The 40th National Writers Workshop

The 40th National Writers Workshop was conducted in Dumaguete City from May 7 to 25 with 10 writing fellows in attendance.

The "kids," ranging in age from 19 to 35, may bewail the eventuality that their batch could be dubiously honored by an asterisk, the way the San Antonio Spurs’ NBA championship team of 1999 calls for a footnote on account of a lockout-shortened season.

No, the Dumaguete workshop this summer didn’t suffer from early termination, or a truncated session. What it lacked to gain full legitimacy was the superstar player – National Artist for Literature Edith L. Tiempo, who co-founded and has directed the event yearly since 1962.

Oh, there was one year, 1964, when "Mom" Edith and her husband Dr. Edilberto K. Tiempo (the late lamented "Doc" or "Dad") assigned their protégé at Silliman University, the poet David Quemada, to handle the prestigious workshop, since they had to revisit the U.S.

I also recall a time in the mid-’80s when premier poet Cirilo Bautista and I missed their presence when we paneled for a week. Merle Alunan of UP Tacloban temporarily subbed as director, until the Tiempos made it back from abroad for the last week.

This summer, the task of facilitating the longest-running writers’ workshop in Asia fell on the hands of a triumvirate of hometown heroes: poet-fictionist Atty. Ernesto Superal Yee, fiction writer Bobby Flores-Villasis, and do-it-all literary guide Cesar Ruiz Aquino, aka Dr. Xawi.

Ernie Yee has produced an outstanding collection of short fiction that gained a National Book Award nomination from the Manila Critics Circle a few years back. Soon he’s publishing a strong collection of poetry titled About My Garden.

Bobby Villasis works with the Negros Oriental Governor’s Office, and has been instrumental in supervising numerous cultural activities in Dumaguete over the years. A pity, however, that all that G-man work seems to have taken him away from his earlier devotion to the fine craft of drama and fiction writing.

Aquino has finally earned his doctorate in literature from Silliman University, and now threatens to resume his prodigious role in the advancement of memoir-writing. Curiously, he had abstained for over a memorious decade from adding to his substantial fiction output, which has gained him a Palanca prize or two. All those years seem to have been spent in perennial revision of a poem he first wrote when he was all of 17.

The joke going around the Silliman campus was that Mom Edith was so relieved to finally receive, and pore over, Xawi Aquino’s masterful thesis, that she had to take a much-needed vacation. Thus, her absence.

The truth of the matter is that her daughter Rowena Torrevillas, who helps administer the International Writing Program in Iowa City, prevailed upon her to lodge another visit. This was to coincide with both their birthdays, in late April and mid-June, respectively.

And so we all missed Mom. But thanks to Ernie, Bobby and Xawi, the administrative skills of Ms. Isabel Patelona, and the sustained support of College Assurance Plan, or CAP, everyone still managed to have much fun.

Comprising the 40th Workshop fellows were: Christine Alindada, Jeneen Garcia, BJ Patiño and Janet Baclayon Villa of Ateneo de Manila University; Alfonso Benedicto Dacanay, Ibarra Gutierrez and Marie Aubrey Villaceran of UP Manila;

Anna Bernaldo and Lolita Villa of UST; and Jin Paul Salonga de Guzman of Medical Observer.

Visiting panelists for the first week were Dr. Jaime An Lim and Dr. Anthony Tan of MSU-ITT of Iligan City, and Dr. David Genotiva and Prof. Vic Sugbo of UP Tacloban.

Dr. Ophelia A. Dimalanta, director of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies, failed to show up as she also had to take a U.S. trip. Well, one literary doctor less in the house couldn’t have prejudiced the young patients, it may be said. And yet dear Ophie’s no-show must have also told on the fortnight that was, when the fellows were left bereft of a feminine touch from the panelists’ table.

Coming in for the second week, a day after elections on May 14, were Francis "Butch" Macansantos of UP Baguio, Dr. Gémino H. Abad of UP Diliman, and this writer. Butch brought along his daughter Monica, a budding writer of a college frosh who had to forego a scholarship at the National Arts Center in Makiling because her doting parents couldn’t have their only daughter that far away.

The guest panelists for the third week were fictionist Susan Lara and poet Danny Reyes, who stayed with Ernie Yee at Mom Edith’s place at Montemar in Sibulan town, a little ways north of the city. The sprawling bungalow is nestled on a hill overlooking the national highway and Tañon Strait beyond, offering scenic views of the southern tip of Cebu Island, and then some.

That was where the fellows were tendered a farewell videoke party last Friday. Hopefully, some of them will revisit in the years to come, and get a chance to sit at the feet of Edith, the literary master.

