Post by thepoetslizard on Oct 10, 2008 15:56:15 GMT 2
Lina Sagaral Reyes was born in 1961 and grew up in Villalimpia, Bohol, which according to the writer is a "a village of blacksmiths, nipa thatchers, fishers, carpenters, a few teachers, sailors and other professionals and women who live on their own". She took courses in Journalism and Creative Writing in Silliman University between 1978 and 1983. In 1987, she was diagnosed with a disease which doctors claimed would take her life in two years. She wrote furiously in the time measured out for her. She outlived the previous diagnosis and returned to Villalimpia, reclaimed her parents' house and transformed it into the office of the Center for Creative Women. She researched on the life stories of creative women in villages for the Writers Involved in Creative Cultural Alternatives (WICCA). Among her awards are the Palanca 1st prize in 1987 for ( Instead of a Will These ) For All the Loved Ones , with Merlinda C. Bobis, and 3rd, 1990, for Istorya , with Ma. Luisa B. Aguilar-Cariño and Jose Neil Garcia. Her works include Honing Weapons , Lunhaw Book, 1987 and St orya , Babaylan Women's Publishing Collective, Institute of Women's Studies, St. Scholastica's College, 1991. As a journalist, she has also continued to write articles for periodicals such as the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Mindanao Gold Star Daily.
Web source
www.panitikan.com.ph/authors/r/lsreyes.htm
Lina blogs at
www.litratopalestina.blogspot.com/
pppinay.blogspot.com/
"Tree Without Leaves"
How your leaving unleafed me.
Wide wide lakes of leaves,
The crackle of breaking
Underfoot.
Memory became a bare crown
Of boughs as taut as the dark-eyed
Nipples of women
Facing the honest mirror of fears.
“You have strength I can’t name,”
Once you told me.
Now you must
Know: as winds churn
The leaf-lakes below,
I stand
Rooting with the power
You knew
and named Nameless.
On the rough nodes of my evening
Fireflies nestle,
Blooming.
