Almeria i

The Picture of Poetry

I begin with the nurture of images, and soon I am breathing out the

language of Poetry.

I envision my verse. There I am, trapped, caged, muted in the silence of

the wilderness. There is no sound. Everything is unsympathetic.

My eyes sweep in every direction; see everything, now in black and white,

now colored in actions and variations. They are my windows to reality. They quest and

seek for the truth. They know no pretense.

I write what my eyes witness. I yearn for pain, for only then can I write

my poetry. I write it to escape my pain.

Poetry is intoxicating. I ramble around the quadrangle of a blank sheet,

cram the page with words, with fragments and stanzas, just the way I frame my subjects

with my camera viewfinder. I offer every part of myself in my poetry, as self-sacrifice. I

submit myself to the higher God. I am not afraid to die for words. I am a martyr, a

minion of Art, who will do what she can and try to describe what she cannot, in any way

possible.

Writing is more than a mere passion. It is an addiction, a special kind of

madness. Pain glides through my flesh; it is a drug, a narcotic. It is transcendental. It

moves freely, in the dark, lurking in my deepest slumber.

When I write, I withdraw from humanity. I confine myself in one corner,

squat on the floor, lie down and hitch one leg on a table. When writing becomes
 Almeria ii

unbearable, I cry for a while, and then write again. I write death and bliss, knives and

smiles.

I envy the mystery of darkness. That is why, most of the time, I write in

the throbbing silence of the night, until the break of dawn when the sky turns apricot as if

dabbed like a painting.

The only failure in writing is when you get tired of it and stop doing it. It

is a journey where you stumble when criticized and humbly rise from the wrongs to face

the truth. Writing is traveling with words; there is movement on every corner of the

page.

A poet has a gallery of images inside her mind. She has a powerful, honed

sense of sight, for she sees the uniqueness in every mundane thing. She is a lone traveler

raring to exhibit each of the crafted portraits of herself to the keen eyes of her audience,

as every picture has its own story to tell.

 Almeria iii

Penning Pictures
It is the function of art to renew our perception.
What we are familiar with we cease to see.
The writer shakes up the familiar scene,
and, as if by magic, we see
a new meaning in it.
- Anais Nin

I could have taken a picture of perfect scenery once, nine years ago.

I was nearing my tenth birthday. The summer sky was overcast. The wind

blew hard and it was a perfect time to fly the kite I had made with my own two hands

and my childish creativity. It was made out of a plastic bag, broomsticks, and rubber

bands. I was so excited that I even opted to skip a round of the game, “dangaway,”

which my friends and I were playing.

I walked to a two-hectare empty lot, an approximate distance of half a

kilometer from our subdivision. I have known the place since the time I and my

playmates tried to catch spiders there one dismal evening. I could not recall how many

times I set foot on that lot, but the only thing I remembered then was that every time I

visited the place, I felt as though I were seeing it for the first time. Tall, green grass was

dancing, swaying like passionate lovers, gently caressed by the wind. I felt awe-struck. In

that empty lot, I found my paradise. It was not the same as the miniature paper castles I

used to play with, but it was far better. It was as if I owned a piece of land which nobody

else knew existed.

So I started flying my kites that summer. I liked to maneuver the flight of

my kite hoping that they would kiss the azure sky. I wanted them to soar high, fly like

birds, unafraid of losing their stability. Perhaps I loved kites because of their persistent aim
 Almeria iv

to ascend. (There’s something in me that wanted to be freed, wanted to be tossed

towards the absence, something which Clarissa Pinkola Estes called the wild woman.)

There was one time when one of my kites reached the highest point of its

flight. I pulled the string and maneuvered it carefully. I was at my happiest at that

moment. The higher it soared, the freer it was.

I felt the place was worthy to be photographed. But how? I did not have a

camera to record everything, but I kept a diary with me to pen my frustrations. I started

writing fragments during that summer. I started writing pictures.

There were about ten poems, a mixture of English and Tagalog poetry.

I always favored the rhyming scheme. During my childhood, children's books were always

available to me especially collections of fairy tales like “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” “The

Emperor’s New Clothes,” etc. Mother always wanted us to read them, but my eyes chose

to wander among the pictures on the pages. I had no inkling at the time that I would one

day write poetry. However, my mother always told me that I inherited my love for

literature from her, because she too wrote poems and kept a diary in her youth. I could

remember that I had written sentences or clauses, perhaps, but most of my scribbles were

fragments and verses.

When I wrote my first lines, I wrote it in accordance to what I felt, to

what my heart told me. It was more of an emotion rather than a form of rational

thinking where words became the melody of my heart’s song, trying to orchestrate it into
 Almeria v

a poem. Writing is a patient and a non-aggressive craft in which the writer seeks the need

to grow, trusting her own heart, mind, and body.

My lust for pictures was heightened when I finally got my first camera

during grade VI, after the summer of kite-flying. It was an instamatic Canon imitation

camera that my mother had bought for the whole family to use. I was very excited when

Mama told me about it. She was very particular when it came to her things, and so it

seemed a miracle when she allowed me to take the camera to school. I never told her

about my interest in taking pictures.