On the week we paneled, Jimmy Abad, Butch and I, assisted by Dr. Xawi, immediately became convinced that this year’s fellows were a superior lot, with nearly uniform skills as manifested in the manuscripts we took up.

Janet Villa and Barry Gutierrez were lawyers who submitted solid fiction and contributed articulately in the discussion of the younger fellows’ works. Barry was masterful in his dialogue, while Janet showed narrative expertise when it came to detailing the scuba-diving experience.

Marvi Villaceran’s story "Sinigang" was a virtual case study on the effective use of that much-mentioned literary device called the "objective correlative." Her cross-cutting narrative technique offered ironic parallels that advanced her bittersweet story of a daughter’s disappointment over her father’s second family.

Jin Paul de Guzman had a witty parody on a writer-poseur, while Al Dacanay successfully transformed an early play on cyber-chat blind-dating into "fiction of cruelty."

The poem "Day Dress" by Lolita Villa elicited memorable remarks from the panelists, like Abad’s quote of Franz Arcellana’s "Get real!" in reference to the necessary extension of the donnée or given, so as "to hint at the dramatic situation." And Aquino’s quote in turn of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s idea of pitting "fancy versus the imagination" and the need "to provide a basis for the wistfulness."

"I like the quiet tone, rhythm and structure, but not the surface reckoning," volunteered someone else from the panelists’ table, while Macansantos warned against "the inability to intervene."

Similarly, my notes on the discussions included the following wondrous quotes as drawn by BJ Patiño’s poem "Late Mourning" – Abad citing Jose Garcia Villa’s injunction on "the economy of salvation"; and Macansantos’ admonition that a poet should always "marshal your forces, the images in your arsenal, so that these should march inexorably toward meaning."

On Christine Alindada’s poem "Flowers on Bel Field," my souvenir marginalia include Aquino’s strange invocation of "stigmata: the kingdom of God is all around me." Then there’s Abad’s recollection of Wallace Stevens’ ban on the use of color words. We recalled as well Butch Dalisay’s advice to young writers on "raising the stake," which ran alongside Carlos Cortes’ "pushing the envelope."

Somehow any workshop always evokes images, conceits and quotations culled up from other, previous workshop discussions, so that it soon becomes a buffet of regurgitated (or digested) counsel.

Anna Bernaldo’s poem "Lunch Is the Bewitching Hour" drew praise for its cadence and subtle presentation of a mistress’ lifestyle vis-a-vis the man she feeds with much pork at high noon: "There you are again at my doorstep, piggish for lunch/ Just in time to lurch at succulence on the table (or floor)..."

Particularly outstanding was the accomplished poetry of the young Jeneen Garcia, a recent Ateneo graduate who had helped out with the literary journal Heights, and had been a fellow at last year’s Zamboanga Writers Workshop. Her poems dealt mostly with a water theme, and were all rather deftly done: "Toy boats sail/ and insects scamper/ on a pond of/ molecules that hold up/ things they shouldn’t..."

But it was her poem "Falling Apart," detailing a dominant husband’s decline to emptiness, that was deemed "all of a picture" while "redolent with objective correlatives." Yeah, there’s that often abused term again, skewering through and together all the workshops we’ve ever been part of in this ritual barbecue of fresh manuscripts.

On the extracurricular side, we were happy to discover a new book shop in Dumaguete – the Village Bookstore run by Danah and Javier Fortunato. On Noblefrancia St. just off Rizal Boulevard by the sea, the book shop proved nearly up-to-date with its literary titles supplied by Anvil, Bookmark, Giraffe Books and the university presses. Jimmy and I wound up pointing out friends’ titles to the attendants, as well as our own, thereby triggering a signing session.

Met too with the young literature teacher Ian Casocot, to whom we owe thanks for his ensuring a buy-out of our first novel which had been assigned for class study. Heard that poet Nino de Veyra had completed his masteral requirements for Creative Writing at Silliman. Picked up a copy of the Silliman Journal with a paper titled "Young Writers and the Tradition in Philippine Short Fiction in English: Does The Force Exist or Is the Jedi Council Pulling Our Legs?" by Timothy R. Montes, another outstanding literary artist who has made his home in Dumaguete.

Soon the week was over – inclusive of a day-long session at JVC Beach Resort at Bacong, lunch with the fellows at Chin Loong by the boulevard, dinner and drinks at North Pole, and a farewell dinner at South Sea Resort where Jim and I stayed, and where the memory of a pair of swans floating on the pool (for a wedding reception) will stay with us through several more summers.

As an image, it certainly comes close to the photo-op session with the fellows conducting a fleshy display of quarter-turns at the beach, in simulation of a beauty contest. And the winner is – the 40th National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete, with or without Mom Edith, Ophie and Marj. May we not miss them again next May.