Another Filipino triumph in poetry

I can’t be happier for my young friend Joel M. Toledo, poet and literature teacher at Miriam College, also the percussionist for the music band of fellow-poets, Los Chupacabras.

As far as I’m concerned, he’s done an Efren "Bata" Reyes and a Manny Pacquiao, in proving that a homegrown Filipino poet in English is world-class. Not that we didn’t know; it’s just that the triumphant occasion comes with official notification.

Last May, one of the final generous acts by The British Council Philippines director Gill Westaway, before she completed her tour of duty, was to arrange for Filipinos to enter poems and stories in English for the Bridport Prize 2006 competition without having to pay the usual contest fee.

No telling how many local poets and fictionists answered the call, but the hefty cash prizes must have generated a flurry of activity by way of downloading the entry form from a website, printing and filling this up, and dropping it off at the BC with the accompanying works.

Well, Gill will be happy to learn, in Sri Lanka where she’s now posted, that her faith in the Filipino has reaped yet another award for the country I’m sure she still pines for.

In 2004, Gill was also instrumental in helping set up the English Speaking Union Philippines chapter, which conducted a contest that eventually resulted in getting Patricia Evangelista of UP to join the ESU International Public Speaking Competition in London, where she bested some 60 foreign competitors and won the top prize.

Now we have the 34-year-old Joel – who took a Masters Degree in Creative Writing at UP, and has authored a novelette for young adults, Pedro and the Lifeforce (Giraffe Books, 1997) – accomplishing the same in a worldwide contest where a poem of his won out over more than 5,000 other entries.

Last week he was rendered motionless, stupefied and ecstatic, perchance in that order, at an Internet shop upon checking his mail and finding a congratulatory notice re a prideful windfall.

"Dear Joel,

"I am thrilled to tell you that you have won the 2nd prize of £1,000 for your poem "The Same Old Figurative" in the Bridport Prize 2006 competition.

"In fact, our judge Lavinia Greenlaw also chose your poem "Ruin" as third prize and "Softness" as a runner-up prize but unfortunately our rules state that only one prize can be won.  Lavinia really liked your work.

"Our prizegiving day is on Saturday 18th November but I have assumed that it will be too difficult for you to attend! If you can, we would be delighted!

"We also produce an anthology of winning entries so your poem will be published in that… We had our biggest entry ever this year – over 10,500 entries of which about 5,600 were poems, so very many congratulations to you…

"Do get in touch if you have any questions. Once again, our congratulations, and we are very pleased to have a winner from the Philippines.

"With best wishes, Frances." (Frances Everitt, Administrator, Bridport Prize, Bridport Arts Centre, South Street, Bridport, Dorset DT6 3NR, UK)

How, any poet who receives such glad tidings in any form tends to initially disbelieve his good luck.

What Joel did was to reread the mail a hundred-or-so times. But it wouldn’t change; it was set in his lucky birthstone. Too elated to even think of dashing off a reply, he finally got up and did a jig.

He went home and woke up his wife April to share the great good news. They must have both hugged their two sleeping kids, Red and Moira. Then Joel started texting his friends, including this senior, ever-supportive one, well past midnight. It wasn’t until later that day that Joel managed to e-mail the UK back.

"Thank you so much for this wonderful news. I was so happy when I read your e-mail, I couldn’t move, much less reply any sooner. Ha-ha...

"I am also so thankful to Ms. Greenlaw for believing in my poems. I never thought I could even get a chance in such a prestigious competition as the Bridport Prize. It is such an honor. My many thanks are extended to you and to the people at the Philippines’ British Council for believing in our literature in English enough to sponsor our entries (you probably know by now that if it weren’t for the endorsement of the British Council, many writers in the Philippines would not be able to shoulder the competition’s entry fee).

"I am afraid that going to the awarding day on Nov. 18 is quite impossible for me as I don’t even have a passport. All the same, I am very honored... As for the publication, I am thrilled to be included in the Bridport Anthology…

"This is such an important development for poets writing in English from my country."

Yes, indeed, it is. With Ed Maranan consistently topping the weekly haiku contest conducted by a London paper, and Luisa Igloria in Virginia, USA, earning one distinction after another in the tough poetry arena in the States, this international triumph by a young, home-based poet marks another proud notch.

Two years ago, the then 19-year-old Angelo Suarez, who is among Joel’s kabarkada, won the Unesco Prize for best first book of poetry (The Nymph of MTV, UST Press) at the annual Bridges of Struga poetry event in Macedonia.