After a year, the instamatic camera broke, perhaps due to my reckless

usage of it. Nevertheless, my desire for images remained.

Three years later and it was during my 3rd year in high school that I finally

owned a camera of my own. It arrived in a box. I held it tightly. I became curious, so I

examined it carefully and I glimpsed a smudge in the viewfinder. An image with colors of

viridian and scarlet blurred the lens the first time I peeped through the camera’s

viewfinder. To my curiosity, I peered once more, but this time I manipulated the lens. I

rotated the zoom lens, in and out, farther and closer until the smudge became sharper

and clearer. It had become more dramatic, more emotional. The image: a scarlet bud

with its petals cupped with green thin leaves, attached to its thorny stem with its deep-

black backdrop.

I knew there was poetry in it: the colors, the subject matter, the thorn, and

the flower. I lusted for poetry, the moment I pointed my camera at the image. I felt there
 Almeria vi

was pain in the image because I was squeezing the red rose with my eyes while viewing it

through the viewfinder.

It is often said that the best segments of our lives are during childhood.

That is when we are first taught. That is why, every time I see an image of a rose, it

always brings me back to the time when I first held my own camera, the summer

escapade with my fragments, verses, and my hand-made kites.

A Poet’s Portrait
 Almeria vii

There is a pain -- so utter-

It swallows substance up
Then covers the Abyss with Trance -
So Memory can step
Around -- across -- upon it -
As one within a Swoon -
Goes safely -- where an open eye-
Would drop Him -- Bone by Bone.

-Emily Dickinson

I wished to photograph myself in a scenario where I was in a dark, gloomy

room with the only streak of light coming from the window above me. I write in the

embrace of darkness, but I chase the only light the room could ever have. I write my pain

in the light of hope. Everything should be natural; the lighting, the subject, and the

emotion, in a room I can call my own.

It is a picture of me while I’m writing my poetry, feeling the throbbing

pain of silence, hearing the piercing cry of the cicadas and the rustling of the leaves. I lock

myself inside the room and wander around the rambling streets of sentences; being one

with punctuations, twisted texts, phrases, words, and fragments.

You may call it insanity, but I call it my drug. No one knows about my

madness, as I secretly imprison it within the four corners of blank, white pages.

There, I aim to immerse myself in the wild nature of life as I showcase the

drama of a woman’s soul. I write other people’s stories without their permission; I steal a

part of their life, I keep secrets. I explore everything. I am not easily contented. I seek for

adventure.

A writer is a seeker of things. To quote Cirilo Bautista:

 Almeria viii

For the world is never satisfactory to the writer, that is why he is

always examining it and trying to find out justification for its state.
He does not intend to improve it—no writer can improve the
world—but simply to probe it and expose all aspects of its reality
for the readers to have a true appreciation of it. (n.p.)

We need patience to write, however, according to Prof. Timothy Montes,

if one wants to write, one should be willing to be disturbed. In that way can a piece of

writing become interesting.

I know that it is hard to conceal every scar, every pain, but it is through

writing that I can free myself. I speak of the kind of pain I have experienced, the empathy

I feel for other women, their stories and mine, all sharing this pain—a collective feeling of

being one with the Scar Clan, as Estes calls it.

In my writings, I seek stories. I seek to write what I really want. I seek to

write more pain, anger, hatred, and rage. Adrienne Rich once wrote:

Both the victimization and the anger experienced by women are real, and
have real sources, everywhere in the environment, built into society. They
must go on being tapped and explored by poets, among others. We can
neither deny them, nor can we rest there. They are our birth-pains, and
we are bearing ourselves. We would be failing each other as writers and
as women, if we neglected or denied what is negative, regressive, or
Sisyphean in our inwardness. (n.p.)

I know that I have a story to tell, and that poetry is the only genre that

can speak for my pain. It is a journey that I need to embark on perhaps with the Scar

Clan, or alone.

Watching and Writing Womanly Woes

You must know I keep my own name,

times, I feel myself free
 Almeria ix

to choose the words of my singing, though

in my own woman's voice, cracked
with too much laughter, or anger, or tears,
who's to listen, I don't know

-Merlie Alunan

I tame the wild woman inside me. I feed her with Poetry. She lives inside

me. As with the other members of the Scar Clan, she learns to bear the pain. Everything I

want, she shares. She hunts like a foraging wolf in the woods, walks with me, cries with

me, laughs with me, and one day will die with me. However, I have not failed her since I

conceived her.

It was during the summer of 2008 when I finally decided to write about

women's poetry for my thesis after taking a Gender and Literature course under Prof.

Jhoanna Lynn Cruz.

During the first week of July, I approached Prof. Cruz. I showed her the

poems I wrote during the 2008 summer class at UP Diliman. I had started keeping an

online journal because during that summer I spent most of my time on the computer.

When my adviser and I finally discussed my poems, she noticed evident images of pain.

