DR. OPHELIA Dimalanta readers can now have a more compact collection of the poetess’ selected poems. The Ophelia A. Dimalanta Reader: Selected Poetry Vol.1 (UST Publishing House, 2004) compiles 141 handpicked poems from Dimalanta’s previous poetry collections: Montage, The Time Factor, Flowing On, Lady Polyester, Love Woman, and Passional.
“It was no comfortable job for me, reading all the poems again…and later, proof-reading. The labor pains are recreated, re-lived, and vulnerabilities once again laid open,” the UST Creative Writing Center director says in the Reader’s foreword.
The compilation was launched last Feb. 2 at the Chiang Ching Kuo Research Center, where associates of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies Nerisa Guevara, Eros Atalia, and Ralph Galan and special guests read some of Dimalanta’s pieces.
The event was highlighted by the performance of soprano Luz Morete and pianist-composer Greg Zuniega, who composed the music for “Dalamhati,” a poem by Dimalanta translated into Filipino. Sharline J. Bareng
