10 days before Christmas, depending on your location in this little world that still seems so divided, and I’m struggling to feel it.
I’ve gotten used to living near the lowest point of Africa where this time of year is actually warmer and not at all wintery. Maybe these days it’s not that much warmer than where I came from originally, with climate change and all.
My mind is full of worry about people I don’t really know, in another part of the world I have not even visited. But, after waking up from the slumber of falsehoods in my youth, I grew to know about them and their decades of struggle under a power that is armed by bigger empires of previous centuries.
It seems almost selfish then to share personal news at this moment, such as this piece that has been published in The Atticus Review.
The poem was written when my mother was still with us in this world. I’d like to believe she is elsewhere happier.
A few days ago I wrote another poem about her and my father. It got published in the AVBOB Poetry website. It’s called “Another 14 Years.”
I wish to thank the editors of The Atticus Review and the AVBOB Poetry website for welcoming my work.
The following titles are all from the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. They may be ordered via the UST Publishing House Facebook page or through some Philippine online retailers.
Sanga sa Basang Lupa at iba pang kuwento (2016)
A Thousand Eyes (2015)
Kalmot ng Pusa sa Tagiliran (2013)
Sound Before Water (2013)
Baha-bahagdang Karupukan (2011)
Alien to Any Skin (2011)
The following titles are currently unavailable
Salimbayan (Publikasyong Sipat, Manila 1994)
Beneath an Angry Star (Anvil Publishing, Manila 1992)
On the morning of the 14th of October 2023, I stood before a small audience in a place where silence is often kept. Silence in the pages of books before they are opened, before words tumble out and swirl into many doors and windows, entire worlds. It was a library with high ceilings, abundant with natural light, a public library in the centre of Cape Town, South Africa, the city I have come to love as my second home.
With David Kapp and Stanley Wagon Grant. Mike Klink of Friends of Central Library (FOCAL) who was magnificent in more than just organising the venue and refreshments. With the fantastic Stacy Grod of the Central Library in Cape Town. Ingrid Jonker Prize winner Sindi Busuku graced the small affair.
This was the first in a series of readings and launches in public libraries for my newly released books (two of which are South African editions of previous titles):
Waking Up to the Pattern Left by a Snail Overnight (Gaudy Boy, New York 2023 & forthcoming from Ateneo de Manila University Press, Manila 2024)
Crocodiles in Belfast (Vhakololo Press, Limpopo 2023 & San Anselmo Publications, Manila 2020)
Sound Before Water (Minimal Press, Cape Town 2023 & UST Publishing House, Manila 2013).
Being with small independent publishers is a challenge for both the brave publisher and the author. One doesn’t have the backing of huge promotional campaign funds. There is no team to work with and throw ideas around, no long meetings on how to reach target audiences. It is a humble existence, and often solitary. But when one finds keen readers and listeners, one sees the most beautiful and magical of fireworks that do not just fade into darkness.
It was Robert Berold, highly-respected poet and owner of Deep South who encouraged me to find ways to share my new books. He said it is not every day that a poet finds him/herself with four new books in two years! It just never happens. But, shocked as I am, it has by chance happened to me! (Maybe I’ll write about how this came about at another time.) And now I have an obligation to these books, these paper children. I need to find them new homes with the little means I have at my disposal.
Thus, I decided to embark on this small journey by seeking to work with the kind and generous people who run the many public libraries in and around Cape Town. I have so far secured four events, three of them in November.
This one at the Central Library was a beautiful beginning to what I hope to be a unique journey. For a while, in that almost sacred space, I was allowed to break the silence.
I started with quiet poems about the struggle of small creatures, about hearts and distances conquered, before unleashing my gutter-like voice for a poem dressed up as a tribute to The Lord of the Rings, but was actually about the real tragedy of war and destruction. I then ended the reading with an old poem which appeared in Alien to Any Skin (UST Publishing House, Manila 2011), “The Side of Love, for Mahmoud Darwish”
The people who sat and listened looked very much entranced. They asked important questions in between the reading of the poems. Afterwards they repeatedly thanked me for sharing my work with them.
-o-
Part 2 to follow soon.
Go to Clarke’s Bookshop!
Clarke’s Bookshop on Long Street in Cape Town has most of the books. They’re wonderful and super helpful. Please get your books from them instead of snotty pretend book sellers that only stock imported so-called (manipulated as) bestsellers. Local authors really appreciate the few spaces they’re allowed. It’s unfair, but something for another day.
Apologies for the absence. Too many things have been happening on all fronts. I’ll share the news when it becomes official.
For now, let me share this link (and hope that I haven’t actually shared it before here) to a poem which appeared last year on THE AVBOB Poetry website, “Lament of Mountain Spirits.”
Got shortlisted for the New Contrast Poetry Prize (ex-National Poetry Prize… poster didn’t get updated) for a poem that may upset some people, make others laugh, or go wah?
All poets will be reading their work and another poem on Monday evening (April Fools!) after which the winners will be announced.
The so-called liberal media of the US and Europe have lost their way.
This was laid bare in the past few months since October 7. They have allowed themselves to be used in manipulating public perception so blatantly that as the lies were revealed, they’ve had to make up more lies.
We can no longer believe what The New York Times, The UK Guardian, the BBC, and a whole lot more when it comes to reporting about Palestine and other places where traditional colonial powers used to reign, or where new empires and their brutal representatives use their murderous weapons and technologies to control the local population.
Please read THIS ARTICLE that exposes the complicity of mainstream news agencies in creating this genocide in Gaza and the rest of Palestine.
I didn’t know what the Nakba was until friends in the Czech Republic started telling me about what Israel has been doing to Palestinians for decades. That shock was back in 2008.
I was deeply bothered with what I found out, so much so that I began to write a series of poems about a people I had never met, a place I had never visited.
I still intend to share all those poems as a set one day. But this just came to mind now as many people prepare for the coming year.
Please don’t choose to remain blind.
-o-
Israel Needs Shoes
new moon dimmed by flares shoes scatter on rubbled streets not one matching pair
-o-
I wrote that in January 2009 and appears in ALIEN TO ANY SKIN (UST Publishing House, Manila 2011)
I’d like to be a bird in my next life – a langaylangayan (swallow) and then a sacred ibis, if I could choose.
Photo by Ruel Laurenciana, taken on a famous bridge in New York.
Being a fish would be good too, one day. But they say a fish gets caught by its mouth. Or an industrial net these days, I guess, monstrous and species-ending.
I’m not a fish for now. But it’s a bit like being caught by your own big mouth when you are interviewed.
That Bullet is Alien – the third poem in the section “intergalactic nightmares” from ALIEN TO ANY SKIN (UST Publishing House, Manila 2011). #ceasefirenow #Palestine #ICC #humanrights #Israeliwarcrimes #gaza Donate to GIFT OF THE GIVERS https://www.instagram.com/p/CzyGZ9Du7po/?igshid=ZDBjMWI0ZjMxOQ==
Matangmanok 