huge thanks to judges Sir Jimmy Abad, Sir Rayvi Sunico, and Ma'am Marj Evasco for, as bayaw Ken Ishikawa would say, "honoring my poems" The Ascension and New Century, With Dragon during the free press awarding last night. maraming, maraming salamat po!
Congratulations are in order for Ken's Wife Anna Sanchez, hipag Sandra Roldan, and bayaw Doug Candano, who shared his first award with literary biggies Dean and Sir Tim Montes.
the complete list of winners is posted in Ian's blog. at oo, Ian, pipilitin ko talagang makauwi dyan. :)
update: pootcha. talaga palang "haze". haha. this photo just emailed by douglas:
and congrats Mookie for bagging the top prize for poetry for As Far As Cho-fu-sa, a take on and re-imagining of Ezra Pound's classic, sarap kabisaduhin translation of a poem by the 8th century Chinese poet Li (T'ai-)Po entitled:
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord, you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
***
Moisture
Whatever lives can evaporate
must have loved water once
or is at least missing it
riverbed bone root you ask
time pleads stop though it persists on
refusing exhausted from waiting all season
having gone out again to the fields
eager for the bead of its first dew listening
for the straining of voices in the air
all the life discussed quietly and solely
by plants as again moisture pools
on the drooping leaves, coats the grass
and the sleeping grasshopper, that grand process
eluding human presence nor participation
again as the sun comes out with its given rituals
blazing and embarrassed because it is summer
and there is but a slim chance of raincloud
slow shipbuilding no long voyages
sails folded and put away as you continue
calling out to the long months—drowning, period
of dissolving and drunkenness, when water impresses
on leaves, slides persistently down the trunk of trees,
into the deep and sunken roots, soaking the permanent
remains of your old selves, the flowing down the hollow
where an eye, a voice used to be; you are summoning
time breathing the words bumping into the manifold arms
of trees collecting your frail human summons constant
human weeping as the river returns, now rushing, gushing,
brimming with newfound love
