our time. Along this line, it is inevitable not to mention the Sillimanian, the Philippines’ oldest campus or student publication. Its pages friendly towards the campus pen pushers have provided the seeds into the mind of its adviser, Rodrigo T. Feria, the necessity of putting up a truly literary magazine. He saw the profundity of the minds among the contributors to the weekly student tabloid, whose only literary effusions even merited the attention of some editors of the national publications. Among them was the poem of the unforgettable Reuben R. Canoy, whose “Birth: The Hypothesis” elicited praises from critics, both local and national.
Indeed, walking back into the meadows of memory, now grown with some reeds of forgetfulness, brings nostalgia and some memorable events in the campus. For instance, when this author took the helm of the weekly student newspaper, there were two most popular columns, namely: “The Point of View” by Alphonse and Gaston, and “My Diary” by James M. Matheson, the editor of the 1954 Sands & Coral.
“Alphonse and Gaston” was actually Jose V. Montebon Jr., a law student then, and Kenneth R. Woods, who took up chemistry. The latter was the literary editor of the Sillimanian and then co-editor of the 1953 edition of Sands & Coral. More often than not, the duo would taunt the English majors to produce literary pieces worthy of the attention of the editors of national magazines. The friendly squabble as to who can write better drew the attention of the literary gurus in the campus and no less than Ed Tiempo, already then a leading light in the literary world intervened and chided the irresponsible critics and the literary monstrosities created by some of the campus mavericks. Ed’s persuasive advice did not deter the rebellious writers from pursuing their goals in providing their worth. The efforts had its dividend when Alphonse, a.k.a. Jose V. Montebon Jr., romped away with the second prize of the annual Philippines Free Press short story contest with his piece “Bottle Full of Smoke.” Kenneth R. Woods, on the other hand, co-authored several short stories with campus writers, which saw print in various national magazines; among them was “The Monkey Feast” co-written by this author. Woods wrote “Wanderjarh” in the 1953 Sands & Coral, which he planned to extend as a novel, to be co-authored by Reuben R. Canoy.
Lest we forget, perhaps the most popular writer in campus at that time was James M. Matheson, editor of the 1954 Sands & Coral. His column “My Diary” in the Sillimanian exhibited some mania for commenting on the mores and conduct of Silliman students and faculty members. He was also prone to commenting on the contemporary literary scene during his solitary moments. One Friday afternoon, when the weekly student newspaper hit the streets, the campus exploded with the unmitigated anger of the internationally-famous Filipino biologist in whose honor the biggest rodent caught in the northern Zamboanga peninsula during a field trip was named after. Without malice in fact or in law (as lawyers would put it), James M. Matheson wrote in his column to the effect that “it was not surprising at all that some professors are named after rats.” The famous natural scientist, who considered his profession “like religion,” upon reading the column went on a warpath and like a bounty hunter went looking for poor Jimmy all over the campus to “break his bones.” The threat could have been done had it not been for proverbial cooler heads. Truly, the muscular biologist could have crumpled Jimmy boy like a piece of paper, taking into account his size. Jimmy was considered as the shortest and smallest American mestizo who ever walked on this planet. The incident did not ruin his sense of humor. His story, “Sands on the Seashore,” in the 1954 edition of Sands & Coral, exemplifies his scathing commentaries on the social mores of our people: his stories often garbed in humor though.
There was some kind of a controversy relative to the numbering of the volume of Sands & Coral. It is imperative that this little puzzle must be resolved with finality.
When this author took the editorship of the Sillimanian in 1952-1953, we made an independent stand that all student-budgeted publications, including the Sands & Coral, must be the sole responsibility of the student editors. To make the story short, a compromise was reached with the university administration that a Supervisory Board of Student Publications must be created, composed of two faculty and five student leaders. In effect, the editorial and business responsibilities were devolved to the student staffers with minimal interference from the faculty supervisor. Under such arrangements, literature and politics became harmonious partners when the student government channeled some of their funds in order to have two issues of the Sands & Coral during the 1954-1955 school year. Some kind of diplomacy was infused. Thus, in October 1954, the magazine under the editorship of James M. Matheson came out as Volume 8, Number 1. I am too proud to say that I was then the chair of the Supervisory Board of Student Publications. With sufficient funds, another issue by March 1955 came out under my editorship. In the same year, another edition was issued under Maria Luisa E. Centena as editor.
