Happy Mondays VI

Reading runs from 7 to 930pm. Free Admission! Please come.
Featured poets for tomorrow are:

1. Ramil Digal Gulle
A two-time Palanca-winning poet, Ramil is the author of Textual Relations, recently published by UP Press.

2. Jamie Wilson
Jamie is a professional actor in theater and indie films, nominated for numerous Aliw Awards as well as for best actor in last year's Urian Awards for the Cinemalaya film, Bigtime. He has been doing spoken word poetry since the mid '90s in Old, Bohemian Malate.

3. Ingrid Reynolds
Is an Australian poet currently in the the country for hectic work, sublime art, and meditative Yoga classes.

4. Johanna Fernandez
Started writing poetry back when she was in 3rd year high school at St. Paul's, Pasig. She is currently a sophomore in the Ateneo and has sung with the Nictynasty band gigs in Magnet.

5. Yanna Verbo Acosta
Works as a performance poet with the collaborative group Project Ganymede, and has performed with several musicians such as Punnu Wasu of Sing India, Oz Arcilla (violin), Silverfilter (electronica), and percussion group Sruvaleh. She is part of the Electric Underground Collective which regularly performs at Cesare Syjuco’s exhibit openings.

6. Mikael De Lara Co
Kael is an M.A. Literature in Filipino student in the Ateneo and a published poet who's been to various National Writers Workshops in the country. He also plays the mean lead guitars for Los Chupacabras.

7. Keith Cortez
Was a recipient of the UST Ustetika awards for his poetry and co-edited the most recent issue of Dapitan.

8. Yol Yamendang
Yol is a bayaw teacher in the Ateneo's Filipino Department as well as a former fellow of the Ateneo Writers Workshop.

9. Angelo Suarez
Is a two-time Palanca-winning wasak poet with two books of poetry and a third one close to publication. His book, The Nymph of MTV, won for him the National Book Award.

10. Arkaye Kierulf
is one of the youngest and most promising poets in the country. He was the winner of the 2005 Meritage Poetry Prize and his poems have appeared in various literary publications.

other expected readers include Ken Ishikawa, Cos Zicarelli, Kash Avena, Corin Arenas, Lope Cui, Jr., Khavn Dela Cruz, Kenneth Magadia, Pancho Villanueva, and John Torres.

Rising indie band Tabloid Lite jams in between.

kitakits, mga bayaw at hipag.

Los Chupacabras @ Purple Haze Tonight

the band gets down and moves it all around at 9pm. punta kayo at makiwasak.

Purple Haze is located at the corner of Tomas Morato and E. Rodriguez Avenues, Quezon City.

***

He Said Discipline is the Highest Form of Love

All three girls were in love with their music teacher. At a lesson, he told one: You wear your heart on your sleeve. Then the other came in, dark hair parted in the middle like a black book. She had the longest most promising fingers, but he did not love her. The third girl did not come until the next day. In the night she dreamed that he spread his arms out behind her and then wrapped his left arm to hers holding the instrument, and folded her fingers so they touched the strings. His right arm crooked with her arm holding the bow. They were just one violin.

Every time she practiced after that she felt his limbs on her limbs, his breast at her back, like a man-shadow cast by her small girl body. An hour would go by like an arrow. That's what was hardest: what love did to time. The Brahms fell apart like a glass. His shoulders over her shoulders. Even when she grew up, which happened in a night, and was happy, she could still conjure him, this love skin.
This whole petal of him.

When she came to her lesson the next day he tapped the lip of her music stand with a baton, tic-tic-tic, four-four time. She felt—a bit, a bit of his ankle in her ankle, and then the knee above that, floating. She wondered what he was like with the book-haired girl. She knew he loved those long fingers. Maybe that was enough. In time.

--Beckian Fritz Goldberg

via Blackbird

King and Queen of Hurts

what happy news! may mga blog na ang kamahalan ng mga bayaw: si Diomedes at si Toulise Romantico.

