Slim pickings @ Manila’s lit fest 2011

by Katrina Stuart Santiago

Let me begin with a confession: I take festivals and conferences, no matter how big or small, seriously.

Regardless of whether I pay to get in or not, whether it’s here or elsewhere, whether it’s an art fest or a literature conference, I go in on that first day, knowing I will go the rest of the days, always ready to get involved in discussions and prepared to be blown away by the brilliance of artists who are ready to discuss their work and the landscape of creativity that they are necessarily part of. These gatherings after all carry the weight of diversity and difference, rendering us all—participants and panelists alike—uncomfortable to some extent, and rightfully so. We prepare to be questioned, we prepare for discussions.

The Manila International Literary Festival (MILF) 2011 deserved this expectation. Organized by the National Book Development Board (NBDB), this is a measure of what government thinks important in light of literature and publishing in the country; happening in posh Makati with a P2000-peso price tag, its exclusivity was clear.  But I paid. Despite my gut telling me I shouldn’t need to—I’m a working writer after all, and I was flown in by the National Arts Council (NAC) of Singapore for their Singapore Writers’ Fest after all.

But I’m not one to throw my weight around. Besides I thought this would be a venue for some intelligent discussions on literature and publishing as they happen in these shores, and I thought this was something I couldn’t miss because it will inform the kind of writing that I do. Given the changing landscape of publishing and literature, at the very least I thought the conversations to be had here would be new.

A sinking feeling  

I thought wrong. A day in, and after the tone was set for more critical discourses on literature and writing by both plenary speaker Resil Mojares and Pulitzer Prize Winner Junot Diaz (both of whom deserve essays all their own), I began to have a sinking feeling that this wasn’t a literary fest as it was a writers’ fest; that this wasn’t even a writers’ fest, but a how-to-be-a-writer fest. Because there were one too many panels with the international literary agents and book editor who were invited to speak; there were also by-invitation-only meet-and-greet sessions with them for “chosen writers”—that should’ve been a sign that this was not for those of us who are not chosen. Later it becomes clear that the goal was to bring together our writers and these international literary agents; had I known this was the point, I wouldn’t have attended the MILF at all.

But of course there were other panels here, and surely steering clear of the how-to-get-published-elsewhere and how-to-write talks should’ve meant some intelligent discussions with our local writers? Surely the brilliance I was looking for, the reason for these international agents to even want to be here, must come from our own writers?   But our local writers could only be found wanting.

Granted I could only go to one panel out of three parallel sessions at any given time, and experiences will differ (check out Carmela Lapeña’s write-up ), but for a government-organized international festival, at a price so steep even middle-class-earner-me had to think twice about paying up, every darn panel should’ve been brilliant.   Or at the very least honest about the creative task, with a great dose of self-reflexivity about the literary system in these shores, with a sense of what needs to change especially if the goal is global competitiveness.   No such luck. If there’s anything the MILF 2011 proved, it’s still this fact: the literary world in this country remains a very small circle made up of older writers who have cared for and to whom a set of younger writers are indebted.

Here was literary patronage like no other, nepotism lives, uncritical participants included. That the last time I was a Comparative Literature major was in the year 2000, and that a decade since things remain within the same bubble, is just tragic.

Of false notions and shamelessness 

In the panel with the international literary agents, instead of the Pinoy audience honestly answering questions about why there’s no editing process in place for local books, the response was about a lack of funds instead of the truth: in the land of sacred cows, established writers would get offended were they told they needed editing.   In the panel on writing away from home, the representative for Filipino American writing, Gemma Nemenzo, categorically said that the Filipino-American question has “long been settled.”

I wanted to ask: pray tell, since when? In truth when you talk about Filipino writing that happens elsewhere in the world, you must also know that it’s only as unstable as an economy that’s dependent on foreign remittances. In truth if we are to talk about Filipino writing in America, we must only raise two names and right there see how false notions of settling and celebration are: Carlos Bulosan and Miguel Syjuco.

The former was a migrant worker, an apple picker who published books on the migrant Filipino experience in America in the 1940s, and a writer of fiction in English who rarely studied in the academe, rarely honored with inclusion in seminal anthologies and studies on Filipino writing, much less Filipino writing in America.

