Brava, Bobis!
Today I arrive in Dumaguete in time to catch the last week of the 55th edition of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop. I join lifelong friends and guest panelists Marjorie Evasco, Susan Lara and Victor Jose Peñaranda, as well as Dumaguete-based panelist Cesar Ruiz Aquino and workshop director Ricardo de Ungria from Davao City.
It’ll be the first time in years that I serve in the panel on a week separate from buddy Gémino Abad, who had to do it earlier owing to conflict with his commitment to the UP Writers Workshop that goes on this week in Los Baños. He was in Dumaguete for the first week, together with fictionists Kimi Tuvera and Yeo Wei Wei, from Singapore, who lectured on “Writing and Belief.”
The second-week panelists were Simeon Dumdum, Jr., Nikki Alfar, Dumagueteño Ian Rosales Casocot and Prashani Rambukwelia. A novelist, Prashani delivered a lecture, “The Narrator in Creative Writing: A Sri Lankan Perspective.”
There’ll be no literary lecture this week, albeit David Lopez- del Amo, a Beijing-based literary agent who’s also with the Spanish Agency for Cultural Promotion as well as Literature Across Frontiers, is joining us at the last minute to observe the workshop and look into the possibilities of literary networking with Filipino writers.
Should we be asked this morning for preliminary remarks, or to orient the young writing fellows on our individual tacks for assessing their manuscripts, it will give me an opportunity to hark back to 1985 when one of the fellows was a very shy poet-writer from Albay recommended by the late lamented Ophie Dimalanta, under whom she earned a Master of Arts in Literature (meritissimus) from UST, after her Bachelor of Arts (summa cum Laude) from Aquinas University of Legazpi.
Two years after that Dumaguete workshop, Merlinda Bobis
became a joint winner for a Palanca first prize for poetry in English with her collection titled “Peopleness.”
In 1989, she won the Palanca second prize for Lupang di Hinirang: Kuwento at Sikreto, a collection of poems in Pilipino. Followed the Likhaan Award for Daragang Magayon and other poems at the UP Writers Workshop in 1990, and on the same year, the Gawad Cultural Center of the Philippines for Mula Dulo Hanggang Kanto, another collection of poems.
After teaching Literature and English for a decade, she went to Australia in 1991 on a study grant. Merlinda completed a Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong, where she wound up teaching creative writing for more than 20 years.
And she’s been on a roll since, having focused more on short fiction thence long fiction, as well as radio plays.
Last week, word went out that her fourth novel, Locust Girl. A Lovesong, won the prestigious Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. She received her prize worth 40,000 Australian dollars at a special event of the Sydney Writers Festival on May 19.
Described as a dystopian novel about climate change, Locust Girl was published last year by Spinifex Press (of North Melbourne), which had also published her poetry collection Summer Was A Fast Train Without Terminals in 1998, her short story collection White Turtle in 1999 and 2013, and Fish-Hair Woman in 2012. Coincidentally, Spinifex is celebrating its 25th year of publishing.
Her first and second novels, Banana Heart Summer and The Solemn Lantern Maker, were published by Pier 9, Murdoch Books Australia, in 2005 and 2008, respectively, with the first also released by Delta, Random USA, in 2009.
Subsequent local editions appeared in Manila for White Turtle in 2000 (De La Salle University Press), Banana Heart Summer in 2005, and Fish-Hair Woman in 2012 — both by Anvil Publishing, which also published Dream Stories in 2014.
Last October, Merlinda joined Danton Remoto and me at an Anvil launch of our books at Conspiracy Bar & Garden Cafe, where she read excerpts from her latest novel.
The judges for the Cristina Stead Prize for Fiction, where Bobis’ novel had joined a shortlist of six titles, had the following comments:
“Locust Girl is a transfiguring fiction that asks the reader to reflect on, and see into the hearts of, those labelled as outsiders by political systems. … Bobis’ story resonates not only in today’s Australia but throughout an environmentally and politically disrupted world where repression and violence are rife; where huge numbers of people leave their homes to undertake dangerous journeys in the search for life.
