Poetic justice

What a difference a merienda makes. One afternoon a couple of years ago, some writer-friends and I hosted a merienda for a visiting Albanian poet who’d been brought over by some friends from Italy, where the poet has lived in exile. His name was Gezim Hajdari, and he could barely speak English – but when we read his poetry in translation, and what sources like the International Herald Tribune said about him, we sat up and took notice, and sent him home with copies of our writers’ best work.

I thought that was the last I would see of the gregarious and generous Gezim – touted to be a contender for the Nobel Prize – until, a year later, he and his friend Silvano Gallon invited me to attend a literary festival on a fabled mountaintop near Rome, Cervara di Roma. That visit gave me an opportunity to interact with other writers from Italy, Latvia, Macedonia, Iraq, and such other countries as we know very little about (remarkably, the Latvians knew about Jose Rizal and Lope K. Santos, among others).

I’m happy to report that, next month, another of our merienda mates will be winging his way Rome-ward, again at the instance of the formidable Mr. Hajdari. Poet, critic, and professor Gemino "Jimmy" Abad will be attending the third edition of "Mediterranea: the Intercontinental Festival of Literature and Arts of the Mediterranean" which will be held in Rome over most of July.

"Mediterranea" will bring together poets from all over Europe, Africa, and (thanks to Jimmy) Asia to "Rome, Ladispoli, Cerveteri, Santa Marinella, and other towns of the Latium Region to liven up various events with public readings; their voices will cross and alternate with the works of other artists to express in different ways the same language of freedom, of opening up to a pluralistic world, of fighting exploitation, war, and terrorism."

Jimmy’s going will truly be a form of poetic justice, since he’s almost single-handedly labored all these years to teach not only modern poetry also the Greek and Roman classics to undergraduates in UP and other universities. He’s been to Rome before, but it will surely be different in the company of like-spirited poets to walk beneath the columns of the Pantheon on a bluish summer evening, before imbibing a glass of grappa, or two, or three.

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Following through on last week’s update on Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature which the UP Institute of Creative Writing will be publishing, I’d like to announce that the deadline for submitting stories, poems, and essays (in English and Filipino, for our first issue) is Aug. 31, 2006. Please take note that only original, unpublished work will be considered.

For the story and the essay, we will consider work in the range of 12-30 pages double-spaced; for poetry, we will consider only suites or small collections of about four to seven poems, from which the editors will select at least three for publication. The essay could be a work of literary scholarship or criticism or creative nonfiction, formal or informal. We will consider short graphic novels or excerpts from longer work; what we actually publish will depend on the range and quality of the submissions.

All submissions will undergo a process of pre-screening by the editors, and shortlisted pieces will be reviewed by expert referees. I should probably forewarn our potential contributors that, as space is limited and as we will be putting the highest premium on quality through the refereeing process, getting in will be very difficult for all but the best work, and winning or having won a Palanca or a similar award will offer no guarantee of acceptance. For those accepted, however, Likhaan will pay commensurately high rates.

Kindly submit all contributions to us at likhaanjournal@gmail.com, accompanied by a brief self-introduction. Again, please don’t ask or expect me to provide an instant response to or a critique of your work; I have neither the time nor the inclination for this, and as the editor of the inaugural issue, I cannot be saying anything to influence our referees’ decisions. But I’ll be sure to acknowledge receipt of your work, also by e-mail.

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I’d like to devote some of this week’s column to respond to some reader comments and inquiries, before the backlog gets too large.

First off, some corrections:

Darwin Mariano – press and political affairs officer of the British Embasssy in Manila – wrote in to say, in connection with my piece on foreign scholarships, that "It’s not the British Council but the British Embassy that funds the United Kingdom’s Chevening Scholarship Program. The British Council only helps us administer the scheme."

