A colorful monsoon
No. 29 is a photographers’, a translation, and a colors issue. I never thought the monsoon could be so colorful, even with the grades of gray, gray, of course, being the standard shade of the season, of both mood and water itself, the one permeating the other. So the rain must have its special attraction for photographers and poets, because when I emailed my e-group, Banggaan (photographers, writers, artists, musicians—at home and in the Diaspora), to send in any “rain photograph” they had in their old files or hard disks, I literally got a downpour in return.
A photographers’ issue indeed if we just glance at the images we have dominating some of our pages. For this issue at least, we give the photographs equal treatment with the poems, and not just as accents or something to underscore a point. In fact we thought it was best to let the images literally interact with text. I was quite excited when I started mixing the colors, so to speak, I hope the thing works and you enjoy them as much as the poems.
California resident Vics Magsaysay, who prefixes his current hometown Long Beach with the descriptive “sunny,” sent in that picture called Sampayan Blues, of twin clothespins left clinging to an empty clothesline adorned with beads of rain, sparkling against a background of wall or fence boards painted darkly with rain. Perfect for my twin poems on the monsoon, I thought. Regular contributor Rod Samonte sent us one of his stunning macro shots, this time what looks like a vortex of green (the whorl of a calyx), again adorned with raindrops on velvety spider webs. The corresponding words from Luisa Igloria find their way to this myterious maelstrom. Sydney Morning Herald editorial artist Edd Aragon came up with his shot of a marina viewed from the frames of glass panes. It resonates with a “cold” poem from the other side of the world, from Jim Pascual Agustin of Cape Town, South Africa. Rain on glass, or shattering in a thousand droplets, or swirling as clouds in a waterlogged empyrian—these were the images our cyber-hunt yielded for the other poems: our opening poem, the late Mike Bigornia’s "Destiyero ng Ulan / Exile of the Rain," with its rich, experimental sestina that was a challenge to translate, while warning of rain, limns a dark torrential cloudburst; a gathering storm, a monsoon memorial from Kristian Sendon Cordero proceeds from the customary practice (now modified) of giving storms the names of women, while giving witness to the father whose memories begin with the name of his wife, which is also the name of the coming storm; Ruey de Vera’s enigmatic "Zamboanga" and a mysterious girl, gray though it may be, is accompanied by impressionist smudges of "colored" rain on glass. Once more we are honored and showered with the fine images from Reuters Singapore (formerly of Beijing) photographer Claro Cortes IV. What better way to accompany a poem, of Reuel Molina Aguila’s, that lamented the absence of an umbrella than with the multicolored fiesta of umbrellas?
Coming in just before we started assembling this issue was Alfredo “Ding” Roces’ picture of their backyard kalamansi tree flaunting (amid all the thorny green branches and leaves) a yellow fruit—a happy mutant that was not only yellow but heart-shaped. A whimsy of nature for which we had to come up with a matching poetic whimsy. For our cover, we have to thank world traveler Tim Frost for the two or three sites that we have accessed to contact him and sample his work. We wrote Tim and asked for his permission and he didn’t take time to say yes, as he emailed us back quite thankful that we appreciated his work. But he has presumably gone back on the road so he missed sending us his biographical note for the Contributors’ page. So on home page we have Tim’s London street pavement reflecting the colored signages of a commercial street. So English, so monsoon. In terms of an opulence of precipitation, Manila has a sister city in London.
Though the rain poems were in a bit of a trickle, the rain photographs provided half the poetry. This issue is also a translation issue because it opens with Mike L. Bigornia’s poem in the original Tagalog, and is for the most part made of Filipino and one Bikol poem that had to be translated. We broke an unspoken rule that since this is an online magazine with international readers we should primarily be an English language Internet publication. Or at least we should start the issue with poetry written originally in English, rather than translations. But it’s a translation we open with, partly in memory of a good and dear friend who had left us but whose particular rain poem stays in our memory. And that is followed by another translation (from Bikol) of Kristian Sendon Cordero’s typhoon poem. That leaves us with only three poems originally written in English, a minority this time. Not that it’s a “bad” thing in itself but it tells us that it’s time to remind our contributors that our reserves are dwindling. But Tagalog, Bikol and poems written in other languages: just keep them coming. I am just requesting that Filipino works in any other language be accompanied with translations, subject to editorial considerations, of course.
