MANILA, Philippines - My desire to write poems started, believe it or not, when I was in first grade. One day, teacher Precy made me read aloud to the class the poem, Who Am I by Felice Holman. It was an experience like no other, since after that I desired to produce something as captivating and lovely and beautiful. I have always tried to write since then. I vowed to become like Holman.
In hindsight, it was the beginning of what William Saroyan called in his essay, “Why I Write,” the thing he was willing to survive on. Like him, I found the thing I was willing to do all my life. To have found it was easy as an epiphany. But the things that followed were not quite.
I struggled. I wrote poems only to be ignored. I wrote poems only to be rejected. This painful process went on for so many years, over a decade actually. I struggled not only with the “how” but “what” to write.
In college, it got even more torturous because then I was a full-time student and full-time employee in a call center in Cagayan de Oro, and also moonlighted as a tutor to grade school kids to be able to eat and pay and study. This hard life was the price I had to pay for leaving home, for being a stowaway. I had to defy my dad, because I wanted to be me: gay. I couldn’t pretend and live a life of lies. This was another block in realizing my dream.
Back in college, I wanted to write and buy books and read some more but I couldn’t. I did not have the time and money. I have loaned my time to my employers. I had to work to finish college. It was a depressing phase to go through for a writer not being able to hold his pen.
Of course, the library was always there. But I was not much interested in the Filipiniana collection of my university; not only was it convoluted, it did not have a significant selection of Filipino titles and authors. And worst of all, it was not updated, just indeed like any Third World library! I hope, after two new university presidents, things have changed there. This was a concern I had to deal with since I love reading Filipino authors, especially those who are writing in English.
After college, having been liberated from the bank loans and tuition fee, I was able to purchase books for myself. Since I arrived in Cebu City two years ago for work, I have amassed over 90 Filipino titles, mostly literary, contemporary and in English.
In my book buying-scouting experience in all different cities, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, and Manila, I have observed that NBS and PowerBooks have a better selection of Filipino books/authors. Honestly, had it not been for these two bookstores, buying a book by a Filipino author would be very difficult if not impossible — it could be likened to searching for bits of gold in a brown river.
Yes, I confess, I mean, I am bragging when I say that I am bibliophilic when it comes to books by Filipino authors. Name it; I probably have it in my shelves, from Ambeth to Abad to Tiempo to Hidalgo. I admit too that most titles I have are literary, or if not, they are literary in proclivity like Hidalgo’s Fabulist and Chroniclers. Or they could be non-literary but by literary personalities like Butch Dalisay’s Man Overboard.
But of all the Filipino books I bought, it was Gemino Abad’s Our Scene So Fair that opened my literary eyes and then I began to have a sense of roots and therefore a sense of direction. The book, a compilation of academic essays on literature and literary history, is a must read for young writers or writer wannebes.
With Abad’s book I realized that to be able to start to write one must choose, one must be definite about it. The Filipino reader desiring to write would realize and ask (after reading his book): To whom does a Filipino writer owe his “allegiance”? After reading his book, I discovered the path taken by the other successful Filipino writers.
Although very young in the field, the struggle I had to be recognized, read and published, finally paid off this year. I owe this to the enlightening ideas of Gemino Abad in his landmark book, Our Scene So Fair. Now, I still get rejection slips. But mostly, I get published both here and abroad. I know there are so many things to do to be fully recognized and accepted in the field I have chosen, and I am far from that status, but I know I am on the right track. Thanks to the Filipino authors who have labored to set an example for the next generation, for the upcoming, for the budding.
Our Scene So Fair and a host of other Filipino books, mostly contemporary, plus passion, dedication, perseverance and hard work helped me paved the way in the possible fulfillment of my childhood dream.
This week’s winner
Denver Ejem Torres has a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature Studies from Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan and was a fellow for poetry and literary translation at several national workshops. As a bilingual poet, he writes and translates in his mother tongue, Cebuano and English. He has been published here in the Philippines and as well in India, Singapore and the USA. His work is in the anthology Querida: An Anthology, ANI 37 (CCP) and a collection of poems will appear in Assaracus (Sibling Rivalry Press, USA). He divides his time in two disparate worlds, the arts and corporate.