The relationship between the student editors and the university authorities at that time, though marked by some differences of opinion as to the contents of the magazine, was excellent. The policy adopted during our time antedated by several decades the controversial Journalism Act of 1991. It is but fitting that I must pay tribute to the two genial, amiable and fatherly members of the board, namely Dean Pedro E.Y. Rio of the College of Education and Dr. Rodrigo Tugade, whose humor equaled if not surpassed that of Jimmy Matheson. There never was any controversy during the existence of the student board as all were unanimous that Silliman students were responsible enough to protect the prestige of the university.
The Silliman writers, in more ways than one, looked beyond the distant shores to look for models of their work. We did not confine ourselves to the writings of Faulkner, Hemingway or Steinbeck but also to Camus, Moravia, Svevo, Sartre, and other European masters. The Latin American writers with their so-called magical realism like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda were still distant stellars.
The success of Sands & Coral is no longer an issue. The literary grace is well-received by critics, here and abroad. All of these could not have been achieved had it not been for the heroic efforts of the English Department, more specifically the monumental contributions of the famous writing couple Ed and Edith Tiempo, followed by their beauteous daughter Rowena, who is presently with the Iowa International Writers Workshop as one of the top honchos. The literary achievements and honors garnered can never be dissociated from the accomplishment of the university as one of the best learning and writing centers in Asia today. For instance, the Silliman Writers Workshop, reputed to be the oldest in Southeast Asia, has been replicated in many areas of the country, whose founding members were mostly once under the tutelage of the Tiempos.
In the field of poetry, the famous Ilonggo poet, Ricaredo Demetillo of the “Barter of Panay” fame, and many others have enriched the local poets in how to universalize the local mood and culture.
R. T. Feria, the long-reigning adviser of the student newspaper may be considered the father of Sands & Coral, who with his idea borne over cups of coffee is responsible for making this magazine exist today. His wife, Dolores Stephens Feria, or Dee, enlivened the pages with her brief reviews and criticisms with some philosophical touches.
Except for Edith L. Tiempo, who is a consultant of the CAP, all of those I have mentioned have returned to our Father’s House, probably still musing.
If there is any reward in an endeavor like creative writing, it is the consolation of reading your name years after you have gone out of the scene.
In an article, “Center of Creative Writing,” by T. A. Rodriguez, published in the August 22, 1964 issue of the Chronicle Magazine, she wrote:
Now in its sixteenth year, the magazine has introduced to national literary circles such writers as Graciano Arinday Jr., Alexis Baban, Leticia Dizon, James Matheson, Jose Montebon Jr., David Quemada and Carmina A. Yaptenco.
Except probably for David Quemada, who is still abroad engrossed in the teaching of literature, none of these above-mentioned names are still in the so-called “literary circle.”
One writer who can be considered as part of the literary group of Silliman is Rinaldo G. Remitio, who won a literary contest in the mid-1950s with his poem “Walking on the Tight Rope.” He was then taking up Pre-Law in Silliman University. He has written a book of short stories entitled Scents of Sampaguita, and his story in Free Press entitled “The Raft” won critical acclaim.
One incident which I can never forget relative to creative writing was when I received a pay check for my poem “Apocalyptic Morning” from the Saturday Evening News Magazine, then edited by an ardent Silliman admirer Antonio S. Gabila. Such an incident is still heavily etched in my mind because on the very day I received my fee I did not have a cent to my name. It made me think that writers do not necessarily go hungry.