Now the gray season gave us an issue of color, not least because of the Banggaan photographs and some we filched (with credits or permissions) from the Net, and as usual, the contributed poems themselves despite the slowness in coming, because also we are honoring two contributors who each received important and international recognition for their work. H. Francisco V. Peñones Jr, or Frank to us who first saw him and his works in Bikol and English way back when we were still sitting at the panel of the UP Writers Workshop, has gone quite a long way in “homing in on the nest of our tongue” (pagtugpa sa salagan kan satong dila), he says in intense Bikol, which has apparently become Frank’s signature line. In a short article, writer Judith Balares Salamat reports that not just has Frank finished his MFA on the 21st of May at San Jose State University in San Jose California, he has also along the way collected the Dorrit Silbey Award for the best poet of the university. A Ford Foundation International fellow, Frank worked for his MFA for three years at the university that “empowers the Silicon Valley.” The award was also in recognition of his master thesis titled “P.I.: Poetry and the ImagiNation,” (clever, inventive title said the University MFA coordinator). As an exploration “through colonial visual representations about the Philippines,” Frank’s masteral thesis is a collection of his ekphrastic poetry, a couple or three of which he has contributed to PPB. It was a confluence of sorts, since as we were rearing this ezine from late 2007, Frank had found it as a venue for his new poetry which later became part of his thesis.
Also early last month, one of the “pillars” (Joel Salcedo’s epithet for more “senior” writers) of Philippine lit, became an even more international pillar. Our friend, mentor of poets, and early inspirer of PPB, Gémino “Jimmy” H. Abad, was informed about a new feather in his poet’s cap. Let me quote from another friend Krip Yuson’s Philippine Star column, which tells how Jimmy received the news in an email while lazing around on his third day at the Dumaguete workship together with the fellows in the in-between sessions: “Two years ago, Jimmy was invited to attend the 2007 Mediterranea Festival in Rome, where an Albanian poet, Gezim Hajdari, offered to initiate the translation into Italian of his landmark poetry collection In Ordinary Time (UP Press, 2004). Hajdari worked on it together with Amoa Fatuiva, and unbeknownst to Jimmy, entered the translation manuscript in a competition. Here's the result (and Krip quotes the email). Here’s part of the notice verbatim:
"Rome, May 4, 2009
"Dear Professor Gémino H. Abad,
"We are particularly proud to inform you that our Committee has awarded you the Prize Premio Feronia â Citta di Fiano 2009, for the section 'Foreign Author.'
"The Prize, first created 16 years ago, has an antagonistic character as compared to other major literary awards in our Country, that are tightly bound to marketing strategies of dominant publishing houses. As an example, all official meetings of our Committee are open-door to guarantee the maximum of integrity.
"The winners of previous editions of Feronia Prize, section 'Foreign Authorâ' are: Gunter Grass, Adonis and Natan Zach (ex-aequo), Leroi Jones, John M. Coetzee, Alfonso Sastre, Predrag Matvejevic, Michel Butor, Ismail Kadara, Gao Xingjian, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Mahmud Darwish, Yvonne Vera, Dubravka Ugresic, Saadi Yousef, Kunwar Narain, Muhammad Bennis, Agotha Kristof...”
Apart from joining the Italian pantheon that includes Grass and Darwish, Jimmy receives €3,600, is conferred the prize at the historic Castle of Fiano Romano outside Rome on July 11, and gets to attend again the Mediterranea Festival.
Hoooraaay and mabuhay for Jimmy and Frank! (We will feature more of their poems in subsequent issues.) And, my, what colors we have for a season of gray.
And surprises never end either! We had stashed away in our folders a full-length travel article which we thought the author (one of our favorite poets) would have us publish in our ezine only after it had appeared in the more real-time and ink-and-paper publications. But he casually asks in an email if we’re still “interested” in publishing his article. We were flustered, course, and sure, we’d like to, we just thought... So here it is, folks, on Page 4, a “special” to PBB, “Searching for Borges.”
Marne L. Kilates
PHOTOS: From top, detail from cover by Tim Frost; Kalamansi Heart by Alfredo Roces; Frank Peñones triumphant; Gémino "Jimmy" H. Abad with your editor and poet Ed Maranan, by Marjorie Evasco, and H. Francisco V. Peñones Jr; and Jorge Luis Borges steps into his favorite rose.