During that time, I knew that I wrote about women, but never realized

that most of the poems contained the images of pain. I only knew that I liked writing

about abortion, rape, infidelity, the darker side of life. Those were my start off points in

my writings. However, I was not able to pull off some of the poems, leaving only those

poems that exhibit my own kind of pain. These kinds of subjects interest me the most. I

don’t have any intention to brag my experiences of this sort of woman-writing-her-pain-

 Almeria x

drama; however, I would like to be honest with my readers because, as an audience, they

deserve to know.

In 1999, when I was ten I had a stalker— an unforgettable experience with

a man. Everyday, I left our house for school before 6:30 in the morning. Despite the

birth of a new day, mornings never felt warm because the figure of a stalker reaching me

in the brisk dawn sent a chill down my spine. I felt his cold fingers creeping down my

back every time I rode a tricycle or a jeepney. It was always like that for months. I was

too afraid to talk about him, even to my father; who I believed was the only noble man

on earth. It continued until one day, I finally worked up the courage of revealing it to

Papa.

However, the curtain of experience didn’t stop there. I experienced it

twice during elementary, and twice in college. I was just very fortunate that I was not

frail enough to be subjugated.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in her book “Women who Run with the Wolves”

says that “the keeping of secrets cuts a woman off from those who would give her love,

succor, and protection. It causes her to carry the burden of grief and fear all by herself,

and sometimes for an entire group, whether family or culture.”(377) She further asserts

that when a woman keeps a shameful secret and buries it, it is horrifying to see the

enormous amounts of self-blame and self- torture she endures. All the blame and torture

that threatened to descend upon the woman if she tells the secret do anyway, even

though she has told no one; it all attacks her from within.
 Almeria xi

I revealed three of those four “experiences” I had, to the people who were

closest to me, my father and mother. The one during my elementary was disclosed only

recently, to my college best friend. However, even though they were divulged to the

people closest to me, the emotional scars seem to throb every time I remember them.

They are painful, they are alive.

I told myself that I should free this scarred woman inside me, free her of

any emotional dilemmas and painful undertakings, and so I thought that as a healing

device, I should write about my woes and share them as a work of art, through writing

poetry.

However, in writing, a poem or a story will not be possible without the

impulse of the writer when it comes to crafting his or her own works. For after all, a

writer depends solely on herself when it comes to her craft. To quote Cirilo Bautista:

The writer labors in isolation, and he is not even sure that the
poem or story will turn out the way he intends it to. He only has
himself to rely on in his attempt to explicate the mysterious
meanderings of his soul. It is a painful and demanding
commitment.(np)

When I write, I do not go back to the words I have written, but I continue

until everything is done. I do not bother to go back to a line just to check the grammar or

correct any misspelled words. I want the process to be pure, raw in its form.
 Almeria xii

I write for myself. I write because this is how I see things. To quote

Professor De Veyra:

Seeing apparently allows us to conceptualize our relation to a thing. But

this conception is always conditioned by our perception of other things
and by what we know of these other things. So our understanding of the
world is always a negotiation of what we see and what we know of what
we see. It is looking at the actual world and then to the image in the
mirror and back again. (52)

However, as writers, we don’t just watch the things that surround us, but

we see and connect to those things in such a way that we feel we become one with those

objects. It is a collective feeling shared with the self and the objects.

I write my wounds, my own pain and the pain I feel in empathy for other

women. These are the wounds I have experienced during my childhood, my desire to

free the agonies I have felt and the struggle of writing my own pain in all honesty and

without being shameful of it. I believe this is the reason I adore the company of words.

They have become the outlet of my pain, my frustration, and self-deprivation.

Positioning Poetic Perspectives

I developed my love for literature when I began my studies at the

university taking up Creative Writing as my undergraduate course. Most of the students I

met in my first year considered reading as their favorite pastime. I envied them, their
 Almeria xiii

passion in reading, how their eyes scrutinized every word on the page. In high school, I

could seldom finish a book. It actually pained me to do so, because for me, finishing a

book was like leaving the characters of the story that had became part of you. However,

I gave reading a second thought: what if I started devouring the pages and finishing every

novel that I read? I told myself that I had nothing to lose, so I might as well give it a try.

So I started reading. I had a hard time finishing the first long novel I read,

but I was persistent. It was “Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown. I craved literature after I

finally said goodbye to the characters of that book, and I was never as satisfied as I was

after I finished reading it. I started visiting book sales, scavenging, foraging, rummaging as

if digging for gold.

I read the works of Anne Sexton, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Emily

Dickinson, Merlie Alunan, Marjorie Evasco, Gemino Abad, Ricardo de Ungria, and other

writers whose works were discussed in our Philippine literature and poetry classes.

I like Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy.” She was first introduced to me when I

took up AH 4 and discussed it under Mr. John Bengan’s class. I like the line where she

mentions:

Daddy, I have had to kill you

You died before I had time—
Marble heavy, a bag full of god

After reading the entire poem and being struck by the above lines I noticed

that her poem is very strong and violent. I believe that Plath as a confessional poet drew

some of her musings from her experiences. She would not be able to write such work of
 Almeria xiv

masterpiece without referring to her deeply troubled life. Her poems used the images of

incest, her madness, etc. The poet is never afraid to write about intimate, taboo subjects.