Bino Realuyo in New York recently had his first poetry collection, The Gods We Worship Live Next Door, published by the University of Utah Press after the manuscript won the 2005 Agha Shahid Ali Prize. Barbara Jane Reyes in Oakland, CA won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets for her second collection, Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005). Erlinda Tabios in St. Helena, CA continues to come up with her own dazzling array of poetry collections (the latest being The Secret Lives of Punctuations, Vol. I), while also editing and producing anthologies. And Eric Gamalinda’s Amigo Warfare comes out in Spring 2007 (WordTech Communications).

Now Joel helps us make a mark in the UK. Clearly, the Pinoy poetry syndicate is threatening a global juggernaut.

I first made Joel’s acquaintance, after having heard of his fine work in poetry, at a donut shop on Katipunan Avenue. He had posted a list of second-hand books he was helping sell, and I had ticked off my choices by e-mail, which he brought to the donut shop for my pick-up, hole in the pocket and all. Similar transactions followed over the next months.

That year, in 2004, Joel placed second in the Palanca poetry contest. I recall taking a photo of him and his wife on Palanca Night and having it come out in this paper, among other tribal ritual pics. The following year, I was pleasantly surprised, as a Palanca poetry judge, to learn that the entry we had selected for first prize, "What Little I Know of Luminosity," was from Joel. He and close friend Naya Valdellon of Ateneo, another excellent young poet who is now at the University of Toronto for her MFA, traded first and second places in the Palanca for consecutive years.

Joel actually scored a hat trick last year. A poem of his also wound up as a runner-up in the San Francisco-based Meritage Press Holiday Poetry Prize organized by Eileen Tabios. Then he received the 2005 National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Writers Prize for poetry, a generous grant for the possible publication of his first book of poems.

I was one of three judges who gave his concept proposal and sample poems the unanimous nod for the NCCA’s Writers Prize. But that’s not the reason why I refer to the Pinoy poetry company as a syndicate. I really believe in this guy’s work, and have held up his poems as excellent examples in my AdMU Poetry class.

You can’t put a good man down, even in poetry. Toledo’s Bridport Prize certainly makes up for a couple of downturns he’s experienced of late. The same winning poem (which we’re placing in a separate box for proper perusal), together with the two other poems the Bridport judge Lavinia Greenlaw found meritorious, were part of a selection Joel had submitted to the 2006 Palanca contest. His entry didn’t place at all, so that he must have been crestfallen last month. Luck of the draw, one might say. He might have been unlucky that I didn’t serve as a judge, heh-heh.

Another recent disappointment has to do with his NCCA Writers Prize grant of P200,000, only part of which has been given him, after much delay. Someone at the NCCA even questioned Joel at some point as to why he was submitting such short lyric poems. Strange.

Then last month he received a letter from NCCA executive director Cecile Guidote Alvarez, this time asking him to explain why the poems he had submitted were also the same ones that had won the Palanca in 2005. Joel has taken pains to explain that five of the 10 sample poems that came with his project proposal were from the selection that had won the Palanca first prize, while the other five were from the selection that had won the Palanca second prize the previous year.

Nothing improper there. Poets come up with selections or collections that may vary in exact composition. Technically, a Palanca entrant may change one poem in a losing selection and enter the re-composed batch the next year. It’ll be up to the judges, if they become aware of it at all, to see if this time the "new, improved" selection beats out others.

As a Writers Prize awardee (for Translation) myself, and subsequently a two-time judge for Poetry for that grant, I know of no rule that prohibits an entrant from submitting poems that were part of a selection that won in another contest. It isn’t at all like sending multiple submissions for publication, which is naturally frowned upon.

In any case, I’m almost sure the NCCA leadership will be satisfied with Joel’s explanation and lay the matter to rest. Better yet, they can continue to give Joel M. Toledo his due as long as he fulfills the rest of the requirements. In fact the NCCA ought to be happy and proud to also publish Toledo’s first book of poems, especially now that he’s proven to be yet another source of national pride.

As for the syndicate, well, Philippine poetry in English takes another step forward with the planned revival of Caracoa, the poetry journal of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC), which last came out almost a decade ago. It was our young poets who thought of the idea of coming up with a "revival issue" with 25 poems by 25 contributors to commemorate PLAC’s 25th anniversary this year. The selection was made by Angelo Suarez, Mookie Katigbak, Lourd de Vera and Joel Toledo.

The manuscript is now in my nitpicky hands, awaiting an angel for publication. Maybe our good friend Cecile can still find a bit of NCCA funding for its modest printing. Why, we have a global reputation to uphold.