Istoryan Writers

[Von!-x]

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thanks for this post, diem! I am quite intrigued by the student's hypothesis on the mentality thing.

Who is the bestselling living filipino writer today?

[diem]

Who is the bestselling living filipino writer today?

[color=navy] You have to be more specific my friend because as you well know, "writing" is a world in itself, larger than Jupiter perhaps.

If we would consider in terms of book sales then the best-selling living Filipino writers CURRENTLY would have to be:

1) Carmen Guerrero Nakpil with her "Myself, Elsewhere", an autobiographical, intimate retelling of the 1920s and 30s when the new American culture collided with the old Spanish past.

2) Joey Concepcion, with "Negosyo: 50 Joey Concepcion's Inspiring Entrepreneurial Stories"

3) Glenda Rosales-Barretto, with "Flavors of the Philippines: A Culinary Guide to the Best of the Islands"

Online Source: NBS Bestsellers
http://www.nationalbookstore.com/sho...mpact=1&page=1

[radiostar]

larry ypil and nikay paredes is one of my fav writers here in cebu...

[diem]

thanks for this post, diem! I am quite intrigued by the student's hypothesis on the mentality thing.

[color=navy]Kamusta ka na bro? Busy with work and all? Just keep on writing.

Personally I do not agree with that particular hypothesis that we can't write big that it's because we're so used to thinking small and that local literary awards are contributing to it. It's not necessarily true because the Palancas, the NVM Gonzales, the UP Likhaan etc etc all have categories open for submissions of novel-length.

This 'small-thinking' is perceived a general mentality but I believe it really boils down to the individual writers themselves, kung saan nila kaya, kung saan sila masaya, kung ano ang kanilang niche.

Besides there is nothing wrong with writing short pieces. What's wrong is that one stops writing.

Arthur Conan Doyle, Poe, Isaac Asimov and Stephen King and many others began their careers writing short stories.

Carlo Caparas wrote komiks in serial segments which if compiled together is a large body of work.

Ako nga currently among other projects is writing an anthology of short stories. Right now, I am praying to have more time to write, it's just that I am just grateful for my present job (as a technical writer) that helps me not be a sponge and scrub from my family, allows me to experience and enjoy life without debts.. for how vain it is to sit down and write when one doesn't go out and live, right?

I have still my heart set on becoming a published author and I am not giving it up as long as I am alive.

[gareb]

teach me poetry.

please.

[diem]

[color=navy]@gareb

Poetry is a challenge to teach. I believe it is one of those few things that can't be taught but can be learned. Please be reminded that it is like any subject, you must study it and then apply what you studied. Knowing your potential for language I doubt it will be a difficult task for you.

But you might require a methodology for studying poetry, where to begin and what to do next. I'd like to make the following suggestions, hoping that these will guide your journey.

Take the first step.First off, read an overview of poetry as an art, as a craft. I find the Wikipedia article on poetry to be a sufficient introduction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry

The article summarizes its history and traditions, basic elements (and examples), types, forms, genres and provides both internal and external links to more definitive articles.

Take to heart the basics. Know the history of poetry, how it was founded and hows it evolves to the present. Understanding the basic essences of form and type will allow you to discover what/how to and not to write poetry.

Once the student is ready, the mentor will appear. You will have to take it upon yourself yourself to choose a mentor whose idealogy and style you determine a mirror to yours. It could be Shakespeare, Plath, Keits, Balagtas~ or it could be a living poet today.

Find books or resources and study their poetry and try to echo them for awhile. With constant practice and determination of self, I am sure that you will not remain an echo for long and will have your own voice and style of poetry.

The Test of Fire. Ultimately, I would suggest that you submit your work for publication or competition. There are many literary magazines and books, both local and international, which take in submissions. You know I regularly announce this here.

Publication/competition helps us writers determine how far we've come in pursuing our craft and how far we still have to go to achieve that center of contentment.

That's all I can share bro, because as I have posted before, I am no expert in poetry because I find it more "art" than "craft", more "spiritual" rather than "physical", more "beautiful" rather than "brutal" of any form of writing that I've ever personally experienced.

Go for it bro, begin your studies and work your way through. I am sure that everyone here in the thread is wishing you the best and eager for the day that we will be an audience of your wonder-weaved works.

[giver_bert]

teach me poetry.

please.

do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame..


i wanna learn poetry too!!