The inspiration of my poem “Death Fantasies” was Anne Sexton’s “The

Death King”:

I hired a carpenter
to build my coffin
And last night I lay in it,
Braced by a pillow
Sniffing the wood…

When I finished reading the poem, I told myself that I wanted to write

something like Death King and so I came up with my own version of it. Anne Sexton’s

poetry is said to be difficult to separate from her life, as her works started out as being

about herself.

I adore the brilliance of Virginia Woolf when it comes to criticism and her

short story entitled “The Mark on the Wall,” as well as her long essay entitled “A Room

of One’s Own,” which was given to me by my college best friend. According to Woolf,

for a writer to be able to write, she should have money and a room of her own.

So that when I ask you to earn money and have a room of your
own, I am asking you to live in the presence of reality, an
invigorating life, it would appear, whether one can impart it or not.
(114)
 Almeria xv

I started liking the poems of Emily Dickinson when Rigil Lumingkit and I

reported about her life and discussed three of her poems in Prof. de Ungria’s class. I love

her poem about Pain:

Pain has an element of blank;

It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there was
A time when it was not…

In fact, I had already purchased a collection of her poetry even before the

report. Her poems are mostly about the agonies and ecstasies of love, the unfathomable

nature of death, the horrors of war, God and religious belief, etc. Reading Dickinson’s

idiosyncratic vocabulary and her images that allude to death and other painful subjects

made me think of the life she had lived.

I learned a lot about Filipino poets in our Philippine Literature classes. I

was inspired to write “Amakan” because of Merlie Alunan’s “Bringing the Dolls.” Before I

wrote the final form of “Amakan,” I had a version patterned after Merlie Alunan’s poem.

However, my adviser asked me to explore other objects. Then, she let me read a poem

by Mitsuye Yamada entitled “The Club.” From then on, I started to conceptualize my

own version. This time, it was an object the Visayan people call “Amakan.”

I look up to the poet Gemino Abad. It was during Poetry 1 that Sir Nino

required us to read Abad’s book entitled “Getting Real.” According to Abad, “one learns

the writing of poetry from the reading of it- and, of course, the doing, the writing and

steady practice of it. One's guru may in fact be one’s favorite poet. We must assume that
 Almeria xvi

that experience has nurtured his interest in poetry, his delight in language.” (304) There

are times when, after reading a poem, I envy the writer. Honestly, I envy how a certain

writer succeeds in evoking meaning in his poem, a meaning that the reader experiences

after reading the work.

I love the images of Ricardo de Ungria’s book “Waking Ice.” Reading the

poems in that collection, I felt empathy for the poet. There’s so much pain in it, I felt it

was one of the saddest moments of my life after reading it. It was as if I mourned for the

loss of the poet’s son whom he feels he had not loved enough.

My desire to write concrete poetry or visual poetry started during our class

in American Literature under Mr. Bengan’s class. He let us read the poems of e.e

cummings. One of which is the poem a leaf falls structured and written in this manner:

1(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

It seemed like the words themselves formed a picture. I became interested

in his style and so I decided to try and make my own concrete poem. It started with the

poem “Workshop” where I indented the word “fall”. I tried once more and so I was able
 Almeria xvii

to write “Kite,” “Memory,” and “Distant Love.” One of the many reasons I included

concrete poetry in the collection is that I want my poems to look like pictures.

I also read the book by Clarissa Pinkola Estes entitled “Women who Run

with the Wolves.” I first encountered the book during our Gender and Literature class

under Prof. Cruz. It’s a book about wild woman archetypes. Our group was tasked to

read the tale of the Red Shoes as it is alluded to in the novel of Julia Alvarez entitled

“How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.” I started searching for the Estes book. It was

during the summer of 2008 when a friend and I were roaming the stores of Alabang

Town Center that I found a copy. I read through some of the chapters and it inspired me

to write about women. The chapters entitled Battle Scars: Membership in the Scar Clan

interests me the most. I identify myself among the members of the scar clan, trying to heal

the wound of the wild woman inside me and the confessional poets who were never

scared and ashamed to share their experiences to their readers.

Processing Poems
I always see something I could press tighter
or enwrap more completely.
There’s no trifling with words —
can’t be done:
not when they’re to stand ‘forever.
 Almeria xviii

- Virginia Woolf

In January 2009, Aida Rivera Ford opened a poetry reading by discussing

her experience of being a writer. For her, writing is how the writer perceives the reality,

the actuality that surrounds her. And according to her, when writing, one must share

something of herself, the inner self.

I wrote my first poem in college during our Creative Writing 101 class

when we were required to pass a mini thesis. It was a poem structured in modern haiku

about heartache. Ms. Jean Claire Dy asked us to write the collection through using the

different genres of literature like poetry, sudden fiction, essay, etc. It was on that

collection that I finally shared some of my experiences as a human being to my classmates

and to my friends.

