An Australia-based Thomasian writer discussed nature and travel-inspired poetry in a lecture at De La Salle University on Sept. 27.
“Let us surface from the deep now and rise into space, so we can see our blue planet as a whole entity and possibly imagine the interconnectedness of its inhabitants’ fulfillment for everyone’s survival,” said Merlinda Bobis, who obtained her master’s degree in literature in UST in 1987.
The four-time Palanca winner said the relationship between human beings and the planet must be “give and take.”
“I hope that something in us will defy the darkness of the night, the coldness of the ground in outer space and here on Earth that are home-based, because we have the capacity to meet the other with the modicum of respect, civility and humanity,” she said.
One should not be indifferent of others’ sufferings and natural disasters in writing about them, Bobis added.
The lecture served as the launching of Bobis’s poetry collection titled “Accidents of Composition,” published by University of the Philippines (UP) Press and Spinifex Press in Australia.
Bobis’s poetry collection deals with her contemplation on the serenity of nature based on her experiences in her home region of Bicol, her stay in Australia for 25 years, and trips to different countries.
Bobis read the poems “After the Grand Canyon,” “Lucy Afloat,” “After Reming,” “Pied Fantail,” “The Perfect Orchid,” “In Our Arms,” “Empathy,” “Migrations,” “Outbound” and “Love is Planetary” from her collection during the lecture. E.B. Coldora