[diem]

[color=navy]@everyone who enjoys poetry, writing poetry like my brothers-of-the-pen gareb and giver_bert. Taken verbatim from the Philippine Daily Inquirer Website.

Performance poetry
KRIPOTKIN By Alfred A. Yuson
Monday, October 8, 2007
Online Source: http://www.philstar.com/index.php?Ar...aid=2007100760

It’s called by many other names. Spoken Word. Slam jam. “Show� poetry. Performance poetry has its own set of considerations as distinguished from those that apply to what is now called “page poetry� — or that which we’re more familiar with, what we see printed on the page.

In poetry classes, workshop sessions, lectures, I usually point out certain requisites for poetry — page poetry, that is. It’s like a simple list of do’s and don’ts.

One: Don’t declare. If you want to declare anything flat-out, write a letter, an editorial, or an essay. Or an entry in your blog site. If it’s avowals of love you express, don’t just say “I love you.� Metaphorize. Say something like “I love you with the breadth, depth, and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight.� That way, you extend and thus qualify your “declaration.� Nag-ra-rhyme pa.

Or when you’re bereft because your loved one is leaving you for another, don’t just say: “Okay, introduce him to me please, so I can congratulate him, before I turn away, feeling so sad.� Take the cue from e.e. cummings, who wrote: “If this should be, I say if this should be, let me go unto him, and take his hands, saying, Accept all happiness from me. Then shall I turn my face and hear one bird sing terribly afar in the lost lands.�

That bird is a metaphor, especially since it sings, presumably of loneliness, and does so solo. Where? In the distance. So far. So remotely. Exactly where? In the lost lands.

Again, that is extending, thus enhancing, the emotional import of what would otherwise have been just a declaration — which is often the difference between failed and effective poetry.

Two: Use images that fill up the mental screen of the reader. Imagery provides a graphic quality to the emotions or ideas you share. For the most part, images also stand for something else, and are not just what they basically are. We might say that in a poem, a cigar is not always just a cigar.

Birds can represent the notion of freedom, or of flight, or of song. Cummings’ bird, because it is “one bird� that “sing(s) terribly afar,� represents excruciating loneliness and sorrow.

Three: compare, compare, compare. Use similes, or make parallels between your basic utterances and certain images or actions they can be held similar to, or be symbolized by. When you use “like� or “as� then it’s a simile. If you don’t want to compare that way, then you go aggressive and directly apply the metaphor, to wit: “King James is a lion on the court� instead of “King James is like a lion on the court.� Either would do.

There are many other considerations when writing poetry. Prime among these are still the avoidance of stating anything outright, and the need to be graphically inclined. With the latter, one avoids having too many fat and flabby lines comprised of abstractions, of words that signify too much or stand for something too vague or all-inclusive, like the word “soul.�

A poem must rely on a tangential, elliptical, peripheral approach in articulating — in heightened language — emotions, ideas, experiences, insights, oddments, inklings...

Now, poetry has been evolving in a public manner. It is being/getting democratized. Well and good. More and more young people are taking to expressing themselves “poetically.� Sometimes the stance is enough. That is, by declaring radically fresh notions, one then fulfills the simpler requirements of performed poetry.

Thus, Cesare A.X. Syjuco can recite a “poem� in public that goes: “The value of zero times zero is zero./ The value of one times zero is zero./ The value of two times zero is zero...� And so on. When he completes the multiplication table and ends with a flourish by playing a riff on a harmonica, that is his performed poem.

When you read these same lines from a sheet, it appears as “concrete� poetry, which is what is called poetry that jumps at the eye with typographic features that visually enhance it — such as having a poem about rain composed of lines that are indented with gradating margins, so that the poem appears slanting, to suggest rain.

Gimmickry? Well... Some hardnosed academic critics might say so, the same who would dismiss Jose Garcia Villa’s so-called “comma poems� where each word is simply followed by a comma, as a frivolity that passes away after a season. Unlike, say, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock� that is all of a solid, variegated suite (a long, sectioned poem) that is also a well-knit compendium of ideas, images, motifs and melodic prosody that gathers up an irresistible centrifugal force. This is why it’s considered a “classic� that’s also suitable to read out loud.

Not all written poetry, or page poetry, lends itself well to oral reading. The more abstruse or complex ideational poem will lose a listener from the word go, unlike Eliot’s “the women come and go...� Sometimes the trick, and trick it is, is to balance the impermeability of a poem with its musicality, as with Villa’s ludic designs on his perennial battle with, or self-proclamation of, divinity.

