December's Featured Poet is Rhett Valino Pascual for developing a wonderful -- humourous and inventive -- take on the Hay(na)ku Poetic Form through verse-dialogues. His Bio: "Rhett Valino Pascual is exploring Filipino life in America. He uses writing as a tool for decolonization. He is fascinated with the lives of Marcos, Aquino, and other Filipino and American celebrities. His photographs of Philippine folk dancing have been featured in Maganda magazine (UC erkeley)." Rhett's verse-dialogue poems can be seen at his Tatang's Hay(na)ku Blog. Here's a sample featuring Nixon and Kennedy talking about Filipinos in alternating stanzas:

On Filipinos

Nixon:
why
do we
speak like this

Kennedy:
we
exist in
a Filipino's dream.

filipinos
voted for
me in California

filipinos
make such
nice domestic help.

filipino
stewards serve
excellent coffee in

the
White House,
but there was

one
steward who
threw chairs across

the
parquet floors!
He scratched it

during
the 1950's,
in Ike's years!

did
you know
the filipino steward?

very
respectful, always
with a SIR

why
throw chairs
instead of cha-cha?

he
wanted to
be back home

home
or the
white house? Insanity!

he
dances cha-cha
with his wife.

*****************************

MERITAGE PRESS' 2002 HOLIDAY POETRY CONTEST

Dear Filipino/a Poets:
You are invited to submit to a fun poetry contest. No submission fees. E-mail submissions. Details below:

Third Annual Holiday Poetry Contest
Sponsors: Meritage Press and the NPA (New Poets Army)
Judge: Patrick Rosal
Deadline: December 31, 2003

ABOUT THE JUDGE:
Patrick Rosal is the author of UPROCK HEADSPIN SCRAMBLE AND DIVE (Persea Books) and the chapbook UNCOMMON DENOMINATORS , winner of the Palanquin Poetry Series Award. His work has been published in many journals and anthologies including NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, COLUMBIA, THE LITERARY REVIEW , and THE BEACON BEST 2001 . He has been a featured reader at many venues in and out of NYC, from Boston to Daytona Beach, as well as in London and on the BBC's "World Today." He was the 2001 Emerging Writer in Residence at Penn State ltoona and is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Bloomfield College.

ABOUT THE CONTEST:
All poets are encouraged to submit by e-mailing 1 or 2 poems to MeritagePress@aol.com. (Send no more than 2 poems). Please include your full name along with your e-mail address. However, the poems will be sent without your names to judge Patrick Rosal, thereby allowing the poems to be read on their own merit. All poets are welcome to submit -- it doesn't matter whether you're established or emerging as the work is read on its own merit.

There are no limitations to poetry styles or content. All types of poems are welcome. We are now taking submissions up to the deadline of December 31, 2003.

Only previously unpublished poems are eligible (you may, however, submit poems that you have featured on your own web sites or or blogs, or that have been published in limited edition chapbooks of no more than 250 copies).

Meritage Press has asked Patrick Rosal to choose one winner. However, Patrick may choose other finalist-winners, depending on the quality of the submissions. The winner(s) will have their poems published in the February 2004 edition of "Babaylan Speaks" at http://meritagepress.com/babaylan.htm.

The FIRST PLACE winner also will receive copies of

UPROCK HEADSPIN SCRAMBLE AND DIVE by Patrick Rosal (Persea Books); for information about the book, go to http://gomarky.com/bookpromo/);

REPRODUCT IONS OF THE EMPTY FLAGPOLE, Selected Prose Poems 1996-2002 , by Eileen Tabios (Marsh Hawk Press; for information about the book, go to http://marshhawkpress.org/tabios.htm);

GRAVITIES OF CENTER by Barbara Jane Reyes (for information about the book, go to http://www.barbarajanereyes.com./home2.html); and

THE ANCHORED ANGEL: SELECTED WRITINGS BY JOSE GARCIA VILLA edited by Eileen Tabios (Kaya Press) (for information about the book, go to http://www.kaya.com/aa.html).

The FIRST PLACE winner also will receive copies of two of Meritage Press' titles:

OPERA: POEMS 1981-2002 by Barry Schwabsky (for more information about the book, go to http://meritagepress.com/opera.htm; and

100 MORE JOKES FROM THE BOOK OF THE DEAD by John Yau and Archie Rand (for more information about the book, go to http://meritagepress.com/100morejokes.htm).

Other finalist-winners besides the First Place winner, if any, will receive the Meritage Press titles.

