Category: literati

Marra Lanot of the charmed literary circle (1944-2026)

Never met Marra or Pete Lacaba, but knew of them, of course. In ’99 our paths sort of crossed when Eggie Apostol asked for a copy of Himagsikan sa EDSA — Walang Himala! (2000) after it won an Honorable Mention in Erap’s 1998 Centennial Literary Contest. Her Tagalog wasn’t good, she said, so she was going to ask Pete to check it out first. She got back to me a few days later with the good news that Pete said yes to the People Power Foundation publishing it but that the manuscript needed editing, which Marra would be happy to do.

I looked forward to Marra’s edit because it was a puzzle that only the Sanaysay category named no major prizes, just four (4) Honorable Mentions. Was our Tagalog, Pilipino, whatever, not good enough? I had dared ask the Judge at a post-awards party and he said, “Dapat nagpa-edit ka.” Eh di eto na nga, thanks to Eggie.

And thanks to Marra who didn’t touch my prose, what a relief. Pero marami akong natutunan tungkol sa pagsusulat sa Pilipino. Ipinaalala niya ang mga patakaran sa paggamit ng “rin-din” at “raw-daw,” gayon din ng “ng-nang” (that I thought I had down pat from HS Balarila days, though I did tend to play around with them, haha). Idiniin din niya ang mga bagong patakaran sa mga salitang inuulit, tulad ng “sunudsunod” at “libulibo” na “sunod-sunod” at “libo-libo” na, at wala na ring kudlit ang “ngunit subalit datapwat.”

And finally my spelling. Yes, my ispeling of certain words: “Coryista” not “Corysta,” “tsismis” not “chismis,” “taumbayan” not “taongbayan,” how was I to know, and what if I preferred “taongbayan”?  Matagal ko ring pinag-isipan ang “aksiyon” at “tensiyon” imbis na “aksyon” at “tensyon” until I saw my “leksiyon.” Sabi nga ni Marra, sanayan lang. Sa pagsulat ng Pilipino, hindi necessarily sa bigkas ibinabatay ang baybay.

Salamat uli, Marra. I remember the big smile you gave me as you rushed off to class (late ka na!) from an Ateneo tribute to Eggie. And I still have our FB chat back in 2018 when I invited you and Pete to an Ishmael Bernal exhibit sa UP Film Center. I so wanted to give you a copy of Pro Bernal Anti Bio (2017) that has marginal notes by Pete on the First Quarter Storm. You didn’t make it but messaged back with kuwentos of dancing the tango with Nick Joaquin in Ishma’s Grey November in the ’60s, and when Pete was arrested in ’74 for sneaking past Marcos censors the acrostic poem “Prometheus Unbound” — hiding in plain sight the bold phrase “MARCOS HITLER DIKTADOR TUTA” — how Ishma would visit you, even asked you for a script, and kept in touch, making sure you were okay. And when Mang Nick, upon accepting the National Artist  for Literature award in ’76, got Marcos to release Pete, it was kind of magical and awesome.

Marra Lanot of the “charmed literary circle,” I wrote of you in a 2017 EDSA essay. To my mind, “charmed,” for having survived martial law despite standing up to Marcos, even displaying, in Mang Nick’s words, “a most enjoyable recklessness” in a “climate of fear.”

*

“Prometheus Unbound” by Pete Lacaba
https://ndfp.info/prometheus-unbound/

“The Writer in a Climate of Fear” by Nick Joaquin
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/640001/nick-joaquin