Every man has his own las vegas de la memoria, just as John Steinbeck has his own LasPasturas del Cielo.
This memoir is history, subjective though. It is also a statement of concern and, as someone said, it is a relevant sentiment.
Today, I still do write but no longer in the world of fiction. The demand of my writing is limited by the parameters of the virtues of justice. In a sense, it is still literature. Judicial interpretation rather than imagination takes the form to weed out the truth so that justice shall prevail. I do hope that in the near future I may be able to give finishing touches to a novel which I have promised the late Ed Tiempo, whose friendship and advice left some unforgettable instructions in my mind about writing and criticism.
[Reprinted from Sands & Coral Centennial Issue, 2001]
Graciano H. Arinday Jr. was editor of Sands & Coral in 1955. He retired as Regional Trial Court Judge of Branch 69 in Silay City, Negros Occidental in 1999. He died in 2012.
In that long ago and far away time, Diosdado Macapagal would become our country’s president. He dabbled in Kapampangan poetry (though my recollection may be faulty), but when the price of commodities went up, we called him “President Macamahal.” The Cuban missile crisis brought home the real threat of nuclear war. A popular American president who spoke and wrote with great style would be assassinated in Dallas, causing my friend Liling’s father a fatal heart attack. But mostly, we were, self-consciously, serious about literature and writing, as only the young can be. Never mind that a lot of what we rushed to publish is cause for embarrassment, viewed now with the hindsight and experience of more than three decades. No one could have told us then that there wasn’t a chance we could, would become writers.
Write we did and publish. It was the “golden age” of Silliman. The Sands & Coral, well-respected in the country, was the place to be. If you made it there, you had “arrived” as a campus writer, sometimes seeing your work alongside those of established national writers who submitted work to Silliman’s literary annual. Being appointed editor was a great honor. The Sillimanian was the campus newspaper, receptive to a broader range of student writing. Antonio Gabila, adviser and journalism professor (and the director of the Office of Information and Publications), scrupulously demanded that all university material for local or national release be professionally written and presented, taking into consideration things that don’t seem to matter much these days, such as, yes, correct grammar. His standards provided invaluable training to future journalists. The Sillimanian editor under his guidance was a position of prestige and honor. For editors, it was a lot of work. Often, pressed with deadlines, we would have to beg and cajole the amiable University Press Manager, Josue Rodriguez, who always came to our rescue.
It was not uncommon for creative writing majors to take journalism classes and vice versa. At Silliman, we did not see the two disciplines as exclusionary. Seeing how stories in newspapers and magazines are written today, and the current popularity of “creative non-fiction,“ it seems that Silliman was on to something early.
Another university publication, the Silliman Journal, printing mainly scholarly articles, was not usually an outlet for creative writers.
At that time, some of us also started seeing our poems and short stories accepted by the more prestigious, not to mention paying, national publications: Philippines Free Press, Comment, Graphic, Women’s Weekly.
We did not have an official campus writers group or organization, but in 1958-60 when Edilberto and Edith Tiempo had returned with doctorates in creative writing from abroad, we met and discussed our manuscripts at the creative writing workshop taught by Edith and required of all English majors but open to anyone interested. (Before the Tiempos returned, David V. Quemada was our campus literary guru. In fact, as a college sophomore in his Intro to Lit class, I was introduced to the excitement and challenge of modern poetry and prose. I showed Dave a poem I had written, which he passed on to Gene Baban, a pre-med student with literary interests, then editor of Sands & Coral. That would be my first appearance in S&C.)
The workshop where we discussed poetry and fiction was held at an unholy time—Saturday afternoons when we would rather have been siesta-ing or doing other things, glad to be done with school work for the week. I confess to skipping a few sessions, especially on very hot afternoons when I succumbed to long naps. Since there were usually not more than a dozen or so enrollees, every absence was prominently noticeable, and it was easy to feel guilty, although Edith never mentioned it.