Two readers – Rene Guatlo and Romy Aquino – also corrected my reference to Carlos P. Romulo as having been a secretary-general of the United Nations. My fault for blindly picking that off a press release, but as a current-events quiz-show fan myself, I should’ve known better: CPR served as president of the fourth session of UN General Assembly from 1949 to 1950. (For Romy Aquino – an old friend from Ann Arbor – the error was particularly egregious, noting that "My parents liked the name Romulo, hence I got the name in 1951 when I was born.")

Another old friend, the eminent Iluko writer Honor Blanco Cabie, wrote me to say, among other things, that "Your piece on the Manila High School you described as the country’s first public high school may not exactly be factual. The Ilocos Norte National High School in Laoag City, which has as well produced national and regional leaders in the various disciplines – and they include diplomats assigned overseas – marked in appropriate ceremonies at the sprawling campus grounds northwest of the provincial capitol its centennial in the first week of February 2006, which would make it four months older than the Manila High School." Not to provoke a little war, perhaps more clarifications from both sides can settle the issue.

Speaking of the blogosphere, leader Mike Baños wanted to know how to find out where your blog readers are coming from, and what search terms they use that lead them to your blog. Mike, there are many so-called counters available for free on the Internet that not only keep track of the number of your visitors, but also yield more particulars such as the data you mentioned. I myself use CQCounter (http://cqcounter.com). It will give you, among other things, the URL and IP addresses of your last 20 visitors, and also an idea of who’s linked to your blog.

And last week I claimed to write a weekly column for the San Francisco-based Filipinas magazine. That’s rather hard to do, considering that Filipinas comes out monthly.

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Speaking of quiz shows, we received a pleasant home visit from Mrs. Pettizou Tayag, executive director of the National Quiz Bee, a worthwhile activity that’s become an institution in our schools for the past 27 years.

This year’s National Quiz Bee participants can look forward to more innovations. Pettizou reports that "We are releasing past Quiz Bee questions asked the previous years in a book compilation called Answerboards Up! The Quiz Bee Reviewer to help prospective contestants review prior to competition. This will help them assess how questions are phrased or formulated. We are launching the first radio quiz bee by August 2006 with DZXL for public school students in Metro Manila. We are also launching the quiz bee on text messaging, whereby Quiz Bee questions asked during the eliminations can be answered by the audience as well."

While I have nothing against entertainment programs (I was a dutiful follower of American Idol this year), it worries me that too many of our kids are growing up thinking that singing and dancing (or, alternatively, surviving a roomful of housemates) represent the acme of personal achievement. When I was in grade school and high school, we looked forward to events like the Voice of Democracy public speaking contest to strut our stuff – and, yes, to spelling and quiz bees that exercised our brains (and maybe gave us nerds some form of psychic compensation).

I’m under no illusion that a mastery of trivia equates with knowledge and even less with wisdom, but with the quiz bee, you might say that it’s not actually what you know but what you learn that counts. By that I mean the habit of reading, the practice of inquiry, the discipline of study, and the love of knowledge for its own sake – all values that Filipino children should be imbued with, but which have been swept aside by our culture’s obsession with material goods (mea culpa!).

Thus, a project like the National Quiz Bee deserves all the help it can get from both public officials and private donors. The organizers are deeply grateful for all the assistance they’ve received from such regular sponsors as Time-Life Books, Uni Writing Instruments, Ovaltine Power, Fujifilm, PCSO, Datu Puti Patis/Papa Banana Catsup, Max’s Restaurant, JRS Express Worldwide Delivery and Megapix Photo Inc. But they need more substantial and sustained support from our mega-corporations, especially those who deal with our youngest citizens. (Do I hear the cellular phone companies saying "Hey, that’s us!"?)

If you or your company can help rescue young Filipino minds from the specter of mass mediocrity, get in touch with Pettizou P. Tayag of the Quiz Bee Foundation at 0917-8922560 or 712-0682 or 741-0856.

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at http://homepage.mac.com/jdalisay/blog/MyBlog.html