Literary

WHENEVER I repeated a word my master said, I got a cracker. This was how things worked for me ever since I started living in my master’s house. I never liked the taste of crackers. Dried-up bark would probably taste better. But ever since I was placed in a cage, I didn’t really have much of a choice anymore when it came to the food I eat. Before, I was free to search for my own food, usually the nectar, pollen, or fruits in the forest.

HE WAS a Thomasian seminarian until he discovered his multiple callings as a corporate officer and a multimedia artist in the dynamic world of poetry, painting, and performance art.

Instead of wearing stole and cassock, Sacred Theology graduate Danny Sillada now sports his trademark sultana, red shoes and shades worn during his live art performances.

“People always ask why I decided to become a full-time artist. But art has been a part of myself since I was a kid,” he said.

SPEAKING from memory and skilled imagination, 16-time Palanca award recipient and Philippine Star columnist Jose Dalisay, Jr. gives another compelling retelling of one of the country’s tempestuous epochs—Martial Law.

WHEN I found out that my works were accepted to the 8th UST National Writers Workshop, I braced myself for a put-down. I had attended several peer-critique sessions and a couple of university-wide literary workshops before, so I was somewhat familiar with the feeling of standing in the middle of the battle-ground of letters, vulnerable to all sorts of bashing. But this was a national workshop, surely a bloodier battlefield that I would be entering. My works were my only armor, my only shield that would have to endure the assaults of the panelists and the fellows.

THE GUST of wind links you and I

As we breathe each other’s air, through nose or mouth–

It doesn’t matter at all.

As long as there’s wind to tickle the skin

Of workers, lovers and wanderers

Walking under the sun’s light

Inhaling dust and exhaling heat,

For it is a must, or there will be no us.

Day in, day out.

Sun in, sun out.

Sometimes the sun shines on our supple skin

Illuminating parts that once were covered

BREAKING away from run-of-the-mill living is not an easy task, especially if one’s only weapons are words. Ramil Digal Gulle, a former associate for poetry of the Center for Creative Writing and Studies, faces the challenge in his third poetry collection, Textual Relations (University of the Philippines Press, 2007).

DEAD flower garlands and bouquets surround the Dead Christ inside a glass casket. Stationary and with very few devotees except on very special occasions, Christ’s figure is in the helpless posture of a body without a soul.

Just like Alfredo Makabangon who, even now in his own home, cannot take a stroll. He looks at the image through the open door of his room as if looking into a mirror. These days, not one of his limbs can move and he eats through a tube in his stomach. “What a way to spend my last years,” he thinks to himself.

Tomas, understand:

it has become my habit

to make the sign of the cross

when passing by any tower

with a crucifix on top. Who would have thought

that not all cross-bearing edifices

are God’s sanctuaries? Ripples of giggles

swelled in my ears and flowed through my skin,

slowly becoming as pink as a pomelo.

You should have told me about it, Tomas,

just like how you have warned me

of rivers and seas and waterfalls

FRANK, vulgar, and in-your-face poetry.

These are the fit descriptions for Filipino-American Fulbright scholar R. Zamora Linmark’s first poetry collection Primetime Apparitions (Hanging Loose Press, 2005), with topics ranging from hilarious English grammar and martial law musings to queer adventures and movie allusions. His poetry is a portal into the mind of a Filipino raised in a foreign country, only to go back to his original hometown and find out that nothing much has changed.

WORDS, colors, and chords harmonize for an evening of creative expression and artistic fellowship.

For the third installment of “Brushes with Words and Chords,” the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies (CCWS) gathered three musicians, six poets, and 11 visual artists from UST at the UST Museum of Arts and Sciences last Feb. 24.