Seeing helps us find reason in the way we can perceive the things around

us. However, to see is to have a negotiation between the objects and the people around

you. When we deal with an object through seeing, we do not simply view it as it is, but

we also delve deeper into the object, seeing it more closely.

As Prof. de Veyra discussed in his lecture entitled “The Writing Eye”,

In poetry and other literary texts, the writer's ability to look and see --
embodied in the term insight -- is deemed of prime importance.
However, seeing is not as simple as it seems. It involves a negotiation
between what we see and what we know of what we see. Moreover,
seeing also requires a negotiation between how we see things and how
others see things. It is in these negotiations, therefore, that we are able to
investigate the others way of seeing and, in the process, explore still more
ways of apprehending the world and arrive at an insight. ( 47)
 Almeria xix

I want to evoke an emotion in my poetry. The poem entitled “Workshop”

was originally entitled “Untitled,” until Cherry Alcantara read it and considered the

images as a usual scenario in a workshop. The poem was inspired by an incident in my

Poetry class. I situated myself in the room and pondered about the comments I received

from the class. It was originally posted as one of the entries in my blog, but I scavenged it

from the “waste basket” and polished it for submission.

I didn’t expect that the poem “Workshop” would be published in Sun Star

Davao. I read “Workshop” last January 2009 in the poetry reading sponsored by the

Davao Writers Guild at Matina Town Square. I was nervous that time, but when I finally

took the microphone, I became fearless. It was hard to read my poem in front of an

audience because I have never been used to it. However, I uttered the words with great

respect and justice to my piece.

Among all of the poems I submitted during the October 2008 workshop

for the first phase of thesis writing, this was the only poem the panel had liked. During the

workshop, Prof. de Veyra said that I should let the images speak for themselves rather

than the speaker speaking for the poem or let the images speak for themselves rather than

have somebody describe the whole scene. Furthermore he explained, “paint an instant

picture and do not say anything in a picture that would bring the reader in a

contemplative mood. Make the reader think.” He also mentioned that the details are

important in the poem, for example, the colors blue and red, the weight that the speaker

carries, etc.
 Almeria xx

Writing poetry, like writing essays and fiction, is never easy. It was almost

like a matter of life and death, I might say. However, hearing my professors’ criticisms

during the workshop inspired and challenged me to continue writing and never give up.

The first draft:

Untitled
I sit at the center,
the red metal stool
carries my weight.
the girl in blue stares
at me with tiger eyes.

I face the other side,

drag the stool
as it screeches, biting my skirt—
as though my thoughts are
wailing

The man in eyeglasses shouts,

“What’s the central image?”
the girl nods,
not once but twice
as the man
hammers
my poems
on the table.

I face them both,

carrying
my own weight

he hurls my paper
up in the air,
Our eyes witness
as my syllables
fall
like loosened
leaves of a tree.
 Almeria xxi

I consulted with my poetry teacher, Prof. de Ungria regarding the revision

of this poem. It was only a minor revision, with few words added and altered. In the first

stanza of the poem, instead of using the lines:

the girl in blue stares

at me with her tiger eyes.
I changed it to:
the girl in blue stares
me down with tiger eyes.

In the revised version of the first stanza, I noticed that it had more impact

compared to the first one. The poem evoked more tension.

In the second stanza, I changed the verbs into present form, because they

should be parallel, and Prof. de Ungria suggested changing the last two lines

sounding like my thoughts

of repulsion

rather than to retain it as

as though my thoughts are

wailing

The revised version of the second stanza had a proper line cut and was

more concrete compared to the original. Also, I decided to change the word “syllable” in

the final stanza to “words”, as that was more appropriate. In the third to the last line, I

separated the word “fall” from the other words so as to have an image and structure in

the stanza, as if the word “fall” fell like the leaves from a tree.

Our eyes witness

as my words
fall
 Almeria xxii

like loosened
leaves of a tree.

When one is writing, she should not write with the sole aim of pleasing

her readers, for Art is subjective. What you consider beautiful might not be pleasing to

the eyes of others. It is difficult to write, but whatever outcome you might get from your

audience, you should know how to accept those criticisms. Harsh criticisms are inevitable;

but, they will help the writer to improve her work, one way or another. There may be

challenges that a writer experiences, like how the leaves need to let go of the tree, but the

tree lives on. That is writing: we write, we commit mistakes. We learn from them, and

we grow.

“Undertow” takes a darker theme. I am ambitious when I write. I write to

explore, just like a photographer. For it is only through writing that I can become naked

and free. I am willing to discover, to peep into the holes, to sail with the waves and

enjoy my sweetest recoil. I always fancy the solitude of the sea. Its calmness is disturbing;

it has a tinge of desolation. It has its own rhythm of pain.

