Announcements

Vibal Foundation opens internship program for online writing

Vibal Foundation is opening an internship program for college students interested in writing using digital platforms starting April 7, 2008. This is in line with the Foundation’s mission of encouraging young people to harness the potential of the Internet as a communication tool.

The internship program will involve writing articles for the Foundation’s flagship projects: WikiPilipinas.org, a free and collaboratively written encyclopedia of Philippine content; POC, a news website; and creating metadata information for Filipiniana.net, a digital library containing Philippine books, documents, and multimedia resources.

Interns will be requested to render at least 100 hours of on-site work. They will be provided with a stipend throughout the internship and a certificate of completion once they have finished the program.

Interested parties are requested to email their CVs to Christian Pangilinan (Program Coordinator) at chris@wikipilipinas.org.ph. They may also contact the Vibal Foundation office at 7129156 to 59 loc. 343.

Vibal Foundation is a non-profit organization whose aim is to foster information literacy through the creative use of digital technology and new media.

Katext Mo Sa Katotohanan Poetry Contest>The Filipinas Institute of Translation, Inc. (FIT) launches “Katext Mo Sa Katotohanan” (Your Text Mate For Truth), a dalit poetry writing contest through the popular SMS/text messaging. FIT has sponsored similar contests in the past using other indigenous literary forms like the tanaga and diona.

Dalit is a traditional poetic form consisting of four mono-rhyming lines of eight syllables each. It is highly metaphorical and conveys an insight on human life and experience. Here is an example:

Ang sugat ay kung tinanggap
Di daramdamin ang antak
Ang aayaw at di mayag
Galos lamang magnanaknak.
(When one submits himself to wounding,
The intensest pain is bearable;
When one is unwilling,
Even the merest scratch can fester)

Writers and poetry enthusiasts can join the contest which has a very contemporary theme—the value of telling the truth. Writing poems is an effective way of expressing communal feelings and at this time in our national life, communal action.

Ang tunay na Filipino
Nagsasabi ng totoo
Naglilingkod sa totoo
Ilalaban ang totoo.
- Rio Alma

Contestants can text their poems at 0915-7832810. Or email them at dalitext@yahoo.com. Poems must strictly follow the dalit rhyme and meter. Cut-off time is at 5pm every Friday. Weekly winners gets a prize of P2,000.00 Consolation prize winners will receive certificates. For details, call 9221830 or email at mentioned address.

NBDB Book Club Meeting: Sudden Fiction Anthologies

The NBDB Book Club will be reading two volumes of the country’s best collection of sudden fiction stories.

Written by the finest writers of this generation, Mga Kuwentong Paspasan and Very Short Stories for Harried Readers (both volumes published by Milflores Publishing) contain 30 stories in Filipino and 41 short stories in English. Both volumes are edited by Vicente Garcia Groyon.

The book club meeting will be held on March 15,Saturday, 10 a.m. at the Ortigas Foundation Library. Award-winning writer Tara FT Sering will moderate the discussion.

Mga Kuwentong Paspasan and Very Short Stories for Harried Readers are available at National Bookstore branches for P290 each.

For more details about the NBDB Book Club, please call 926-8238 or 631-1231 local 222 and 228.

Everyone who has read the featured books is invited to come. Admission is free.

March 8, 2008 | Filed Under Latest, Events | 5 Comments

Coming soon (or sooner)

Busy on a personal level but there have been some new things going on club-wise. Extensive developments, one might say. Am preparing for the RoD magazine which will be published by National Book Store this April and we’re coming out with a new website (yeah, like what’s new–hopefully there should be something a little bit relevant in it though). The second quarter of the year ought to be interesting for the organization.

