Campus writing, on and off, is alive and well

Campus writing, both on and off it, is alive and well at the University of Sto. Tomas, whose Tomas, the literary journal published by the university’s Creative Writing Center, headed by poet and professor Ophelia Alcantara-Dimalanta, has released its fifth issue.

Aside from Tomas, there is the literary folio of mostly student writers, Montage, in which the so-called Kobe Bryant of Philippine literature, Angelo Suarez, cut his teeth.

Tomas, though, features the work of more or less "established" writers, certified prize winners in national contests, as well as a National Artist or Palanca Hall of Famer or two.

On the other hand, a good number of the writers in Tomas are alumni of Asia’s oldest university, and who for good reason continue to be proud of their alma mater: Rebecca Añonuevo, Merlinda Bobis, Michael Coroza, J. Neil Garcia, Doris Trinidad, Cirilo Bautista and F. Sionil Jose.

There are also the habitual Tomas writers who have been published in practically every issue, and for good reason, like Sionil Jose and Alfred Yuson.

Issue No. 5, released in April 2002, is a bit larger than the previous issues, although it still suffers from poor proofreading, with letters and whole words missing. At times the errors are consistent, such as when the small letter "l" disappears from the word "national," making it appear as if the computer lost a key.

For the most part, the publication has become a rich source of research material for literature students, because one can find in its pages academic papers written by renowned scholars and critics, like Len Casper, Elmer Ordoñez, Isagani Cruz and Jaime An. Lim.

In one of the issues, we stumbled on a poem by Constantino Tejero, who has long been laboring incognito at the Lifestyle desk of a daily newspaper; a candid interview with Sionil Jose conducted by a young campus writer; several poems by the lost boys no longer of Today, Ramil Digal Gulle and Lourd de Veyra, each betraying their respective leanings – Gulle, like Rilke and Neruda, could write the saddest lines, De Veyra almost blinded by the beat of gin and Ginsberg; Yuson’s highly personal essay on the varied manifestations of family; several translations of Añonuevo’s poems by Luisa Igloria nee Cariño; a longish excerpt from the latest novel of Bobis, who during her undergraduate days on the España campus once lived in a boarding house on San Diego St. with a sister, that was in itself already the stuff of fiction.

There are the young fledgling writers, too, given proper exposure, like Daryll Delgado, in tandem with that of the older generation, like Aida Rivera Ford.

In all, the quality of writing and the art and layout are way above par if not excellent, which, if not for its careless editing, would make Tomas comparable with the late Martial Law publication Jose, brain trust of the raven Adrian Cristobal.

The UST Creative Writing Center should put out an ad for proofreaders, and for which they should not lack considering they have a ready pool in the Tomasian Writers Guild and USTetika.

In the meantime, Tomas provides a sufficient sanctuary for writers and critics around España and beyond.

Deeper south in Negros Island, City of Dumaguete, the Silliman University’s Sands & Coral came out with its special centennial issue late last year, celebrating the university’s 100th founding anniversary.

Worthy of note are the timelines/series of essays chronicling life in Silliman by the sea and its growing community of writers each decade, starting with the post-war ’40s when Sands & Coral first came out, up to the turn of the millennium with the more or less exciting cacophony of young writers.

In between the most interesting decades, not least because we were most familiar with it, proved to be the ’60s (by Cesar Ruiz Aquino), ’70s (by Anthony L. Tan), and ’80s (by Timothy Montes).

The ’90s, too, hold some interest particularly in the way the aging, older writers are seen in the eyes of the younger ones, like the arch-feminist S.B. Alojamiento.

And as is usually the case of a literary journal, there is the slew of poems, fiction, essays by writers who at one time or another passed through the yearly writer’s workshop, which was started by the Tiempos in the early ’60s.

There are stories by Carlos Cortes, Carlos Aureus, C.J. Maraan and Bobby Villasis, poems by Edith Tiempo and Rowena Torrevillas, Ernesto Yee and Ruiz Aquino, a personal essay and a poem on "the city of gentle people" by the Peña Reyes twins.

There’s no mistaking the special charm Dumaguete holds for writers who spent time there, be it for the three-week long summer workshop, or those who chose to stay on and enroll in the graduate program for literature and creative writing under a teaching fellowship.

Yet it is not merely nostalgia that’s involved in this re-reading of Dumaguete, rather a slow dance that approximates the cadence of waves lapping against the breakwater.