This Publisher's Column shall feature developments related to Filipino literature. Each monthly update also shall include a featured poet and poem. For comments and suggestions, please e-mail Meritage Press Associate Editor Jade Afable at Jade@meritagepress.com


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January:


FEATURED POEM AND POET

January's featured poet and poem is Sarah Gambito and her "Dear Elation," (first published in The New Republic). Sarah holds an MFA in poetry from Brown University and has recent poems in Quarterly West, The Iowa Review and The Antioch Review.


DEAR ELATION,


There is something else you didn’t know.

You cannot be two places at once:
wearing earrings for my return and packing up every mirror in your apartment.

You must not dream for the rest of us.
You must dream for the rest of us.

Whatever you choose. Get into the car and drive.

I often think of our one memory—why is that—when we have known each
other so long?

There was amber light over the high walls of a city.
It is an old city.

Boys and colts were playing soccer in the plaza of the kings
The bay is reflected of amber, filtered through lantern-lights

You were my friend.

Flapping hair.
Rife.
Feathering dress.

You cannot watch the same movie at 20, at 25.

Her blushes mean a different moment..

So, when this holds back
make plans,
make haste.

Make a jagged point in the rock.
You are the rock.



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FISHBONE

Aimee Nezhukumatathl, a Filipina/East Indian poet, recently released her first book FISHBONE. FISHBONE won the Snail's Pace Press Poetry Prize and is available through Small Press Distribution (www.spdbooks.org). This is the poet for whom Eileen Tabios pleaded with Aunt Lute Press, "Stop the Presses!" in order to include her in BABAYLAN: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Writers. Aimee is a fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and received her MFA from Ohio State University. Thanks to Ken Denberg & Darby Penny eds. Snail's Pace Press for permission to reprint Aimee's title poem:


FISHBONE
At dinner, my mother says if one gets stuck in your throat, roll some rice into a ball and swallow it whole. She says things like this and then the next thing out of her mouth is did you know such-and-such actress is pregnant? But I want to ponder the basket of fried smelt on the table, lined with paper towels to catch the grease--want to study their eyes like flat soda, wonder how I'm supposed to eat them whole. Wonder why we can't have normal food for breakfast like at Sara's house--Cheerios, or sometimes if her mother is home: buttered toast and soft-boiled eggs in her grandmother's dainty blue egg cups and matching blue spoon. Safe. Pretty. Nothing with eyes. Under the flakes of fried crust, I see a shimmer of skin as silver as foil, like the dimes my mother tapes to a board for each year I'm alive. How she tucked this into my suitcase before I left for college and I forgot about '93 and '95. How she said she'll never find a '93, and shouldn't this be a great thing to one day put into an oak frame, but not now, not until we find the missing coin? How we don't have many traditions left, thanks to Your Father. These are the things she says instead of a blessing to our food. These are the words that stick inside me as I snap off the next head.


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PINOYPOETICS ANTHOLOGY SUBMISSIONS CALL:

PINOY POETICS ANTHOLOGY

"The best part of our poetry is our struggle,
and the best part of our struggle is our poetry."
-- Al Robles

PINOY POETICS: An Anthology of Filipino Poets and Poetry
EDITOR: Eileen Tabios

DEADLINE: May 31, 2001

PINOY POETICS (PP) is expected to be the first U.S. anthology of Filipino poetics.

FORM OF SUBMISSION: Send copies of submissions (please do not send originals as manuscripts will not be returned). Also, send a cover letter with biographical information, your e-mail address (if any), and two (2) self-addressed, stamped envelopes for replies. Mail submissions to:

Eileen Tabios
Editor, Pinoy Poetics
3337 Clay Street, #3
San Francisco, CA 94118

If you wish to e-mail submissions, please send a query first to Eileen Tabios at PinoyPoetics@aol.com

Submissions are to be comprised of two parts: the poetics essay and the sample poem(s). The sample poem(s) may be integrated within the body of the essay, or be featured separately after the essay. All submissions, except poetry, should be double-spaced. Unless you feel you really need the space, you should try to limit the essay to no more than 25 pages double-spaced.

For both the essay and poems, all forms and styles are acceptable—the intent of the anthology is partly to show the diversity of concerns addressed by Filipino poets. Your essay need not be (though can be) written in traditional narrative/academic/expository styles—you can write the essay using whatever structure you wish as long as you feel it presents your poetics. As for the poems, there are no style constraints for the poems which can range over the lyric, narrative, abstract, collage, "painted poem" approach, surrealist, Beat, street, academic forms, spoken word, Rap, hip-hop, visual and concrete poems, etc.

Essays can be previously-published, though it is hoped that poets use PINOY POETICS as a chance to review previously-written works and update/ expand them as necessary to address as comprehensively as possible the nature of their work. Poems, too, may be previously-published.

Queries/follow-up questions may be directed to Eileen Tabios at PinoyPoetics@aol.com