Post by moira on Sept 26, 2008 16:37:32 GMT 2
WELCOME TO THE SECTION ON FILIPINA POETS!
While this is a non-juried section of the Wompherence, nevertheless we have wanted to make sure that the section is thoughtfully curated.
Other poets whom we have been unable to contact directly either by email or other correspondence, are represented through their bios and sample poems culled from available links on the web.
Most of the poems which have been culled for this celebration of Women's Poetry on the web are in English, but this is more a result of the issue of convenience given the short window of time to prepare text and images for inclusion, and given that all of the wonderful sections here have come into being, powered purely by volunteer effort from Fest staff.
The Filipina poets whose works you will read in this section, by no means represent the richness and plenitude of poetry as written by Filipina women. Literature in English, however, is only one small thread in the tapestry that is Filipino literature. In an archipelagic culture steeped in tradition and lore, vernacular languages and literatures tell as eloquently if not more so, of women - and men and children - and their precolonial, colonial, postcolonial and transglobal or diasporic realities.
As it happened countless times for me as I worked on curating this section, when you browse through these pages, doubtless some of the ads below the main Wompherence banner will call up some of those stereotypical images -- of the Filipina as mail order bride, the Filipina as domestic worker, or as shy and subservient "Maria Clara."
But there is so much more to the idea and reality of being Filipina -- whether she is indeed a mail order bride who has found her way to a rural community in Kansas; or a domestic worker in Dubai or Hong Kong helping her compatriots organize to learn more about their rights as migrant workers; or the nanny somewhere in Europe, who has temporarily put aside her teaching career and her degree in physics; or the former Wall Street banker who has decided to make wine and write poetry; the poets who are mothers and the mothers who are poets, and who use writing to forge new definitions of family in defiance of distance; or the poets who have come to writing from "outside the academy" ...
It is my hope that through the works of the 100 Filipina poets here, readers will see not only the fierce and visionary foremothers in Filipina poetry -- those babaylanes or early priestess-poets as well as those Filipina poets who have been trailblazers in their own time -- but that their legacy is very much alive in the Filipina poets writing today, wherever they are in the world.
Please also check out these excellent essays on some of
the sources and precursors of Filipina writing:
The poet Marjorie Evasco's "The Writer and Her Roots"
tinyurl.com/6kwhx2
Feminist scholar Edna Zapanta Manlapaz's essay
"Our Mother, Our Selves: A Literary Genealogy of Filipino Women Poets Writing in English, 1905-1950"
(originally published in Philippine Studies, vol. 39, no. 3 (1991): 321-336 )
tinyurl.com/68rpet
the sources and precursors of Filipina writing:
The poet Marjorie Evasco's "The Writer and Her Roots"
tinyurl.com/6kwhx2
Feminist scholar Edna Zapanta Manlapaz's essay
"Our Mother, Our Selves: A Literary Genealogy of Filipino Women Poets Writing in English, 1905-1950"
(originally published in Philippine Studies, vol. 39, no. 3 (1991): 321-336 )
tinyurl.com/68rpet
The Ateneo Library of Women's Writings (ALIWW)
tinyurl.com/57autc
Essays on Women by Sister Mary John Mananzan
(Institute of Women's Studies, St. Scholastica's College, Manila)
tinyurl.com/5wmwgz
Link to a Listing of Women's Organizations in the Philippines
tinyurl.com/5ksnwh
Many thanks - Maraming Salamat! - to all the poets who responded to the call for submissions.
Luisa A. Igloria
www.luisaigloria.com
Ambahan poem, against a piece of T'nalak (bark) cloth. The Ambahan is an indigenous syllabic poetry form among the Mangyan of Mindoro; the poetry is inscribed on bamboo surfaces in the indigenous "surat Mangyan" script. T'nalak is mostly woven by women of the T'boli tribe in Mindanao. (Digital photo supplied by Luisa Igloria)