Raymond Llorca, Williamor Marquez, Erlendo Constantino, Teresita Afiover-Rodriguez, Lorna Occeña, Amiel Leonardia, Ben Cabral, Edna Ygnalaga, Fe Roble, David Guimbongan, Lorna Peña-Reyes (my twin who majored in anthro-socio but has always been seriously interested in literature), were among the “workshoppers,“ as were Priscilla Lasmarias and Domini Torrevillas. Attending the workshop briefly was Artemio Tadena whose lyric poems I admired. Somehow, unlike most of us who, from necessity, learned to give and take frank public criticism of each other’s work, “Boy” Tadena was acutely sensitive about having his poems discussed in a workshop. Sure enough, when some negative comments were made about his poem, he became irate, crumpled up his manuscript, and stormed out of class, never to return. We were all flustered, but felt he was a big talent. (Boy and I remained in regular, although not close, contact through the years. He was employed at Foundation College, and I was working at Silliman. On the day I was returning to the States in 1972, I was touched when he came to our house bringing me copies of his two poetry books inscribed with priceless sentiments in his beautiful handwriting. I didn’t know then that I was seeing him for the last time. His untimely death at a very young age deprived the country of a truly gifted poet.)
Our workshop classes were held in the front room of the Tiempo home in Piapi. Being invited into the homes of our professors for classes or meals was a Silliman tradition. The Tiempos were among the most hospitable and welcoming of the faculty. Their home became a second home for many of us. Although Edith handled the workshop (“dramatize, don’t state; show, don’t tell”), Ed sometimes would join our discussions. Like Edith, he was generous with praise when something pleased him, but also like Edith, he could be bluntly hurting. We enjoyed it when the two would argue spiritedly with each other. Ed had a delightful sense of humor—who can forget his incredulous “Kisses in the morning!“ deflating a writer’s idealized image of lovers exchanging kisses first thing upon waking up? He liked to tease us young ladies who embarrassed easily. I think that instead of spending the whole afternoon with us, he preferred working in their yard, puttering among his grape plants and fruit trees, digging and putting in a lily/lotus pond that became the centerpiece of their spacious backyard. During class breaks when we were served delicious cookies and naranjita punch, we would gather in that backyard. Ed, in his tattered straw hat and shabby work clothes, pushing a wheelbarrow, would mutter “Coolie! Coolie!” to our amusement. Sometimes he would take the time to cut down some ripe bananas to share with us.
During class, Rowena, still a small child, sometimes sat quietly to the side of our class circle, perhaps listening to our discussion. But when she decided she had something to tell her mother, which happened more than once, she did not hesitate to go over to whisper in her ear, often interrupting Edith who would be in the middle of a sentence. I still chuckle when I remember how Edith would hold the little girl at bay with an outstretched arm while trying to finish whatever she was telling us. Rowena, like a colt chafing at the bit, strained all the while to reach her mother’s ear, satisfied only when she would be allowed to whisper whatever was so urgent. Donny was still a baby, sleeping or playing in his crib in one corner of the dining room.
Younger campus writers came later: Edgar Libre-Grifio, Roberto Ponteñila, Arthur Lim, Rogelio Tangara. A member of the College of Nursing faculty, Nora Pascua-Sanchez, sister of national prize -winning U.P writer Wilfredo Pascua-Sanchez, was also one of the writers on campus then. The top literary prizes were the Philippines Free Press, Palanca, Republic Heritage, Pro Patria, and the short-lived and controversial Stonehill P.E.N. awards. We basked in the reflected glory of Silliman winners Tiempos and Quemada.