At readings, it is best to select simple poems that the audience’s collective ear can follow, while they too appreciate the ideas, images and insights that are offered. Or one can conduct shock-jock treatment to ensure captivation, such as reading one’s poem while progressively stuffing one’s mouth with paper until the verbalization is garbled, muffled, rendered unintelligible. Such as what our dynamic young performance artist and performance poet (those are distinct) Angelo Suarez once did at Penguin in Malate.

In fact, that same night, another performer jocked that better, or worse, by reading a poem while having his lips actually sewn up. Ouch. Excruciating to watch, let alone listen to.

Occasionally, this is my beef against performance art or performance poetry, that often it partakers of token or more than token violence. That Gelo also heedlessly threw a shoe into the crowd at Penguin could’ve been an invitation to physical retaliation.

By the by, Gelo just returned from the Ubod Poetry Festival in Bali, where I can only presume he kept his flip-flops on, and yet still thrilled the international audience with his vigor and sense of surrealist empowerment.

All this is by way of lengthily segue-ing into recent poetry readings cum performances that proved exhilarating. The first was the Cesare-led event at the Ateneo Art Gallery, where the first performer was London-based Francesca Beard, whom The British Council Manila brought over for workshop sessions on the Spoken Word.

It wasn’t her first time in Manila. I first heard of her from Vim Nadera, who’s no slouch himself when it comes to entertaining audiences with performed poetry. This time Ms. Beard held an all-day session at UP Diliman where a good number of women signed up. Straight from that first-day session, she joined the Syjuco entourage in Ateneo, but was so tired that she had to go first.

I missed her act, because a televised basketball game caused tardiness on my part. (See, I’m so honest I didn’t blame the traffic.) What I caught was a riveting poetry performance by Trix Syjuco, who also emceed the affair. Her “props� included a chair, black tape that she drew some geometrical shape with on the floor, scissors (Aieee!), and transparent masking tape with which she momentarily sealed the faces of a couple of musicians providing accompaniment, and tied these up with her own.

I can’t recall much of the poem she read; suffice it to say that it had certain “arresting� lines. The same can be said of Yanna Verbo Acosta’s act, which delighted with sheer power of voice and physical stance.

Because one can’t smoke inside galleries, or anywhere at all on the grounds of the Loyola Schools except in the smokers’ pocket gardens that are usually a mile away from anywhere, I sought the solace of my car’s confines (with Jimmy Abad, heh-heh) for an orgy with our lighters. And thus missed what surely was another captivating act, by Maxine Syjuco. Good thing I can always ask her to do it again sometime, since she’s a sister to my godson.

The second gig I caught entire was at Mag:net Katips, with the workshoppers under Francesca Beard joining her in delighting the crowd with an ebullient, occasionally brilliant Spoken Word potpourri, from exercises to games and, well, all-around “gameswomanship.� Oh, a couple of guys held up a fraction of the sky, er, Mag:net’s ceiling: Seige Malvar and Francisco Monteseña — and both were excellent.

The ladies of the night were even more so, all together as well as individually, but it was as a spirited ensemble that they blew the very stage away. Take a bow, now: Maria Abulencia, Yanna Acosta, Alma “Jerri� Anonas-Carpio, Aivie Cabato, Ida Calumpang, Christine Carlos, Digi Ann Castillo, Fer Elido, Josephine Gomez, Karen Kunawicz, Jeena Raru Marquez, Surot Matias, Jen Velarmino and Moki Villegas.

Why, I hadn’t enjoyed myself as much since... uhh, well, I have yet to see Ms. Ansler’s The Vagina Monologues, albeit Ms. Carlos rendered an excerpt from it that night.

Then there was Francesca: light, somber, grave, hellacious, London-lilting, luminous, numinous, invigorating with her Spoken Word pieces — recited, chanted, sung. She was something else. She did several pieces, among them the one she recited in Ateneo, “The Poem that was Really a List,� which starts this way:

“The spade that was really a symbol/ the queen that was really a pawn/ the king that was really a rock-star/ the madman who was really God/ the milkman who was really Dad//... And so forth for nine more stanzas of transfer sequencing, until the last: “the cynic who was really a romantic/ the romantic who was really a sexist/ the sexist who was really a phobic/ the self-sufficiency that was really insecurity/ the love that was really fear/ the fear that was really nothing/ the ending that was really nearly here.�

On the page, would that be a successful poem, despite its reliance on abstractions that were types and stereotypes, or states of mind? I’d say yes, since I read it that way, too, from her 2002 chapbook titled Cheap, which I acquired even cheaper, that is, free, with dedication pa man din.