***

Meanwhile, here are what some have said about judge Patrick Rosal's first book, UPROCK HEADSPIN SCRAMBLE AND DIVE :

“part immigrant-song, bildungsroman, family-chronicle and lovestory: Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive is nearly overwhelming in its beauty. Rosal, almost sorcerous in his abilities, has called up a language, a hurricane, a world. . . . a searing meditation on the tenacity of loss and the unbearable limits of forgiveness . . . poems about a Filipino childhood in New Jersey, a lost mother, an ex-priest father, b-boy friends, poems about a heart in struggle with itself. A book from whose pages you'll emerge (in no particular order): shaken, heartbroken, annealed, made new. call it hyperbole but I believe that to enter Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive is to be assured that you will never again be the same. with this virtuoso performance Rosal has vaulted into the literary firmament and there is where I expect he will remain..”
—Junot Díaz

"Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive is an astonishing first collection by a young poet of immense gifts. Urgent, rhythmic (it has the swing without which it don't mean a thing), this is a passionate and elegiac book that claims a place of its own in American poetry's present and bodes well for American poetry's future."
—Thomas Lux

*****************************

BEST FILIPINO AMERICAN POETRY

SUBMISSION CALL
for
2003 BEST FILIPINO AMERICAN POETRY

Editor, Eileen Tabios
Deadline: December 31, 2003

"the story of the collective,
the many eyes of a single pineapple"
--Joseph O. Legaspi

This is a Call to Filipino Poets who would like to have their 2003-published poems considered for this groundbreaking volume. Submissions should feature the poem(s) and the name and date of journal(s) that published the poem(s). Please submit no more than five (5) published poems as candidates for this volume (it is highly unlikely that more than one poem per poet would be chosen).

By 2003, we mean the calendar year 2003. You can submit poems ahead of the journals' release dates, as long as you know that the journal will be out by the end of the calendar 2003.

You can submit in two ways: by e-mail to PinoyPoetics@aol.com or by snailmail to

Eileen Tabios
2275 Broadway, #312
San Francisco, CA 94115

Please note that, unless you happen to be an acquaintance of Eileen Tabios, she will not open any attachments to your e-mailed submission (due to virus concerns). If your poems have special formatting issues or would not otherwise show up clearly by being placed within the body of the e-mail, it's best that you snailmail your submission.

In addition to print publications, certain online journals are eligible -- but not those set up by your mother (loving though your mother may be) or websites that do self-publication. Also eligible are poems first published in books that are released by (non-vanity) publishing houses.

This is a volume of "Filipino American" poetry -- for this purpose, prior print publications will need to be U.S.-American, which means Filipinos living outside the United States are eligible if their poems were published in U.S.-American journals. The online journals obviously transcend the limits of physical geography; thus, for this purpose, eligible authors are required to be Filipino-American authors.

No Filipino-American poet has ever appeared in the BEST AMERICAN POETRY (BAP) series. However, a poem by Joseph O. Legaspi, entitled "Visiting the Manongs in a Convalescent Home in Delano" had been accepted by guest editor Adrienne Rich for the 1996 BAP volume. For a variety of reasons, that poem was not included in the printed version of 1996 BAP. To rectify this unfortunate omission, Legaspi's poem will be featured within the Introduction to this upcoming BEST FILIPINO AMERICAN POETRY (BFAP) anthology.

This 2003 BEST FILIPINO AMERICAN POETRY is expected to be released concurrently with the PINOYPOETICS anthology, edited by Nick Carbo, in Fall 2004. It is expected that BFAP, by providing a snapshot of recent Filipino poetry, will facilitate, when combined with PINOYPOETICS , a more comprehensive look at Filipino Poetry. BFAP also provides another venue for Filipino poets to share their works since PINOYPOETICS is, foremost, a collection of poetics essays rather than a collection of poems.

What PINOYPOETICS and BFAP share in common is a redress of the invisibility of Filipino English-language poetry that caused Nick Carbo to write in his introduction to PINOYPOETICS :

"Filipino poetry written in English or Tagalog does not seem to exist to the big New York publishing houses and most American English departments."

Well, why need Filipinos wait for others to recognize our existence? We already exist. Our poetry already exists. Let us be the ones to make our poems more accessible. Please join us in this project through submissions, spreading the word, and future support.

For questions, e-mail BFAP Editor Eileen Tabios at PinoyPoetics@aol.com

*****************************

NOT HOME, BUT HERE: A BOOK LAUNCHING & READING

to celebrate the publication of the new anthology
NOT HOME, BUT HERE: WRITING FROM THE FILIPINO DIASPORA
(Ed. Luisa Igloria, Anvil, 2003). The anthology features essays by fifteen leading writers in the Filipino diaspora, including Nick Carbo, Reine Arcache Melvin, Bino Realuyo, Aimee Nezukumatathil, Eileen Tabios, Barbara Jane P. Reyes, Merlinda Bobis, Jon Pineda, Edna Weisser, and Ella Wagemakers...

6:00 pm   Wednesday  10 December 2003
at the
PHILIPPINE CENTER
556 Fifth Ave.
NY, NY 10036

Come and pick up a copy of the anthology -- a great holiday present for
yourself as well as for family and friends, and best of all, a great way
to promote Filipino literature.

