LITERATURE

Description
This second volume in
Vagabond’s Asia Pacific
Poetry Series brings
together a selection of
poetry by three major
Filipino poets writing in
Tagalog: Rolando S. Tinio,
Jose F. Lacaba & Rio
Alma, translated from
Tagalog and introduced
by Robert Nery, with cover
art by Lyra Garcellano.
Rolando S. Tinio was born in the packed district of Tondo, Manila in
1937, and began writing poetry in English.He worked as a set designer as
well as director, had a career as an actor for film and television, wrote
film scripts and teleplays. His first book of poems in Tagalog, Sitsit sa
Kuliglig (Cricket Gossip), was published in 1972; there were two others
and in 1994, a selection of his poems in English and Tagalog. These
books don’t include the lyrics to numerous songs. He died in 1997.
Among the most popular of his poems are a handful of poems not
wholly in Tagalog, but in a code-switching combination of Tagalog and
English.
Jose Maria Flores Lacaba, popularly known as Pete Lacaba, is a Filipino film
writer, editor, poet, screenwriter, journalist and translator.
Born
August 20, 1945 (age 73)
Misamis Oriental, Commonwealth of the Philippines

Other namesPepe, Brader, Boo RaderOccupationScreen writer, editor,

journalistYears active1950[citation needed]–presentAwardsCinemanila
International Film Festival conferred the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award
Rio Alma came from a family of peasant farmers in the province of
Bulacan, near Manila. His collection of criticism Ang Makata sa Panahon
ng Makina (The Poet in the Age of Machines) is one of the founding
works of modernist criticism in Tagalog. Professor Emeritus in the
Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature, he is well known as a
scholar in the national language and a promoter of literature in it. His
poetry covers a broad range of forms, and is often exuberant in
expression and passionate in its sympathy for the poor and the working
class. His earlier ranged from expansive free verse to sonnets, but his
more recent work emphasizes formal convention. He is prolific, and his
indispensable work looms large in Tagalog poetry produced since the
sixties.
Robert Nery was born in the Philippines and has lived in Manila, in
Cagayan de Oro City and on the island of Camiguin in the Southern
Philippines. He now lives in Australia. He was editor for a year of Photofile,
the journal of the Australia Centre for Photography, and published film
reviews until he began making films. He has made two feature-length non-
fiction films, Black Nazarene and In 1966 The Beatles Came To Manila. In
2010, with the help of three other artists, he showed a large installation
work If On A Tropic Night – about Philippine history and the Cold War – at
the Casula Powerhouse Art Centre, near Sydney.
Bienvenido Lumbera is a Filipino poet, critic and
dramatist. He is a National Artist of the Philippines and a
recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism,
Literature and Creative Communications. He won
numerous literary awards, including the National Book
Awards from the National Book Foundation, and the
Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards.
Edmundo Martinez is known for his fun and enthusiastic style of social
dancing and teaching. He can be found conducting numerous classes at
nightclubs around the Bay.
Edmundo is also a well known DJ (DJ Mundo) who regularly plays some
of the biggest salsa events in the Bay Area such as the San Francisco
Congress and the US Salsa Open, as well as regular stints at the Blue
Finand Agenda Lounge.
Amado Vera Hernandez, commonly known as Amado V. Hernandez
(September 13, 1903 – March 24, 1970), was a Filipino writer and labor
leader who was known for his criticism of social injustices in the
Philippines and was later imprisoned for his involvement in the
communist movement. He was the central figure in a landmark legal case
that took 13 years to settle.
Amado V. Hernandez
Born
Amado Vera Hernandez
September 13, 1903
Tondo, Manila, Philippines
Died
March 24, 1970 (aged 66)
Spouse(s)
Atang de la Rama
Awards
National Artist of the Philippines.svg
National Artist of the Philippines
He was born in Tondo, Manila, to parents from Hagonoy, Bulacan. He grew up and
studied at the Gagalangin, Tondo, the Manila High School and at the American
Correspondence School.
•Oppression and fighting for human rights are the main
