Drink from the Jar
It should be nice to talk about the evident renaissance of Bikol writing, but let me confine myself to the poets I know, a few books that I read in the recent past, as official reader for a contest or literary grant, or as witness to the few who brought out books and coaxed it back to life.
I say coaxed it back it life because it was just about lifeless years ago when writers, including myself, abandoned it. (After Robert Frost in high school, I had fallen in love with T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams in college, and I was discovering the French and the Russians, among others, and I could only read them in English, and was somehow of the illusion that literature, wherever it was coming from, had to be written in English. But that is perhaps a typical writer’s story in a colonized, or post-colonial, culture…)
In the meantime, Bikol was gasping for breath in the local newpapers, where Bikol columns were inserted among legal notices, and a rawitdawit (poem) or two was given grudging space. Coaxing it back to life meant writing in it, especially literature. The purely Bikol newspaper or magazine, reporting the news or dispensing opinion and remarking life in the Bikol language is probably a long way in the future, but books, yes books, and books of poetry, in Bikol, are being written and published. And Bikol studies, no matter how token or perfunctory, are coming back to schools. And thanks to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts for their emphasis on regional cultures, there are even Festivals on various aspects of the Bikol narrative (Tinagba, Ibalon, etc.), and there is even dancing in the streets. But dance is drama, whether on the street or stage, and they need writers to do scripts.
But poetry—the language of the senses—that is the most basic for resuscitating a language. And some of those who persisted in writing their poetry, and some essays, in it, I knew personally. While I had gone to Manila to join the rat race and advertising, and the writing workshops, Juan Rafael Belgica Jr (Jun) was mastering his Bikol vocabulary (rich from the start, inherited in part from Juan Sr, the school prinicipal and poet), and he had finished his first modern Bikol poem, “Sa Lukunlukunan kan Pantalan” (no translation for lukunlukunan, but it refers to the back of knee-joints, descriptive of the spindly or wobbly pier piles). Rafael “Raffi” Banzuela (the former’s tocayo, incidentally), my former editor at the college publication (Divine Word), had gone into radio broadcasting and was likewise honing his native tongue, perhaps discovering its depths and breadths for the first time. It was not long before the two friends, with whom I shared drinks the every time I visited home, would put out the first of their book collaborations. Both have new collections in the making, looking for local publishers (and perhaps translators, myself included, for the non-Bikol reader).
For the NCCA first-author grants, I read and introduced Estelito “Esting” Jacob’s first book, where I remarked that the term “local color” should be decommissioned if one was writing in his own language—it was a foreigner’s term. Too bad I don’t have copies on hand of Esting’s poems. Calling Esting Jacob, and everyone out these who writes in the our Dilang Maarang (hot or fiery tongue for you): send in your poems for the next poets’picturebook Bikol Poets Folio in the near future.
Then came the U.P. National Writers Workshop, where I met Frank Peñones, then Kristian Cordero, among others. When Vic Nierva’s turn came for the workshop, I was no longer sitting at the panel as I was frequently busy in my advertising job. I had to ask/recommend Jun Balde (premier novelist in Filipino) to take my place so the workshop could knowledgeably take up works in Bikol and at the same time mind the translations in either Filipino or English.
Kristian reminds me that I was fat and he was thin (now we’re opposites) when he first saw me at the panel of the U.P. Writers Workshop in Baguio. The workshop was in its previous format then—participants qualified by sending samples of their works (poetry, stories, plays), and the workshop reserved two slots for Bikol writers (the present format is by invitation, for writers “in mid-career”). I mention the Baguio workshop because even if it was some sort of affirmative action for a regional language, I consider it largely responsible for what’s going on now in Bikol poetry.
And so, panô an duláy, the jar is full for poets’picturebook. Five of the best Bikol poets are among these pages, with two guest writers, Dan Pinto, superb editor now working for Senate publications, and award-winning novelist Jun Balde, moonlighting as photographers (Dan also as a fine translator). Some of the poets’ works you’ve encountered here previously, some for the first time. Panô an duláy, Bikol writing is alive and well and living in Legazpi, Naga, Iriga, Oas… in the pinangat and tinuktok, dulay, rawitdawit… Dip the dipper (tabô) into the jar of the language of the senses, and drink, in Bikol.
Kristian Cordero
Pung-Aw
Dai ini pweding palayogon sa duros,
‘baad magin aliwuswos.
Dai ini pweding itanom sa daga
‘baad maglinog nin makusog.
Dai ini pweding paanodon sa tubig
‘baad kalinturahon an dagat
Pwede sana ining rangrangon
sa palibot kan kalayo
kaibahan an mga kapwa istranghero
mantang pig-i-is-is an mga palad
dangan iduduta sa pandok, sa liog
sa daghan, sa angog.
Mantang sa luwas,
nag-yeyelo an mga pangiturogan,
asin namamarong an sinusulong buhok.
Loneliness
You can’t fly it in the wind,
or it becomes a whirlwind.
You can’t plant it in the earth,
or the earth will quake.
You can’t cast it to the waves,
or the sea will be feverish.
But you can only warm it
Around the fire
in the company of strangers
while rubbing your palms together
and bringing them to your face, neck,
chest, forehead.
Outside
dreams freeze
and the smell of burning hair
spreads.Marne L. Kilates
Pampang Kan Sakong Pagkamoot
May sarong lugar an puso,
Banwang sadiri kan pagkamoot;
Gurano man napaharayô,
Minapuli man giraray an boot.
Pasakit man an inagehan,
May onra man na inabót,
Daing-sukat man giraray
Sa kamot mo minahadok.
Solamente ika, Padaba,
Giromdom kan sakong puso,
Pagkatapos kan gabos,
Sa habaga mo mina-ungkô.
Uya ka digdi, Padaba,
Sa daghan ko nag-eerok,
Maglayag man sa ibang dagat,
Timon ka nin sakong puso.
Maglayag man sa ibang dagat,
Pampang ka kan sakong pagkamoot.
January 7, 1993
Your Love is the Only Shore I Seek
The heart has its home,
The only country love seeks;
Far though it may travel,
Return is the only promise it keeps.
Dire sufferings though it may bear,
Lofty honors it may earn,
It is as poor as when it was born,
Kneeling, it takes your hand to kiss.
Only you, my Dearest,
Are the memory of my heart;
On your shoulder I lay my head,
After everything is finished.
Here, Love, in my breast
You live. Pole Star of my journey,
I head for nowhere else
After sailing different seas.
After sailing different seas,
You are the only shore I seek.
Translations by Marne L. Kilates
Misibis by Jun Balde