The first draft:

Shattered Innocence

We were in a deserted room on midday

he was sitting on a white chair,
I stood behind him
and we witnessed the crisp leaves fell from an old mango tree outside
the wind gently caressed our bodies,

he lifted his right arm

pulled my hands to his chest,
my fingers were trembling with
as though they were stems of a wilted stems
i tried to undo his grip-
 Almeria xxiii

he was strong ,
I could feel his warm breath right before my horrified face-
his arms wrapped around me like vise
it was engulfing, devouring, hungry

he pushed me on the white blank wall,

his hands on my breasts as he hooked me,
penetrating the hole,
in
and
out
in
and
out
until he reached his anticipated ecstasy

I gathered myself
In the embrace of cold

A feeling shot through like dozen knives at once-

He left none of himself;

His haunting shadows,

his breath echoing off the wall-
together with my silent tears,
a crumpled 500 peso bill,
and a crimson dot on the floor

During the workshop, most of the poems in the collection had the setting

in the first stanza; however, it was suggested to start the poem “in medias res”, or in the

middle of things. The poem “Undertow” was one of the poems that was criticized. I

believe that I was right to start the poem with

He was sitting on a white chair

In a deserted room on midday
I stood behind him

and we witnessed the leaves

of an old mango tree falling outside-
the cold wind gently brushed our bodies

to set the mood of the poem. I believe it helped to dramatize what happened in that

afternoon. Beginning the poem with that setting contributed a lot to achieving the tone
 Almeria xxiv

of its narrative. The poem was inspired by an incident that happened to me one summer

afternoon. I was talking with a male friend, and I didn’t notice that during our

conversation there was something going on inside his mind. It was hard for me to recall

everything, as I felt I had really been harassed, but I thought I had achieved artistic

distance while I wrote the poem. As William Wordsworth defines poetry, it is a

spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility.

In the workshop, the panelists noted that some of the poem's images were

so clichéd that they stole the emotion of the piece. It was originally entitled “Shattered

Innocence,” but I realized that the title was too obvious, so I changed it to “Undertow”

and made it more dramatic. I omitted some adjectives and sharpened more of my verbs:

as though angry waves were penetrating the white shore,

biting the shore and recoiling
rush,
smash,
dash,
and crash

instead of
he pushed me on the white blank wall,
his hands on my breasts as he hooked me,
penetrating the hole,
in
and
out
in
and
out

In the second revision, I was more aware of the proper line cuts, and how

they always affect the manner in which the poem is read.

 Almeria xxv

Language in poetry is very important. If a writer doesn’t know how to

manipulate and properly use language, the reaction from the readers will be very

different from the reaction she expected them to feel.

My ars poetica, which I have included with my new poems, was written

solely for the purpose of having something to publish in my private blog, but when I

skimmed through my blog’s site, I found it interesting and included it for my thesis

collection. I recalled the moment when I was writing this entry. I wrote it during a time

when I couldn’t think of anything to write. I battled with my imagination as I saw myself

painfully penning the exact words to use.

When I submitted the poem to my adviser, I was surprised when I read her

comments. It was only during that time that I was conscious of the alliteration and the

beat of the poem. It only had a minor revision. The first stanza was originally written as:

array of images
grasping, getting
a touch of a thought

However, I decided to change the word array to imagining, because I

think it is more appropriate compared to the previous version of the poem.

imagining images
grasping, getting
a touch of a thought

I also deleted the 5th line on the 3rd stanza because it seemed out of

context, as well as the word hollow.

 Almeria xxvi

scratch the savages

of guilt grudging
somewhere, sober
in its silent sanctuary
feed the food
hollow spaces
and horizontal lines,

Final draft :

scratch the savages

of guilt grudging
somewhere, sober
in its silent sanctuary
of spaces
and horizontal lines,

In the final stanza, I deleted the words to your wonder and wandering
souls and restructured the ending.

lead me to your wonder

possess me in your name
gather my wandering souls
at the center of the page
as you encircle,
caging me in a poem.

The revised final stanza of the poem was much better. I enclosed the word
caging in parentheses and brought down the other four remaining words.

lead me
possess me in your name
gather my meandering madness
at the center of the page
as you encircle,
(caging
me in a poem).

Writing is a fight. It is always a battle between the writer self and the critic

self. But when I wrote the poem “Bars,” I won over my critic self. I told myself that if the
 Almeria xxvii

critic self had defeated me, I would not have been able to finish the poem, as I could only

obtain several first stanza versions of it. It pays to believe in your writer self.

The poem “Amakan” is a poem written in the vernacular language. It is a

narrative about a child whose family makes its living through weaving and selling

“Amakan,” as well as the tragedy that her mother experiences every time her father

comes home drunk. It was inspired by my father’s childhood experience and the pain he

experienced when he was still with his parents in a barrio in Iloilo.

I first wrote the poem in Bisaya, the kind of Bisaya I have grown to use in

General Santos City and translated it myself into English. It was so hard for me to

translate it into English. Gemino Abad in “Getting Real” talked about the importance of

language in poetry:

….a fine sense for language is what I would affirm as the basic poetic
sense. That poetic sense knows only too well that language is treacherous;
without mastery of its ways-its vocabulary, grammar, syntax, rhetoric- it
falsifies and mangles what it has really been unable to bear. Each word
must carry its meaning without hurt. (264)

That’s why I wrote it in Bisaya, my native language. I later decided to

translate it into Hiligaynon basing it on the Bisaya version.