Exceptions, exemptions rule our lives; so they must... poetry. The types litanized do present images. Besides, irony, surreal undertones and hyper-reality, together with musicality, can combine to hallmark effective poetry.

But here’s another of Ms. Beard’s chapbook poems, this one briefer but more representative of the written poem, although I’m sure she also renders this powerfully as Spoken Word. It’s titled “Power of the Other�:

“This mind crawls like a pregnant cat; like traffic./ I am in love with the scientists./ They use simple sentence structures. Subject, verb, object./ The sun is a star. Fear is an instinct. The heart is an organ./ Each word is a molecule, the link in a chain, a single step along a/ winding mountain path — at the end you look back and see a brave/ new word, a glimmering landscape smiling shyly beneath you./ The scientists are neither charmed nor terrorised./ The scientists are radiant with patience./ They walk calmly, through the woods, through the trees.�

Dig those similes, the detours, sly curvature of an elliptical playground where contrapuntal images don’t exactly collide but relate in a magical way, in a paradox of parallel universes.

Francesca took her training session to Baguio, where she and her workshoppers (teachers and students of UP Baguio, Saint Louis University, Philippine Military Academy, University of Baguio and the University of the Cordilleras) performed at Kidlat Tahimik’s Oh My Gulay restaurant/café/bar (cum theater and art center). This they did till the wee hours of the morning.

Performance poetry goes places. Earthwards, heavenwards. Round the clock it goes, rounding up and rounding off erstwhile straight-jacketed poetry. Betcha by golly wow, oh my gulay, vive le difference and hooray!

*****

[color=navy] To you hungry young poets, to pursue your passion particularly in Cebu and in the Philippines, you might want to peek at the following links.

http://artcebu.tabulas.com/
http://www.panitikan.com.ph/poetry.htm
http://www.upv.edu.ph/news/news_archive.php?id=8
http://www.sunstar.com.ph/static/ceb...in.motion.html

[diem]

[color=navy]Alley Cat Publications/ Pusang Kalye
An international web-based journal that currently accepts prose and poetry in English, Filipino, Spanish, and Zambal. It is based in the Philippines.

Alley Cat publishes two issues a year, January and July, and will archive back issues in the website.

General Guidelines
1) We accept previously unpublished work for consideration.
2) Simultaneous submissions are welcome, although we should be informed upon acceptance elsewhere.
3) We ask for one-time publication rights, with copyright reverting back to the contributor upon publication. In case, of republication, alley cat should be cited as first publisher. We reserve the right to re-publish your work in a future “Best Of” or print anthology.
4) We cannot pay you in this lifetime, however, we will do all we can to promote the works of our contributors in the News section of our website. In case of print publication, contributors will receive one complimentary copy of the issue.
5) We can only accept one submission per genre per author, however, you may submit to the other genres.
6) Our reply will take from 1-5 months depending on the number of submissions received.
7) Please write on subject line of your e-mail the genre to which you are submitting to ex. POETRY SUBMISSION.
8 ) Please include your bio and contact information.
9) No attachments please, except for art.
10) The deadline for submissions to the first issue is on DECEMBER 15, 2007.

General Editor- Dr. Efren Abueg
Managing Editor- Ayn Frances dela Cruz
Publisher- Francisco dela Cruz

Literature

A. Poetry - there is no theme, no word count, no form, you can send us haikus or narrative poems or lyric poems, or prose poems, or any combination of these just as long as they’re really good.

Send 2-10 poems in the body of an e-mail to alleycat_publications@yahoo. com.

Editor– Ricardo de Ungria (English)
Nestor Barco (Filipino)

B. Fiction - for fiction you can send flash fiction, fables, fairytales, graphic novels, or self-contained novel excerpts, again there is no theme, you can send us futuristic works or realist works just as long as they’re really good.
Send 1-5 stories in the body of an e-mail to alleycat_publicatio ns@yahoo. com

Editors- Eros Atalia and Enrique Villasis (Fantastic Fiction)

C. Creative non-fiction - we are looking for personal essays, autobiographies, memoirs, food essays, and any other non-fiction narratives that deal with your own life. Again, we are looking for high quality work.
Send 1-5 essays in the body of an e-mail to alleycat_publicatio ns@yahoo. com

Editor- Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz

D. Drama- we are looking for one-act plays or self-contained excerpts from full-length plays. We are especially on the look-out for zarswelas, street theatre, and balladic versions of plays.