The latter is celebrated by the local literati, and in an interview with The New York Times decided to talk about being part of the elite in Manila, with no apologies in sight.   We might say that this is shamelessness reserved for someone like Syjuco, elite in Manila, expat in Canada—far from being a Filipino apple picker.

But there is shamelessness in our shores too, and it’s the kind that we reveal when we decide that we can sit in a panel to talk about writing and not prepare for it. It’s a shamelessness that’s about resting on one’s laurels—in fact, a shamelessness that’s about even imagining laurels to be true.

Not prepared    

Now much must be said about the Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgos, Charlson Ongs and Gemino Abads of this world who prepared for their panels, no matter that they might invoke their right to not have to, or go the way of their peers who presume that charm and extemporaneity can see them through to a panel’s end. But there’s no excuse—no excuse!—for younger writers to think that all they have to do is sit in front of an audience, rattle off the work they’ve done, and then demand that they be seen as credible.

The panel that was supposed to discuss literature off the page, that is literature being rendered in other media, only had as one bright light Joel Toledo, jetlagged and obviously tired, but prepared with a piece on how poetry must first work on that page, before it’s removed from it in whatever way.  That panel went downhill from there.

Khavn dela Cruz talked about his work as filmmaker and showed a clip of the film version of Norman Wilwayco’s “Mondomanila,” saying nothing about the process, and instead spending his time talking about the film festivals he’s been invited to. Kookie Tuason talked about herself, and then showed spoken-word videos that she’s worked on recently and not much else. For both dela Cruz and Tuason there was nothing but a whole lot of self-centered rhetoric, not even a sense of being critical about their own work, about the kind of creativity that must be negotiated, sacrificed, and highlighted in the act of transferring text from the page to elsewhere.

The lack of a critical stance was also in the panel on creative non-fiction. Save for Susan Lara who actually wrote something for the panel (but rightfully thought she should be in the panel on the memoir), here were young writers who had nothing prepared for the subject of writing the real, and nothing new to say about creative non-fiction: none of them were going beyond the notions of honesty and just writing about oneself.   When asked how to deal with real people being hurt by this kind of writing, the answers were either of the you-can’t-please-everybody vein (Luis Katigbak and Carljoe Javier) or the fictionalize-it! vein (April Yap and Lara); that these are highly questionable responses seemed beside the point. When questions about the form being masturbatory and the lack of liability they all subscribed to were raised, the answers were neither here nor there.

In this sense, it’s not even the fact that these young writers didn’t prepare for their panels that’s the problem; it’s the fact that they think exactly within the box set by their literary parents, which is just ultimately sad. It’s also proof positive of how the system of patronage works, sacrificing the kind of critical thinking that has to inform any kind of writing at all.

Refreshing honesty

Thank goodness for four (count that!) younger writers who were obviously removed from this system in some form or manner, and had the gall and temerity (probably without knowing it) to talk about their work differently. Tweet Sering and Bebang Siy’s panel on gendered writing was refreshing because both women were honest about the task of creativity.

Siy’s narration of her writing history was riddled with stories of the pittance she’d get paid and the difficulty of getting into a writers’ group. Sering’s take on the question of gender inadvertently revealed her as a writer who reads, and thinks her writing part of these other voices.

Across these two writers it became clear how putting a premium on honesty ties together with a clear sense of being responsible for what we say. And how it is hard work, no ifs and buts about it.

Hard work resonated as well in the panel on poetry with Abad and younger poets/teachers Paolo Manalo and Allan Popa. I would’ve wished the latter two a panel that wasn’t focused on the teaching of poetry, especially since there weren’t a whole lot of teachers in the audience anyway. Suffice it to say that Manalo’s take on poetry as something that’s about both mind and body, and Popa’s piece on inhabiting a poem and its field of possibilities, alongside Toledo’s piece, should’ve been in a poetry panel all their own.

That Popa responded to Mojares’ questions about local poetry and its teaching, with the intelligence of someone who knows it like the back of his hand, and who knows of the landscape bigger than that small room in Ayala Museum and the smaller circle of the literati, was that one moment when I thought there was hope for literature extraneous to the MILF.

That the Popas and Serings, Manalos and Siys, of this world are few and far between, and are dealt with accordingly by the young and old members of the literati, with nary a celebration is telling of the kind of systemic parochialism that ails publishing and writing in this country. That this is all I take from an event organized by my own government via the NBDB, is beyond tragic.   I want my money back. –KG, GMA News

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