The first draft:

Amakan (Bisaya)

ginbunalan niya si mama ug amakan

nga among ginatahi ug ginalukdo kung udto
sa ilalom sa kainit ug kasulaw sa adlaw

ang among balay kay gihimo gikan sa amakan

 Almeria xxviii

ang dingding sa kusina ug kwarto,

u gang bongbong

nagpikas-pikas among kamot,

masamad among tudlo
kay maigo sa taliwis nga grano sa amakan
ang sakit pa
nagahilak akong mama tungod sa amakan

nagadugang nga nagdugang ang lakra sa amakan sa lawas ni mama kung

muuli si papa nga hubog
tungod kay wala namo kini nahurot ug baligya.
Muadto siya sa likod sa balay ug mukuha ug amakan
Ug puspusan niya si mama-
Dira lag siya muundang
Kung maputol na ang amakan,
Kung mangalagpot gikan sa tarong nga pagkatahi

Nipis kini maong sakit kung makaigo

Hapdos ang kambras sa amakan sa bukton ni mama,

Nagtulo ang dugo uban sa iyahang mga luha,
Naghuna-huna ko nga itago ang amakan aron dili Makita ni papa-
Aron dili nako madunggan ang hilak sa akong mama, aron muhilom na
ang kagab-ihon u gang balay,
Aron wala nakoy singgit ug yawyaw nga madunggan
Usa ka buntag nga wala si papa
Nag istorya mi ni Mama,

“ubanan ko nimo ug baligya anang amakan ma,

Huroton nato ug isuroy nato sa mga panimalay”
“o, sige ba, kay gikapoy nako ana nila ug tan-aw”

Ug gilukdo namo ang amakan nga nahibilin

Nisuroy mi sa mga panimalay- gikapoy na ang among likod apan
Nagpadayon pa mi ug baktas,
Ug singgit

Wala nami kabalo kung asa mi nakaabot-

Layo nami sa among balay,
Nagpahulay mi ilalom sa usa ka punuan sa mangga—

Unang higayon ni mama nga makapahulay

Layo kay papa-
Layo sa bunal sa amakan,

Unang higayon pud sa akong papa nga muuli nga hurot na ang amakan ,
Nga wala iyahang anak-
 Almeria xxix

Ug iyahang asawa
Nga kanunay niyang
Ginapuspusan.

The problem I encountered while translating the poem was the lack of

terms to use. That’s why when I started translating the Bisaya version of the poem to

Hiligaynon I remembered the poet Merlie Alunan, in her essay “Splitting Tongues:

Literary experience in a Multilingual Culture,” where she discusses writing in the regional

language. According to her, “some works cannot be written in any language other than

the one that has been chosen for it.”(43)

When I arrived in Davao, I asked my board mates to read the Bisaya

version, and the Hiligaynon translation, which I did with my father's help.

Even though I know how to speak Hiligaynon, my father is a native

speaker. I had a hard time searching for the right words to use, like the word sukdap, a

Hiligaynon term for the woven bamboo strips, the result being what we call Amakan. I

do not know the term it corresponds to in Bisaya, so I decided to translate it into

Hiligaynon because of the accessibility of the terms I wanted to use in the poem.

However, it is still appropriate to use the word Amakan in the Bisaya version of the

poem in replacement to the word sukdap in the Hiligaynon version. So I retained the

word Amakan in the 1st stanza:

gibunalan niya si mama ug amakan

na among ginatahi
ug ginalukdo kung udto
sa ilalom sa kasulaw sa adlaw
 Almeria xxx

The reason I chose to present the Hiligaynon version to the panelists was

that I felt the former is more rhythmic.

During the workshop, the panelists noted that I should tighten the poem,

make it compact, but preserve the poetic sensation. According to Prof. Montes, the poem

lacks earnestness and sincerity. I should also take note of the rhythm of the language, as

Hiligaynon is noted for its emphasis on rhythm as suggested by Mr. John Bengan. I

realized that the poem lacked authenticity or sincerity because it was not naturally written

in Hiligaynon.

I had a hard time during the process of revising the poem. In this poem,

proper line cutting is very important. During the first draft in the Hiligaynon version, the

lines were still longer than in the revised version in Bisaya, for example, in the first line of

the first stanza:

(Hiligaynon) ginbakol niya si nanay sang sukdap

nga amon gina-rara
kag himuon sang amakan,
kun diin amon ginapas-an
sa dalom kag kasilaw sang kainit

(Bisaya)
Bisaya) gibunalan niya si mama ug amakan
na among ginatahi
ug ginalukdo kung udto
sa ilalom sa kasulaw sa adlaw

I also omitted the second stanza, because I noticed that the poem worked

without it:
 Almeria xxxi

ang among balay gihimo gikan sa amakan

ang dingding sa kusina ug kwarto
ug ang bongbong

When I asked my board mates to read the Hiligaynon version, they told

me that the Hiligaynon version of Amakan was much better than the Bisaya. So I decided

to present the Hiligaynon version to the panelists.