“There were many fine and stylistically accomplished works among this year’s entries, but the distinctiveness, sweep and visual power of this short novel set it apart. Bobis’ fabulist, indeed fabulous, narrative enables the reader to imagine what it might look, smell and feel like to be treated as less than fully human. It asserts boldly that in a world seemingly devoid of rationality and logic, a young girl’s dream or a hallucinatory vision may well offer a means of maintaining hope, dignity and identity.”
Previously, Lucy Sussex of Sydney Morning Herald had written in a review: “(A) book that can be read with pleasure for its language alone, and which subtly and surely subverts the status quo. Bobis messes with our minds, in the very best way.”
Here are excerpts from two short chapters, the first about the bombing of a wedding, and the second after the bombing:
“On the dunes endlessly changing shape, Just-me-uhm saw a crowd of bodies swaying with the wind. His eyes picked up the bride and groom. He picked up her swollen belly and his throat hurt. Then the first ball of fire hit the wedding party. He would never be able to clear his throat again after that. He found himself running towards the screaming crowd running from the conflagration. ‘I lost sight of the bride, I lost sight of the bride,’ was all he could hear in his head, until a song rose from the fires.
“Beloved, forgive me
“Love is clumsy because
“It has so many hands
“It has so many hands”
Excerpt 2:
“In the fog my first thought was her village smells familiar.
“After a while I saw the black bodies.
“A charred man was dragging himself on one leg. I wanted to ask him a question, but I could not open my mouth.
“Behind him was a woman with arms curved like a cradle, but it was empty.
“They disappeared into the fog.
“I saw a few more, walking silently as if the lights had burned out their voices. My brow itched like my throat as my lungs heaved and I remembered a name. ‘Abarama, Abarama … ’
“I heard myself whisper. Something was happening to my eyes and cheeks. It was so familiar.
“Fathers who do not speak
“Make me speak
“Mothers who do not weep
“Make me weep”
Literary prizes and Merlinda Bobis have long been fast friends. She received the Pamana Philippine Presidential Award for achievement in the arts (for Filipino expatriates) as early as 1998. In 2006, she won the Gintong Aklat Award for Banana Heart Summer, and the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas for poetry and prose in English, Pilipino, and Bikol from the Unyon ng Manunulat ng Pilipinas. And in 2014, it was the Juan C. Laya National Book Award (Best Novel in a Foreign Language: English) from the National Book Development Board and Manila Critics Circle for Fish-Hair Woman.
Internationally, among her numerous distinctions have been the 1995 Ian Reed Foundation Prize for Radio Drama and the Australian Writers’ Guild Award and Prix Italia for the same radio play, Rita’s Lullaby, in 1998. Her fiction gained the Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award for White Turtle in 2000, and the Judges’ Choice Award at Bumbershoot Bookfair, Seattle Arts Festival for The Kissing (published as White Turtle) in 2001.
Her plays have been produced/performed on stage and radio in Australia, the Philippines, Spain, USA, Canada, Singapore, France, China, Thailand and the Slovak Republic. She has also performed some of her works as theatre, dance and music.
Having retired from teaching at the University of Wollongong after 21 years, Dr. Merlinda Bobis is now Honorary Senior Lecturer at The Australian National University.
Last week, in our e-mail exchange about her latest win, she wrote:
“Ah, Dumaguete. That part of my life feels like a dream from ages ago. I remember feeling so inadequate among more ‘sophisticated’ and experienced writers, especially after that first day when Dad Tiempo thrashed my short story then walked out on it. You can tell the new voices of Philippine literature at the workshop that it’s not just talent but more so years of discipline and passionate caring for the story and the word that make the writer. One cares for the sentence or the line as much as for the stories that consume us.”
Elsewhere, Merlinda Bobis has written:
“Writing visits like grace. Its greatest gift is the comfort if not the joy of transformation. In an inspired moment, we almost believe that anguish can be made bearable and injustice can be overturned, because they can be named. And if we’re lucky, joy can even be multiplied a hundredfold, so we may have reserves in the cupboard for the lean times.”
Surely, the SUNWW fellows this year can take inspiration from her words and accomplishments.