In the meantime we’re trucking on with the columns. We’ve just finished wrapping up the last part of Write or Die for Gawad Likhaan and are taking a short breather. Until April, that is, and then…

March 8, 2008 | Filed Under Latest | 1 Comment

Column: Reading Dangerously

Promoting reading and love for books might seem the most innocuous of advocacies, and perhaps–from a certain perspective—kind of boring. Other people seem to harbor an existential sort of fascination with the name of our organization; on our part, the only advantage is that we are not in any danger of being automatically considered as unreconstructed bluestockings, especially when confronted with lofty frat boys. Not that we—or any reader—should care. However I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve run into our share of Lovecraftian weirdness. Publishers and editors have recounted numerous stories of being stalked by aspiring writers. But reams of psychological suspense and slasher novels are written about and starring bibliophiles, and for good reason.

A mysterious self-confessed male person sent me a caustic text message asking why most published Filipino writers are “elitist, pompous, boring, university-bred asshats” and “why can’t we have Filipino versions of Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs?” A day or so later he followed it up with a question–addressed to ‘Read Or Die’–what ‘a priori’ meant because he’d started reading Arthur Schopenhauer. I didn’t reply to his earlier messages and had no phone credit when the a priori question came up. He repeatedly insisted that I reply because he had nobody to ask and he was only a minimum-wage earner employed by the government and a lapsed alcoholic with poetic pretensions who’d started to get back to reading again, specifically philosophy texts. I had to bite and replied via Yahoo Messenger with a hash definition of ‘a priori’ (throwing in ‘a posteriori’ for good measure). He thanked me politely enough. I found the entire thing rather intriguing. Civil servants reading Schopenhauer! There was hope for this country yet.

The next day he sent another message to ‘Read Or Die’ saying that he’d also started reading the Marquis de Sade and then followed it up with a polemic bemoaning the inadequacies of English-Filipino dictionaries. I sent a brief reply saying that this could possibly be addressed by mass circulation of translated texts but wasn’t sure if it was ever going to happen. He made some sort of derisive rejoinder–I’d begun to notice that he was rather touchy and unpredictable–and then asked for my email and MySpace page. I didn’t reply.

That’s when he started flooding. He kept sending ‘Hey, Read or Die’ messages and ‘Why aren’t you answering me? Are you feeling threatened?’ I deleted the messages as they came because my inbox had very limited capacity, and honestly, only an idiot would take the bait this time around.

The next day he seemed relatively calmer and told me about his band and said in a self-mocking tone that for some reason he’d started thinking of me as the the Jack Kerouac to his Neal Cassady. I didn’t reply. Despite the underlying mockery, I thought the comment must either point to an incredibly naive and romanticized view of the Beat poets or to an equally incredible conceit (Neal Cassidy was Jack Kerouac’s psychedelic muse, Ginsberg’s ’secret hero.’) He recommended several books for Read or Die to read–aside from his obvious partiality for skid row writers with destructive personalities and European philosophers with more of the same, his taste also seemed to run towards biting suburban American novels with soft and dry cores, like ‘Bridges of Madison Country.’

He spammed me again later that evening with more demands and goading sarcastic comments. I turned off my phone. The next afternoon he ventured with an almost timid question asking me if I’d read Nietzsche and if so which books would I recommend. I should also have ignored this, but I found him interesting and quixotic and sad despite his rudeness and high-strung temperament. I replied with “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and “Beyond Good and Evil.” He asked me why I did not pick something like “The Gay Science” which was purportedly symptomatic Nietzsche. I said that I hadn’t chosen the books I did based on whether or not they are ‘representative,’ but on the basis of philosophical and aesthetic continuity. He asked me who Zarathustra was. I replied and recommended a few books on German history and philosophy and left it at that. He didn’t, of course.

”Wow,” said Anon. “You’ve even read Nietzsche? You must be a famous professor, writer or columnist. Or somebody really old, which is why you take so long to reply, your fingers must be rheumatic.”

I did not reply.

Anon continued: “You must be all of 60, I’d say. Why aren’t you replying Ms. Read or Die? Have I offended your refined intellectual sensibilities again with my lower-class boorishness? Somebody like you who’s read German philosophy and has the luxury to found a book club for equally privileged bourgeois kids… I wouldn’t be surprised. How old are you?”