themes of the said piece.
•Influence of Amado V. Hernandez was evident
•Social protest and social realism became the theme of
the poems. Protest poetry proliferated
•Arose because of the Marshall Law
•The work of American and British poets influenced the
English poems in the Philippines.
•Edith Tiempo, Emmanuel Torres and Dominador Ilio.
•Influence by western poets.
•Love and identity, oppression, and those subjects
concerning the poet's worlds.
•The rise of the nationalistics poetry discussing poverty
in-equality, political turmoil, and other social problems
started during the Marcos Era.
Edith L. Tiempo, poet, fiction writer, teacher and
literary critic was a Filipino writer in the English
language. iBorn: 22 April 1919, Bayombong
Died: 21 August 2011, Dumaguete
Education: University of the Philippines
Spouse: Edilberto K. Tiempo
Tiempo was born in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya. Her
poems are intricate verbal transfigurations of significant
experiences as revealed, in two of her much
anthologized pieces, "Halaman" and "Bonsai."
Emmanuel Torres is a poet, art critic, professor of English and
Comparative Literature at the Ateneo de Manila and curator of its
art museum. He was born on April 29, 1932 in Manila. In 1954, he
finished his BA in Education and received the Joseph Mulry Award
for Literary Excellence at the Ateneo de Manila University, and in
1957, on a Fulbright-Smith-Mundt fellowship, he obtained his M.A.
in English at the State University of Iowa where he enjoyed an
International Scholarship in Creative Writing and att
ended Paul Engle’s Writers’
Workshop. He joined the Ateneo faculty in 1958, and since 1960 was
curator of the Ateneo University Art Gallery. In 1961, he was one of
Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM Awardee for Literature).
Torres’ works on art include
 St. Joseph the Worker Chapel (1968),
The Drawings of Ang Kiukok (1976),
Jeepney (1979), and
Kayamanan: 77 Paintings from the Central Bank
Collection (1981). Awarded often at the Carlos Palanca
Memorial Awards for Literature, his poems have been
collected in
Angels and Fugitives (1966),
Shapes of Silence (1972), and
The Smile on Smokey Mountain & Other Poems (1991).
Dominador I. Ilio was born November 15, 1913 to a farmer couple, in
Malinao, Capiz (now Aklan).
He was in the first wave of Martial Law detainees back in 1972/73.
(This period of our lives is so foggy I don't even remember what year it
was he was imprisoned by the Marcos regime.) His recent works
include The Collected Poems of Dominador Ilio, Guerilla Memoirs (a
novel), Madia-as (tales and legends in verse), The Katipunan of Aklan,
and Vagaries of a Wild River. He is also included in Gemino Abad and
Edna Manlapaz's Man of Earth (Ateneo, 1989) and its sequel, A Native
Clearing (UP Press, 1993) and in Nick Carbo's anthology Returning a
Borrowed Tongue, a collection of Filipino poetry in English, published
by Coffee House Press, 1995. He died on February 7, 2006 at age 93.
-During the contemprary period, there are also short
stories produced which use vernacular language.
-The writer chose to write Filipino Literary Works
-Short story writers produced more social conscious
fiction
-Short stories depicting the lives of the working class
emerged.
- Social protest fiction was produced during Marcos
era.
The Filipino Short Story Writers
 Nestor Vicente Madali(1915-1999)
-a novelist,poet and a short story writer.
 Nicomedes Marquez Joaquin (1917-2004)
- he was once a Filipino Writer and a journalist
 Alejandro Reyes Roces (1917-2004)
-a Filipino author, dramatist and a National Artist
of Philippines for literature.
 Francisco Arcellana(1916-2002)
- Filipino writer,poet, journalist and a teacher
 Gregorio Brillantes
- a multi-awarded Fiction writer
 Bienvenido Santos (1911-1996)
-Filipino-American fiction and a non fiction writer
 Edith Tiempo(1919-2011)
- a fiction writer, a Filipino writer and a teacher
In the area of novels, the production of novels with
sociopolitical themes continued after the World War II.

In the area of essay and criticism, literary criticism was

produced after the World War II aiming to analyze the
Philippine writings.

Informal essay also took the scene which was developed

by women writers.

The Contemporary Philippine Literature – was a mixture

of a variety of subjects. It is also a product of innovative
techniques of the writers.