After graduation in 1960, many of us stayed on in Dumaguete, attending graduate school and/or working at the university. Though we were far from the country’s main centers of culture, we felt no deprivation. In addition to hosting prominent Manila writers and speakers, Silliman, which some people called the “U.P of the South,” was often on the itinerary of Fulbright lecturers and U.S. artists and writers on State Department tours. Jesse Stuart and Hortense Calisher discussed our works in workshop sessions on campus. The latter wrote about her Silliman visit in her memoirs, Herself). We regularly got the national papers and weeklies where we could read the work of leading writers. It was easy to send for the latest books published in Manila. At that time they were Estrella Alfon’s Magnificence; Frankie Sionil-Jose’s The Pretenders; Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels (Nick, the Free Press literary editor, often accepted for publication the stories and poems we submitted, as did Frankie for Comment); Kerima Polotan’s The Hand of the Enemy; N.V.M. Gonzalez’s The Bamboo Dancers; Bienvenido Santos’ Brother, My Brother; Ed Tiempo’s More Than Conquerors (his “Daughters of Time” was serialized in the Women’s Magazine, to become later in book form To Be Free); Edith Tiempo’s Abide, Joshua, and that wonderful series of “Peso Books” put out by Alberto Florentino which those of us with limited finances could afford, a favorite of mine being Carlos Angeles’ A Stun of Jewels.
On campus, Luz Ausejo, a history professor who had regular access to publications from abroad, generously shared her books, introducing me especially to the South-American writers. Albert Faurot, a music (piano) professor who was very literary, was also am unselfish lender of his poetry and fiction books from abroad.
My life at Silliman (I had been a resident since 1950) was interrupted when I took a year off to enroll at the U.P in Diliman, during which time I attended the poetry workshop of Jose Garcia Villa (“clean up…tighten…ideas don’t belong in poetry…above all, be lyrical”). Gémino “Jimmy” Abad was a classmate, ever talented and gentlemanly. I also worked briefly as secretary to F. Sionil Jose who was editing and running the Philippine P.E.N., office where I met several big-name national writers, including Estrella Alfon who immediately engaged me in Cebuano conversation when she learned where I was from. But I decided I wasn’t meant for the big city, especially after a frightening experience with an open manhole during one of the many Manila floods (I could never get used to wading through sewer-tainted water either). But my stay in Diliman/Manila showed me that their literati respected the Silliman writing scene, mainly because the Tiempos were an institution.
I returned to Silliman summer of 1962 just in time to attend some sessions of the first Silliman Summer Writers Workshop started by the Tiempos. Patterned after the Iowa Writers Workshop, the three-week workshop was the first of its kind in the country and would become an annual event involving writers from all over the Philippines (some from abroad) , and put Silliman prominently on the creative writing map. Visiting lecturers for the early part of that decade were among the country’s best writers: Nick Joaquin, Francisco Arcellana, N.V.M. Gonzalez, Bienvenido Santos, Kerima Polotan, Emmanuel Torres, Bienvenido Lumbera, Celso Al. Carunungan, Emigdio Enriquez, Severino Montano, as well as Paul Engle, poet and director of the Iowa Writers Workshop, and critic Leonard Casper, well known for his knowledge of Philippine writing. Sionil Jose would drop by for a quick visit.
The Sands & Coral would print work from workshop participants such as Ko Won, a leading Korean poet. We were delighted when Nick Joaquin took some of our stories and poems that were discussed in the Workshop and published them in the Free Press. Indeed that was a good time for young writers. Editors were generous in their support and encouragement.
When the Tiempos left for the States (1963-66), Dave Quemada, himself just returned from graduate studies abroad, took over as Director of the Sumrner Writers Workshop as well as Head of the Literature and Creative Writing program. With his gracious wife, Pat, the Quemada home in Silliman Farm was the setting for many memorable get-togethers of campus writers and their friends.