I wondered where he got the energy to write polysyllabic texts.

”You must be horrendously ugly as well. Buried in your books.”

Well, I was only human. I replied that I was not elderly, rich, refined or privileged. I also didn’t know about being ugly.

Anon shot back with a rather nasty query about what sort of milk formula my parents fed me so that I would have developed a penchant for the canon of German philosophy.

I didn’t reply.

“My dear Ms. Read or Die,” Anon sneered. “Cat got your tongue again? Please spare the time to talk to me and bridge the gap, however fleeting, between the working class and the upper class.”

”I don’t know why you keep harping on the question of our respective backgrounds, Mr. Pseudo-Semi-Proletarian,” I sneered back. “Please keep your illusions to yourself. As for mending the class war, if you’d read Marx–which I assume you have since you’re so obsessed with your social condition–you would know that’s rank heresy. You should be shot in the head. Good day.” My fingers were starting to hurt.

”Pseudo?” howled Anon. “I’m a true-blue-dyed-in-the-wool peon, Ma’am. I was a gasoline boy, sold sweepstakes tickets, worked in a farm, subsisted for a while as a gutter poet, took out an eleven-year research fellowship in Alcoholism, and am now staring at a bleak, pathetic and altogether boring future as a cog in this accursed government machinery. But you wouldn’t know that, of course. What’s your name?”

Didn’t reply. He went on to talk about classical music, jazz (inclusive of malicious asides regarding Steve Cooke) and why am I not replying, was I guilty, was I threatened.

Anon: Forget about being Jack Kerouac. You are clearly Tinker Bell to my Peter Pan. Hey, Tink. Are you there?

I turned off my phone again.

Received more text messages the next morning, which I again ignored though it was getting harder to send my own text messages, and met a fellow RoD member for lunch, who was witness to yet more messages. Apparently Mr. Working Class had taken a half day from work and biked home and on the way came up with ever sharper and provoking retorts guaranteed 100% to ensure him a fair hearing. This included a vague Marxist critique of Vivaldi and rhapsodies on the jazz canon as well as more sly digs about my status in life and possible intellectual pretensions.

Anyway, you get what we’re up against. If it’s not bleeding heart writers, you have pseudo-proletarian poets who think we’re their ticket to fame (Lord knows where they get the idea). Mia was of the opinion that—from a strictly interpersonal perspective—it was another variation of sexist playground behavior. Get the girl’s attention by calling her rude names, shivering, in the meantime, with the delicious anticipation of having her pull your hair in retaliation. I don’t exactly revel in the attention but I did find this person interesting and wondered how he conducted his real-life interactions. He struck me as abrasive, lonely, insecure and a bit schizophrenic. He’s also terribly articulate (in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a good poet–he did style himself in those terms) and I think his anger at social injustice is very real. There’s also quite a lot of vain grandstanding and self-delusion. All in all, a novelistic package.

I don’t think that I’d like to be his friend, though (least of all a readymade amanuensis/Muse), and I could really do without the provoking messages and constant demands for attention. Ignoring him seems to be a good way to force him to temper himself. He apologized one night for his foul comments and said that he was only trying to get my attention. Well, I don’t know if he’s that desperate for my upper-class conversation or if he sees me, possibly the first female of his acquaintance who’s read his German philosophers (for whom he professes his usual mixture of contempt and ambivalent admiration), as a reflection of his own brilliance. He does seem intent to carve out some sort of half-crazed, half-fantastic, overall debased Beat-Marxist fairytale where rich girl dwelling in ivory tower breathing in the rarefied air of dead books and dead knowledge meets poor boy, the genius poet with a violent and melancholic past. And together they fight illiteracy and capitalistic exploitation.

March 8, 2008 | Filed Under Read or Die, Books, Reading | 11 Comments

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  Good to mention Corso, pure poet. Would you consider linking to the film about him. www.corsothefilm.com
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