Sorry, it’s been a while. Came across this thread by accident. Philip, you have no idea how happy I was to read about your discovery of Abad’s anthology and subsequent desire to complete the trilogy. No offense to Janet or Indian writers, but Philippine writing in English is one of the most underrated (or perhaps most unjustly ignored) literatures in English (or in general), so it makes me happy when someone takes notice. It’s been around for only a little over a century, yet it has made tremendous strides, as the Abad (and Manlapaz, co-editor for the first volume, A Native Clearing) trilogy of anthologies, which unfortunately isn’t readily available outside of the Philippines, demonstrates. (Believe it or not, the Philippines has the fourth largest population of English speakers in the world, with more speakers than Canada and Australia combined; only the U.S., India, and the U.K. have more English speakers.) And its star continues to rise: for instance, Penguin Classics has just issued Doveglion: The Collected Poems of Jose Garcia Villa, who was a contemporary of (and even knew) Bishop, Moore, cummings, Auden; I think this book is definitely worth checking out. And Miguel Syjuco just won the Man Asian Prize (the Asian analogue to the Man Booker) for his novel Ilustrado, which will be published in the U.S. by Knopf and in the U.K. by, I believe, Penguin.
I’m glad the late Carlos Angeles caught your eye. He is definitely one of our most important poets. I think Luisa Igloria, whom Mike mentioned above and should be read, and he were good friends, particularly toward the end of his life, so she would be a great resource if you want to know more about him. You may also want to peruse “Gabu,” also in the anthology, which is perhaps his signature poem. Other poets you should check out in A Native Clearing are Edith Tiempo (who has run a workshop for nearly five decades, of which I and several other poets and fictionists writing today are products), Ricaredo Demetillo, Emmanuel Torres, Rolando Tinio, Ophelia Dimalanta, Leonidas Benesa, and Cirilo Bautista (he has written, among others, an important epic poem, The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus, which spans the history of our country; if one Filipino deserves the Nobel, it’s him). If you’re interested in that particular generation, you may also want to look at the 1964 special Filipino Poetry issue of the Beloit Poetry Journal here:
http://bpj.org/PDF/V14N4.pdf#zoom=100
It’s instructive to read the introductory note, which gives the editors’ justification for devoting an entire issue to Filipino poetry—they had more than enough material from submissions for their Asian Poetry issue a year or two earlier. More recently, the Literary Review, Manoa, and Rattle have come up with Filipino poetry issues (the Rattle is available online).
I think it’s important for people reading through the poems in the Abad anthologies, especially the first one, to remember that individual poems were written in a particular historical and linguistic context. Just as Canadian, British, Australian, Indian and American Englishes have their own quirks, so too does Philippine English. For instance, if you’re driving and see a sign, “No Swerving,” what it really means is “Don’t change lanes.” And to “salvage” means to kill extrajudicially. (For what it’s worth, in the above quoted stanza, if you make “Sun” the subject of the verb “refused” in line 3, it makes perfect sense, though admittedly, punctuation could be used to clarify that.)
Filipino poets in English today are producing wonderful stuff, both in the Philippines and the U.S. Among those based in the Philippines are Krip Yuson, Ricardo de Ungria, Marjorie Evasco, Marc Gaba (whose book was runner-up for the Dorset Prize and will be published by Tupelo Press), Conchitina Cruz, Mookie Katigbak, Paolo Manalo. I’m inevitably leaving a ton of people out. A good place to dig further is
www.panitikan.com.ph.
Thanks for this. Feel free to send me a PM.