***

repost from yol:

Call for submissions for the 7th Ateneo National Writer’s Workshop

The Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices (AILAP) is now accepting applications for the 7th Ateneo National Writer’s Workshop to be held on October 22-27, 2007.

Each applicant should submit a portfolio of any of the following works: five poems, three short stories, or two one-act plays, written in Filipino or English, with a title page bearing the author’s pseudonym and a table of contents.

The portfolio must also be accompanied by a diskette/CD containing a file of the documents saved in Rich Text Format.

All submissions should include a sealed envelope containing the author’s name, address, contact numbers, and a one-page resume including a literary curriculum vitae with a 1x1 ID picture.

Twelve (12) fellows will be chosen from all over the country. Food and lodging accomodations will be provided.

Please address entries to: Marco A.V. Lopez, Acting Director, AILAP, c/o Filipino Department, Horacio de la Costa Hall, Loyola Schools, Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights, Quezon City.

Deadline of submissions is on August 3, 2007.

For inquiries, please contact workshop coordinators Ms. Bong Oris and Mr. Yol Jamendang at 426-6001 local 5320-22. You may also e-mail Mr. Lopez at mvlopez@ateneo.edu.

***

Sir Krip has an essay on New Asian voices in English in the June issue of Review Asia. panalo 'yung mga manipulated pics. hehe lalo na ito:



Gelo Tiris Kuto (The Sideburns Remix)







***

video below of the Poet's Corner from partybred who just got back from London and took this illegally (yari ka, dood!) from inside Westminster Abbey. wasak!

Notes on Lowell

Epilogue

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme--
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.

Robert Lowell

i've been reading and re-reading this poem from the Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, which i've gathered was the last poem from the poet's last book, Day by Day (1977).

when i first read it, i found its discursiveness bothersome, if not outright disturbing. the sense conveyed by the initial lines points to the persona's conflictedness with the "imagined, not recalled," as if the persona's immediate problem will naturally propel the poem onward, guided by the speaker's seeming want to risk the imagined. The italicized lines further heighten this dilemma, an interesting claim governed by the "noise of my own (the speaker's) voice" and probably a loose allusion to an artist's (who will be named later in the poem) supposed use of the so-called camera obscura in catching the perfect light.

the succeeding lines then attempt to elucidate on the tone's ambivalence by insisting that everything caught by the poet's eye is "heightened from life/yet paralyzed by fact" and "all's misalliance". the sentiment is unclear at this point, and further made vague by the next line which begins with "Yet". and while "what happened" is tied up to "the grace of accuracy," the organic allusion to the eye of the artist (here revealed to be Vermeer) giving to the sun's illumination is not a matter of fact, but of figure of speech--since the poet chose to connect the light as "stealing...to his girl solid with yearning".


Milkmaid Vermeer c. 1660

the closing four lines relish in another grand insistence, but it becomes clear here the position the speaker (or Lowell's himself?) takes on the subject matter. "We are poor, passing facts," the line reads, embracing finally the claim that while "structures, plot, and rhyme" can be done way with, it is the real or the factual that in the end must endure, that "fact" warns us of the need to give "each figure..his living name."

perhaps this was Lowell's way of solidifying his staunch position and final word (he died shortly after this collection was published) on his championing of the aesthetics of authenticity and accuracy. the poem may be seen as an ekphrasis of sorts, but only in the barest sense. the grand design is still--according to Washington Post critic Sunil Iyengar--to "embrace fidelity as his (Lowell's) ruling aesthetic."

the interesting paradox here is how quickly the poem's speaker relinquishes the light of the imagined while at the same time as quickly promising that it may be the main concern of the poem. the speaker does not problematize the form; it talks about the dichotomy between the remembered and the imagined.

but then the poem's concern dramatically shifts to a discourse on what's seen and the trust that whatever this visible "snapshot" thing is, is still "paralyzed by fact", further claimed as "all's misalliance". and because everything that's factual passes,
the task is to name, well, for example, a rose not by any other name.

at one point, Lowell was the most celebrated poet in the US, a towering figure in confessional poetry. now, he is one of the more maligned poets whose works have been largely dismissed. the question is, how do we read Lowell (the "audacious maker," says Frank Bidart) and how do we negotiate with his heightened sense of self nowadays?

and does he deserve to be just another "poor, passing fact" in poetry?