59th U.P National Writers’ Workshop on ZOOM

i didn’t catch all of Likhaan: the 59th UP National Writers Workshop but what i did catch (some 6 or 7 of 12 sessions) i thoroughly enjoyed.  how great that it was open to the facebook public, requiring no registration or hassle of any kind   i’ve never been part of a writers workshop kasi, i’m not sure why, haha, but i’ve heard stories, of course.  and after the first sessions that i caught, i found myself remembering Sesame, a seven-month gig where i learned to face and deal with criticism without batting an eyelash, parang workshop na rin.  the ability to face criticism is good, worth cultivating, if one is to grow as a writer in whatever genre.  but wait, on second thought, there’s a huge difference between my gig-as-workshop and Likhaan.  other than CTW producer tippy fortune who sat me down in several one-on-one sessions through the different stages of rewrite, my regular critics were mostly the production team — executive producer, director, head researcher, art director — who were just as nangangapa as i was.  in contrast, Likhaan’s panelist critics are seasoned writers, most of whom i’ve read at one time or another but never really seen / heard perform other than on the printed page.  and so it was a blast watching / hearing them strut their stuff, so to speak.  jimmy abad, butch dalisay, neil garcia, charlson ong, bomen guillermo, cristina pantoja hidalgo, roland tolentino, and luna sicat cleto, in particular.  comments were focused and forceful, drawn from personal and professional wisdom, affirming and encouraging, questioning and challenging, pointing out the “infinite possibilities of the imagination” from “marvelous realism” to “science vs, magic”, even of an “alternative value system”, why not indeed, along with questions like, to what end?  saan papunta?  sustainable ba?  “sana matamis hanggang dulo, parang tubó” — ang ganda, ang dulas, ng tagalog ni luna sicat cleto, puwede talaga (i should stop with the taglish, LOL)!  but the top take-away for this fag hag, i mean, LGBTQIA+ ally, was all that juicy stuff (from such credible sources!) about kabaklaan being bawal in the communist movement in the ’70s through the ’90s and yet someone very close to joma was gay?!?  (da who!?!)  i sure could have used some of that for the ishmael bernal anti-bio!

sex & writing workshops, social media & lynch mobs

INSTITUTIONAL, NERVOUS, AND OTHER BREAKDOWNS
Katrina S.S.

The first time a young writer came out with a Facebook status (dated August 2) about having been taken “sexual advantage” of in a writing workshop, I shared it with a very clear statement about silence. Fresh from the CNN Life panel for the Readers and Writers Fest where we were asked what is the biggest realization we’ve had about the cultural sector, I said that it is about how much of it operates on silence. We don’t know what’s going on, how things are decided, how the systems work, and all that we ever discuss is what we see on the surface: the finished art work, the published piece, the film, the TV show, the dress. But the work that goes into that, the institutions that come into play, the oppressions that are intrinsic to that system — we are kept in the dark about these things. After all, we can be so aware of power relations and capital, and still deny what that truly means.

Read on….

The (Mis)Education of the Filipino Writer

The Tiempo Age and Institutionalized Creative Writing in the Philippines
Conchitina Cruz

Abstract
According to Merlie Alunan, the writers Edilberto and Edith Tiempo, founders of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, have so influenced Philippine literary production that the latter half of the twentieth century and “a few more decades hereafter” can be called “The Tiempo Age.” This essay examines the relationship of aesthetics and politics in institutionalized creative writing in the Philippines by unpacking the politics of the Silliman Workshop’s autonomous aesthetics. It situates the origins, pedagogy, and imagined community of the Silliman Workshop within the network of American colonial education in the Philippines, American cultural diplomacy, and institutionalized creative writing in the United States. It explores how New Criticism, as appropriated by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop-trained Tiempos, conflates the autonomy of the literary text with the autonomy of the literary space in which it is produced. The lack of institutional self-critique authorized by this conflation results in the propagation by the Silliman Workshop of colonialist and classist ideas about language and literary production, which are camouflaged, if not naturalized, as principles and mechanisms integral to the craft of writing. The essay calls on the successors of the Tiempos who currently run the Silliman Workshop to scrutinize the historical contingency of the aesthetic values they inherited and to revise their New Critical pedagogy, which continues to uphold the primacy of English as the language of creative writing education and literary production.

FULL TEXT: PDF