What they say about the anthology:

MARJORIE AGOSIN, award-winning poet, memoirist, fiction writer &
human rights activist; recipient of  the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor, the
United Nations Leadership Award in Human Rights, & the Letras de Oro Prize, says:  "An exceptional collection of essays-- these are meditations that explore the enigma and the complexity of the Filipino diaspora as well as the hopes and triumphs of writing, living, and being in between cultures. This collection, edited with a powerful introduction by Luisa Igloria,inspires the reader as well as those intrested in diasporic studies to comprehend the sorrows as well as the joys of living in the spaces between worlds."

MARIANNE VILLANUEVA, author of GINSENG AND OTHER TALES FROM MANILA (Calyx): "A lovely and powerful book--  a meditation on what it means to be other.  It's about journeys; it's about memory. It's about recovery and discovery. Ultimately healing and transformative, this is a book to savor."

Copies of the book can be obtained from US distributors,
LINDA NIETES at
of Philippine Expressions Mail Order Books, 
and from TATAK PILIPINO in Los Angeles
(www.tatakpilipino.com)

In the Philippines, copies are available from ANVIL Publishing, Inc.,
through the following address:

ANVIL PUBLISHING, INC.
8007 Pioneer Street
Bgy. Kapitolyo, Pasig City 1600
Philippines

Phones: 
Publishing Dept. - (632) 637-8840, 637-3874
Sales Dept. - (632) 637-3621, 637-5692
Accounting Dept. - (632) 637-4234
Fax: (632) 637-6084

Email contacts:
Ani Habulan
Gwenn Galvez

*****************************

TONY ROBLES TINKLES HOLY WATER

Young Gun Poet and children's book author Tony Robles saw something at St. Patricks that amused him. So he wrote a poem about it. Then he sent the poem to us and we are happy to post it as it's a hoot of poem-- even as there remains serious subtexts related to the history of colonialism, immigrant and diasporic suffering, homelessness, religious hypocrisy and poverty:

Holy Water
by Tony Robles

The church has
stood for nearly
a century

Its bricks have
withstood
earthquakes,
gentrification

Bricks held together
by a mixture of
straw, bone and
marrow

The elderly attend
mass
there

Business folks, working
class folks drop in
during the course
of the day

Walking by one afternoon,
i witnessed the
unthinkable

utter blasphemy
of the
worst kind

A manong
with a baseball
cap pushing
a shopping basket

with grace and
absolutely
no shame

walked up
to the front of
the church

unzipped his
pants and urinated
on the wall

People
walked by

some looked,
some pretended not
to notice

The manong
was oblivious

The sun was
out and a homeless
man nearby sat on
the ground next to

an empty
cup of
change

I walked
away

feeling
blessed

*****************************

EILEEN TABIOS'S NEW POETRY E-COLLECTION: "THERE, WHERE THE PAGES WOULD END"!

XPress(ed) of Finland, publisher of innovative poetry, has just released Eileen Tabios' collection of "Footnote Poems" entitled "there, where the pages would end"! You can download Eileen's latest poetic invention through http://www.xpressed.org for free. All downloads are free, books are in PDF or HTML format. Here's xPress(ed)'s official press release:

xPress(ed) - new titles - Fall 2003

Twenty new titles:

gregory vincent st. thomasino: Go Mirrored
ISBN 951-9198-37-7, 30 pages

bill allegrezza: temporal nomads
ISBN 951-9198-34-2, 32 pages

ric carfagna: null set
ISBN 951-9198-40-7, 39 pages

ric carfagna: dakota journal
ISBN 951-9198-41-5, 16 pages

andrew lundwall: eye pharmacy
ISBN 951-9198-27-X, 29 pages

francis raven: some scenes of some life
ISBN 951-9198-31-8, 16 pages

donna kuhn: red plastic mystic fish
ISBN 951-9198-26-1, 27 pages

chris pusateri: berserker alphabetics
ISBN 951-9198-30-X, 72 pages

christophe casamassima: p s s t c a r d s
ISBN 951-9198-35-0, 59 pages

joel chace: itsstory
ISBN 951-9198-39-3, 31 pages

jeff harrison: LOOT
ISBN 951-9198-36-9, 61 pages

august highland: crash the silence #0001
ISBN 951-9198-25-3, 12 pages

halvard johnson: G(e)nome
ISBN 951-9198-38-5, 18 pages

andrew penland: drunk on clover & dreaming of earth
ISBN 951-9198-29-6, 34 pages

rob mclennan: the true eventual story of buffalo bill
ISBN 951-9198-28-8, 28 pages

michael scharf: nine sonnets for late 90s literary culture
ISBN 951-9198-18-0, 15 pages

alan sondheim: cancer
ISBN 951-9198-42-3, 85 pages

eileen tabios: there, where the pages would end
ISBN 951-9198-33-4, 93 pages

sheila e.murphy: a motion come to silk
ISBN 951-9198-44-X, 27 pages

john byrum: state
ISBN 951-9198-43-1, HTML

All downloads are free, books are in PDF or HTML format.

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
Editor
xPress(ed)
http://www.xpressed.org
mailto:info@xpressed.org