Dave recruited me to help with the Workshop. Working mainly in administration and teaching literature part time, my participation was as some sort of executive officer-in-charge of behind-the-scene chores for the Workshop to function smoothly. But people-problems were our biggest challenge. At the first Workshop, there was the guest lecturer who, with his coterie of writing fellows, celebrated nightly into the early morning hours, discomfiting the other customers and proprietor of a local watering hole; the group then, talking loudly and singing uninhibitedly through the quiet Dumaguete streets, would make their way back to the dorm, only to be met by the dorm manager, understandably leery of letting them in. Then there was the lady writing fellow, on the staff of a Manila weekly, who was so homesick that she wanted to leave before the Workshop started. And there was the visiting male lecturer, known for his proclivity for other men, who grabbed and kissed a resident lecturer while they were swimming in Silliman Farm (“Lips to lips!” as the resident lecturer, greatly scandalized, would later recount). We also had to arrange once for the return of a well-known poet to Manila who had a nervous breakdown shortly after the Workshop started, breathing easily only after PAL allowed him to board. Though we understood and were willing to give allowance for “artistic temperament,” for most of the “gentle people” in our quiet, laid-back town, such incidents provided grist for exciting, if not “scandalous” talk—what are “those writers” coming to?—putting those of us involved in the Workshop on the defensive.
Fortunately, we had excellent support from the Silliman community: Frank Flores, Celia Gomez, Priscilla Lasmarias, Eleanor Funda, Nora Ausejo, Amiel Leonardia, Trining Malanog in the English Department; Albert Faurot whose literary-musical soirees showed our visitors that Silliman had culture; Nonon Rodriguez, university social secretary, with her community contacts; Mimi Palmore, Lyds Niguidula, Ephraim Bejar, our unofficial drivers.
With a few exceptions, the visiting lecturers and fellows were truly appreciative of the Workshop and admired, envied the beautiful, quiet setting of Silliman which nurtured writers. Like proud proprietors, we were eager to show and share with them our simple provincial pleasures: the quiet, shady streets that were a delight to walk (before the invasion of too many muffler-missing, fume-spewing motorized pedicabs); the uncluttered boulevard by the sea where one could watch the evenings descend on nearby Siquijor, Cebu, and Bohol islands, and rediscover the magic of tropical moonlight nights; Cuernos de Negros and its blue-green mountain range on the western side of the city; Silliman Farm when the beach and waters were still perfect and safe for picknicking and swimming; Banilad, Bacong, Wuthering Heights, among other easily-accessible beaches; Apo Island, marine biology research site, ideal for snorkeling and scuba diving; the idyllic San Antonio golf course; the Sycip Plantation in Manjuyod, belonging to a Silliman alumnus who welcomed the Workshoppers and always prepared a sumptuous spread of seafood that our big city guests could only dream about; the mountain communities of Valencia, Camp Lookout, Palinpinon. (There was a hard-to-find waterfall that we used to trek to in Palinpinon. Willy Marquez wrote a story about it. Decades later, I would write a poem, “The River Singing Stone,” which became the title of my first book.)
At last, we Silliman writers, provincial Cebuano speakers, could feel superior to our supposedly more sophisticated Tagalog guests from the north. No other school had a national writers workshop then. Great and not-so-great-yet writers from Manila and various parts of the country—and abroad—came to talk about literature and writing in our small, secluded university town by the sea. For three weeks every summer we shared with them the pleasures of living and working in what some would call “God’s country.” It was a good time to be young and writing, when our dreams held the promise of future success, and with youthful energy and a strange mixture of trepidation and confidence, the writing came easy.
[Reprinted from Sands & Coral Centennial Issue, 2001]
Myrna Peña-Reyes was born in Cagayan de Oro City, but her family moved to Dumaguete where she was educated at Silliman University from elementary through college, graduating with a BA in English. She went on to earn her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. While a resident of Eugene, Oregon where she lived with her late husband, the poet William T. Sweet, she was a winner of the Oregon Literary Fellowship grant for poetry in 2002. She is presently retired in her hometown of Dumaguete. Her poetry collections include The River Singing Stone (1994), Almost Home: Poems (2004), and Memory’s Mercy: New and Selected Poems (2014). She was recipient of the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Francisco Balagtas for Poetry in English from the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas [UMPIL] and the Taboan Award for Poetry in English from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts [NCCA], both in 2018.
Buglas Writers Journal 