Hey You, The Rivers Crew!

word, yo! South Korea's Rivers Crew won the R16 international world bboy championships just last Saturday, beating Finland's Mo Flo for the title and pocketing $ 15,000.

Just goes to show the complete dominance of the Koreans in the world of breakdancing (Drifters Crew member Hong 10 won last year's Red Bull BC One championships and was crowned the best bboy in the world). Btw, Rivers crew includes two of my top 3 bboys: Physicx and Born. wasak!!!

***

at para sa mga walang paki sa breakdancing (bakit nga ba ako may paki? hehe. mahabang kwento 'yan), salamat pala sa lahat ng dumalo sa Happy Mondays Poetry Nights at nanood ng gig ng Los Chupacabras. record attendance last monday. hope to see you guys again during the reading on June 18, 7-9pm.



early plugging na rin: Los Chupacabras are guesting in Nu 107's Rock Ed Radio on July 1, Sunday 8-9pm. more info in the rock ed radio website.





*photo by Irras Han from her series, hors saison from the Softblow website.

Happy Mondays V

below are the featured poets for the reading tomorrow in mag:net katipunan.

1. Lourd Ernest de Veyra
Lourd is a Palanca-winning poet with two books of poetry and is the frontman of Radioactive Sago Project.

2. Ramil Digal Gulle
A two-time Palanca-winning poet, Ramil is the author of Textual Relations, recently published by UP Press.

3. Kris Lanot Lacaba
Kris aka elpinoymatador recently finished his MA in Creative Writing from UP Diliman and is working on either his first book of poems or a CD of Kundiman songs.

4. Sid Gomez Hildawa
Winner of both the Palanca and Free Press Awards, Sid is the author of Regarding Space, published in 2005 by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) under its "Ubod" First Author Series.

5. Nerissa Del Carmen Guevarra
Another Palanca-winning poet, Ricci is also a dancer, teacher, and the author of the Reaching Destination, a book of poems that comes with a CD which includes readings from her collection.

6. Kash Avena
Kash is an up and coming poet from Miriam College currently finishing a Comm Arts degree. She is the editor of MC's literary folio.

7. Israfel Fagela
Easy is the lead singer/composer of Los Chupacabras. He is also a practicing lawyer and a fellow of the Baguio and Dumaguete National Writers Workshop.

8. Pocholo Goitia
A member of the Thomasian Writers Guild, Cholo is a published fictionist and poet and awardeee of UST's Ustetika Awards.

9. Karl de Mesa
Karl is the lead guitarist of Tabloid Lite, the editor of the literotika line of books, and the author of Damaged People: Tales of the Gothic Punk, which came out last year from UP Press.

10. Pancho Villanueva
Pancho just came back from a fellowship for poetry in the Dumaguete National Writers Workshop. He is a painter and illustrator, having designed Caracoa 2006.

Show kicks off at 9pm. Other readers include Ingrid Reynolds, Mikael Co, Angelo Suarez, Khavn dela Cruz, Arkaye Kierulf, and Waps San Diego.

Performing in-between the poetry reading is the band, Jeffplane. After the reading, Los Chupacabras rock the house!

Punta kayo!!! Kitakits. :)

Back Once Again With The Renegade Master

wasak talaga 'tong mga korean bboys. my top 3 bboys: bboy physicx, hong 10, bboy born. they rule the world of breakdancing. btw, world bboy championships kanina sa seoul. sino kaya nanalo?

abangan! word!