Amakan (Hiligaynon)

Ginbakol niya si nanay sang sukdap nga amon gina-rara

kag himuon sang amakan,
kun diin amon ginapas-an
sa dalom kag kasilaw sang kainit

mabakirasan sang talom nga grano ang amon kamot

kung nagarara kami sang amakan

ang labahod nga daw bulak nga disenyo sang amakan

nagalakra sa lawas ni nanay
kon mapauli si tatay nga hubog-
(wala namon nahurot ka baligya ang amakan)

Makadto si tatay sa likod sang balay

Kag mabuol sang amakan
Para ipang lampos kay nanay

Dira lang siya mauntat

Kon maputol na ang sukdap

naghuna-huna ako nga itago ang amakan –

para indi makita ni tatay-
kag mahipos na ang kagab-ihon

isa ka aga nga waay si tatay

nag istorya kami ni nanay
"Updan ta ka magbaligya sang amakan nay,
ilagaw naton sa mga balay-balay kag uboson ta ka baligya"
"huod ah, ginkapoy nako maglantaw sa ila"
 Almeria xxxii

kag ginpas-an namon ang amakan nga nabilin

kag ginlagaw namon sa mga balay-balay,

nagpanaw pa kami bisan ginkapoy na ang amon likod,

nagpadayon kami sang singgit,

wala na kami kabalo kung diin na kami nakaabot

layo na kami sa amon balay

nabaligya na tanan ang amakan

kag indi na kami mapuli
waay maski isa sa amon tikang ang mahatod sa amon pauli

mapauli na si tatay nga ubos na ang amakan,

nga waay ang iya bata-
kag ang iya asawa.

During the workshop in October 2008, the panelists concurred on how I

ended the poem. It was originally written in Bisaya as:

Muuli si tatay nga wala na ang mga amakan,

Iyahang anak,
Ug iyahang asawa.
nga kanunay niyang ginapuspusan

but I changed it to:

Muuli si tatay nga wala na ang mga amakan,
Iyahang anak,
Ug iyahang asawa.

After revising the Bisaya version of the poem, changing its ending and

translating it into Hiligaynon, I was again tasked to translate it into English, because the

Creative Writing program requires all poems to be translated into English. This time I

asked a third year Creative Writing student, Maureen Devorah Ronquillo to do the

English translation.
 Almeria xxxiii

Finally, I decided to return to my original plan and that is to present the

poem in Bisaya than in Hiligaynon because I believe I am more capable of writing and

expressing it in Bisaya , and most primarily I’ve grown up speaking this language unlike

Hiligaynon. Furthermore, Marjorie Evasco in her article “Songs and Substance” discussed

several women poets who write in Cebuano. She tapped the issue of the works of Merlie

Alunan about the notion of “nation and region” according to Evasco “those who write in

their native tongues are aware of the politics of their choice, realizing it is an effort to

restore or regain lost ground and to assert them as medium for the works of imagination”

(n.p).

I write because this is how I perceive reality. I also write to express what I

feel. If I feel the need to scream, I scream. I make noise around the parameters of blank

pages. I laugh if I feel like laughing. I am not afraid to do many things, even if they are

beyond my limits.

Freeing the Poetic Pain

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
 Almeria xxxiv

-Maya Angelou

I have my own versions of pain, and they are recoded through my

writings, through my poems. Someday, when I become a poet, I would like to chronicle

my pain. After all, Bliss and Melancholy are not too different. Both are emotions.

I was captured by Pain. It was like a bandit, a thief who kept me from

becoming free. Nevertheless, I was thankful, for without having experienced this kind of

Pain, I would not be able to write these musings.

Hiding a thing in private is poison. It doesn’t free the mind, the body, nor

the soul. There’s no use in hiding. I do not want the wild woman in me to continue

grieving. I want us both to be free, to wander among the empty pages, to write more

poetry, to live, and to soar.

This is me-
my story,
A showcase of my Poetry-
The snapshots of my pain

REFERENCES

Abad, Gemino. Getting Real: An introduction to the Practice of Poetry.

Diliman, Quezon City: The University of the Philippines press, 2004.
 Almeria xxxv

Alunan, Merlie. “Splitting Tongues: Literary experience in a Multilingual Culture”.

January 2008.

Bautista, Cirilo F. “Writers are Made, Not Born”. Panitikan.com.ph:Philippine

Literature Portal. 2000. February 8, 2009. < http://www.panitikan.
com.ph/criticism/ writersaremade.htm>

De Veyra, Antonino S. “The Writing Eye”. Siliman Literary Journal Vol. 45 No. 1
(2004).February 8, 2009 < http://ninosoriadeveyra.files.wordpress.com
/2008/06/sj4512004nino.pdf>

Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of
the Wild Woman Archetype. New York: Ballantine books, 1992.

Mcquade, Berkeley Christine and Donald Mcquade. Seeing and Writing. New
York: Bedford/St. Martin's Press,2000.

Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision”. National

Council of Teachers of English. (2008). February 9, 2009

< http://www.westga.edu/~aellison/Other/Rich.pdf>

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World
inc., 1957.