Editor- Ronald Verzo

Theories/ Criticism

A. Poetics- we are looking for essays that deal with writing, whether poetry or prose; we would like essays to tackle any or all of the following: how it is written, how it is read, how it affects the lives of people. We are especially on the look-out for new theories on poetry, fiction, essay, theatre, and art.

B. Ecology- we are looking for essays that deal with the relationship of art and the environment and sustainable development. Examples would include environmental installation art or leaf art (which started in Japan) as a regular part of art instruction in schools, etc.

Editor- Kris Llanot Lacaba

C. Interviews- we are looking for memoirs or transcripts or literary essays of interviews with artists and how their art is read/ misread/ constructed, etc.

Editor- Maureen Gaddi dela Cruz

D. Cultural Criticism- we are looking for essays that deal about, well, practically anything. The whole world is your arena, whether it be politics, your lame right foot, or your neighbor who hallucinates and sees the ghost of Mozart or something. Yep, just as long as it deals with culture.

Editor- Alexander Martin Remollino

E. Art- there is no restriction and no format. Collages, photos, paintings, graffitis, T-shirt art, leaf art, and any other new kinds of art that we don’t know about. Enlighten us. Send us 1-10 slides in jpeg format.
Editor- Lirio Salvador

Spanish editor- Michael Francisco
Zambal editor- Amor dela Cruz


Cats- please send us vignettes, cat stories, drawings, cat graffiti, poems, factoids, myths about cats.

ALLEYCAT POETRY PAMPHLET SERIES

Alleycat is currently accepting poems for its poetry pamphlet series. Poetry pamphlets are an inexpensive way of publishing, distributing, promoting, and buying contemporary poetry. If chosen, we will publish the pamphlet in pdf. format. All rights revert to the authors.

Guidelines:
1) Please send 10-20 poems.
2) The individual poems may be published but the pamphlet as a whole should not be published.
3) Include a table of contents, and acknowledgements page.

[diem]

[color=navy]
Here I am again, sitting in front of my PC whilst Dishwalla roars from the speakers. I am sipping mango nectar that came powdered and packed, not from a can. I stare at the blank white screen, fingers arched over the keyboard like cobras-about-to-strike.

And here I am writing, stating my thoughts out for everyone to see and if you’ve been following my posts frequently in this thread you’d know by now: Diem’s writing about Writing, again. Though there is nothing wrong about it I cannot help but feel somewhat guilty for it could seem tedious, that here I am like a broken record. Yet, at the same time, I feel the necessity of such an activity: writing about Writing. I believe that giver_bert’s aptly described this as mental conditioning in another post in another thread.

Maybe next time I would share what my mental conditioning has produced but for now, let me get a shout out to the iStoryan writers out there and give a report and inquiry to what’s happening to their lives today.

Thisbe.ara has landed a new job and enjoying a first week high. Where she’s working right now, I don’t think I am permitted to share but you can PM her if you feel especially curious. What I am curious about does her new job allow her to pursue her passion for writing?

Shaxyra would probably be finishing her finals by this posting. And looking forward to the semester break though I am not sure of that. Perhaps respiratory therapy students share the same schedule as nursing students and have no such luxury as afortnight long holiday. She’s been needing a pen and paper. I wonder if someone’s been charitable enough to give her.

Galesnostiel has been quiet of late. I wouldn’t be surprised with the day job she has, I’ve heard they get really busy during the last quarter of every year. Anyway, I hope she found more than enough research material for the book she’s planning to do, a supernatural horror-adventure.

Von!-x been busy writing his entries in his literary blog but more busy with work. We all are.

Gareb and giver_bert’s been clamoring for poetry lessons. Sorry bros, can’t help you in that department. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s simply I just can’t.

I wonder if Radiostar(once Astroboyreal)has gain entry to the forum’s Mature Discussions to continue his semi-autobiographical(?) chapters of Juan Pablo.

There are some new people posting about the thread, declaring their wants-to-be-a-writer but I have yet to see them share their work here. I hope they would soon, though.