The special awards for young poets 28 years and below were handed out last Sept. 25 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Little Theater. Doing the honors were National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario together with the Maningning Miclat Art Foundation Inc. (MMAFI) trustees Alma Cruz Miclat, Joaquin Sy and Fe B. Mangahas.
A musical concert featured pianist Raul Sunico, solo cellist Renato Lucas and violin prodigy Regina Buenaventura. The event, dubbed "Tatluhan/Triptych" as it also showcased Maningning’s painting "Triptych" was emceed by poet, fictionist, essayist and UP professor Mario I. Miclat.
Honorable mentions were given UP’s MA student Mesandel Virtusio Arguelles and UST’s Sonny Corpus Sendon in the Filipino category, and Ateneo de Manila University graduates Edgar J.C. Galang and Catherine Candano in the English category.
The 2005 grand prize winners each received P28,000 and a Julie Lluch sculpture trophy. The Maningning Miclat Awards for Poetry were first held in 2003. It alternates with the Maningning Award for Painting that is held on even-numbered years.
The China-born, multi-awarded artist and trilingual poet, published author, translator and art teacher, Maningning Miclat for whom the awards are dedicated, was only 28 when she passed away on Sept. 29, 2000. Her literary virtues and passion for the arts were extolled by CCP artistic director Fernando Josef and MMAFI trustee Edna Zapanta Manlapaz.
The event also served as a fund-raiser for MMAFI as well as the CCP’s Sagip Baryo project. Major sponsors were the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce & Industry, Federation of Filipino-Chinese Associations, ASPAC International and Zest-O.
UP’s professor emeritus Jimmy Abad, DLSU’s Creative Writing Center director Dr. Marj Evasco, and this writer who teaches Poetry and Fiction at the best university in town despite it having lost out in the UAAP’s Final Four in basketball, were the judges for the English category.
As in the recent Palanca judging, again I must say that of the 28(!) entries received, a good seven or so figured in the final deliberations, any three of which could have made it as finalists. I was particularly impressed by Edgar J.C. Galang’s development. This fellow should be bagging more poetry prizes soon. Other remarkable entries that can only be identified through the contest pseudonyms behind them were those by Jude Law, Pinball Wizard, Tristan Tzarararan, Hosanna Hoces, Sundial Girl, and Pinocchio.
Here’s a poem from the English category winner Allan J. Pastrana’s collection titled "Before Talkies" which was made up entirely of relatively long poems of such mature concern and craft. This sample poem is titled "Rib."
"As far as I know,/the legend happened in a split-second./God wanted to come out clean, fleeing/the marked spot like a curious riddle. So the first man/was put to sleep: the first real get-away, instant/and painless. Whenever we reach that part of the story/ where the rib juts out from his side, you wonder/if it is merely bone. But then you start to believe/it is also keepsake, fine heirloom – a loneliness/finally coming out like a splinter.//
"Do you get the whole picture? No,/this is neither Michelangelo nor the 1500s; none/of that smoothness in stepping out of a body, that light walled in and stucco-perfect. These/are difficult times and what we imagine/we have created (out of loam, bamboo splitting in two,/the primordial being) is pure coincidence//
"We are always caught in the middle of something, various/emergencies. You only have to name things/to be able to claim them. An event of eyes and hands, meeting,/means that the pedestrian crossing the street/is mine. Also this stranger beside me, rapt in a motel room/at three in the morning, the head resting on my arm, more/like an enjambment than a complete and irreversible thought./Do you know what the Paradise stands for? It is hunger,/hunger and the pit, deep end of something else/ that is a spacious cavity – that which keeps track/ and, ever after, holds. Someone eventually/has to step into the clearing; the found other still/as a portrait, as if startled by a wild animal./The rest of us just clamber up our beds because patience/ does not wait on anybody. It is simply stubbornness,/slow yet seeks to get even. It so happened://
"Beneath that thick hide of the plot, we came across/the last of the fruit-bearing trees. And we stood there/gaping, the way we wanted to take in everything –/whole lives, this bright field, stars. This/ is the only kind of pardon we may have deserved,/to keep the indentions of the natural world inside us/without regret: and that one bite, finally,/that offers no explanation but,/this time around, foolish and alone, we’ll fall in love."
Ang galing nitong si Allan. As-tig!
The poetry collection, the first of Seryeng Akdang Bayan – works by an organization of writers and artists who intend to make of themselves "living channels of creative thought whose works would be part of the national life" – comes with a CD designed by Olan Santos, who also designed the slim, handy book that fits right into the CD case.
Aguila, a UP Diliman Creative Writing instructor, is an award-winning playwright, poet, fictionist and essayist who has also written for television and the movies, including the screenplay for In this Corner directed by Lino Brocka. Aguila’s latest distinction is the 2005 Palanca First Prize for his full-length play Baligho. His earlier books include Ligalig at iba pang Dula and Ampalaya, Bonsai atbp.
We lend this space to premier poet Marne Kilates, who extols beer buddy Reuel’s latest collection in a brief essay titled "Eroticism as Truth-telling":
"In these jaded, dishonest times, to even dare talk about love’s old magic is nothing short of an act of faith. And faith is what Reuel Molina Aguila has a lot of in his new and first book of poems… which speak of a love that is not sacrosanct. Magdaragat… is love laid bare, brazenly naked, because it tells the undiluted truth: that love is both tender and tensile, is most erotic when stretched taut almost to snapping. And that love is even more desirable and tempting because society forbids the telling of its most intimate secrets.
"It is in this sense that erotic love – the intensity of desire for a person, or even for one’s country, to know it or bring it to its utmost realization – is neither sacred nor profane, but because it is most intimate, and because it is synonymous with absolute honesty and hope, it is sacramental.
"A prolific and peripatetic writer, Aguila has long ‘toured’ the literary genres before returning to this, his first love, poetry…. Perhaps this keeping to writing, as a means of keeping self and family alive, betrays the other aspect of Aguila’s faith: that love is still relevant because desire is not just lust and lust is not just of the flesh. The object of one’s desire, one will soon find out reading Aguila’s taut lines that traverse the febrile territories between tender longing and earthy passion, is not always sexual.
"Listen, for example, to lines that go ‘Tinutulaan kita, basang labi/Dilang palangiti…//Suwagin mo ako, umpugin,/Banggain nang mabining mabini…’ (‘Odang Walang Katapusan’); then, ‘Lumangitngit ang kama/ Sa bawat bayo niya… Isang romansa ito para sa kanya./Romansa ng laman sa laman:/Ng kamao sa labi/ Ng tuhod sa bayag/ Ng paa sa sikmura…’ (‘Romansa’)…
"Does Aguila perhaps venture even into the perverse realms of love? We will leave the truth-telling to the book itself. Let us just say for the moment that Magdaragat… sails all our seas of love, into its coves and harbors, its storms and squalls. The sea is a viable metaphor because it is everything all at the same time. Only a seasoned seafarer has respect for the sea, and will tell what it is without holding back, ripple, wave, tide and tsunami.
"Ang erotisismo ay isang pang-araw-araw na pangyayari sa sarili at lipunan. Kaya isusulat ko ito," Aguila declares in his introduction.
"Like Aguila returning to his poetry after long wandering, let us return to the truth of love and desire, and perhaps rediscover its one and many faces, in these cynical times."