The Palanca Poetry-in-English winners

Fellow poets Dinah Roma, Ramil Digal Gulle and I had our first meeting as judges for the Poetry in English category in this year’s Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature at  fittingly enough  Poetry & Prose Patisserie at Shangri-La Plaza mall.

Over a superb lunch with Nemie Bermejo of the Palanca Foundation, we compared our initial shortlists culled from the 95 entries. We averaged about seven or eight in our individual shortlists. We agreed to reevaluate entries that didn’t appear in the others’ lists, while noting that six noteworthy submissions were common in our respective shortlists.

Our second and final deliberation took place at Red Crab on Tomas Morato Avenue in Quezon City. Ramil was late by almost an hour, but Nemie, Dinah and I were charitable enough to leave him something to pick on from among the chili crab, tortang talong with alamang, sinigang na sugpo and pancit.   

We came up with a collective shortlist of six entries, then brought up the merits or deficiencies in some of these. One entry appeared to dominate the discussion, and we concurred that it would likely top our final choices.

But to apply a bit of science to the proceedings, we each ranked our top three choices, and gave our individual first-placers three points. Two points for the second-placer, and a point for the third-placer. 

Dinah and I had two entries tying for third place, while Ramil limited himself to a choice of three, except that he had two entries tied for second place.

The one entry that had us all impressed wound up a unanimous first. Those that tied for third were assigned half a point each for the arithmetical tally, while Ramil’s two second-placers got 1.5 points each.

Our collective first- and second-placers were clear winners. The third-placer per our points tally enjoyed half-a-point advantage over the fourth placer. The fifth-placing entry was clearly out of the running with only half a point from one judge, while the sixth in our collective shortlist didn’t gain a vote all.

We decided to review the entries that only had half-a-point separating them. Upon discussing comparative merits once again, we agreed that the fourth-placer per the numerical tally deserved to take third place instead.

“Homecoming Collection” was thus declared third-prize winner.  

Reviewing my copy of this entry, I realized that two of her poems gained a check mark from me. For one, I liked this ending stanza from the poem “Cerebral”:

“So when I told you I loved the music of a line, I meant/ how a house is kept from disarray by the strictness/ of a door, from disrepair by the boundaries of pillars, from ruin by the cement flooring underneath the tiles./ And you smiled thinking of how many times I led myself/ to the brink and still came circling back.”

For a full poem in the collection, here’s the other I gave a checkmark, titled “History”:

“And afterwards, they said my name/ Repeated it over again, historicizing it/ in their oral narrative that spread/ like feathers through the afternoon winds.// Is this infamy, this inglorious account/ of the wrongs you have done,/ of the people you wronged./ including yourself… is it fame?// First the feeling, then the event, then the inference,/ then the stretching of the truth in increments.// Tongues are master storytellers,/ sewing the threads in the fabric of the loom.// My words speak from my own soprano/ an aria of the blurring of grey to grey/ in the brown landscape of the autumn of desire.// The myth ruins the lady. Ruins the standing man./ Like a classical pillar becomes suddenly/ a frail stone, like that, ruined.// What is not talked about is whispered,/ What is not whispered about is written,/ What is not written about causes a woman to go mad.”

The entry that took second place was titled “Accidents of Composition.” It was a relatively thick collection of 15 poems, most of them extended, or at least over a page each, with topics/themes dealing mostly with landscapes or geographical features, from the Grand Canyon to Albuquerque to “Musings of a Calf with a Mountain” with an epigraph citing “Photograph, Legazpi, 16 November 2005,” and other titles like “After Reming” and “Cassandra After Yolanda.”

I liked best the briefest poem, “Lucy Afloat” with the epigraph, “After the scaterring of ashes / Pulpit Rock, 26 November 2014”:

“And then the light/ on these layers of grief/ grit, glow/ that make a rock.// From blinding white/ to ochre soft, then rust/ and pink/ running into each other —/ who knows which color came first/ or if the glow came/ before the grit/ before the grief?// Not even the rock knows. The secrets of its chronology.// It is we who look/ who think we know,/ or wish to know/ as we stand on it/ to steady our feet,/ steady our own running/ into each other/ and into grief/ or grit/ or glow.”

As cited above, the first-placer, titled “Hush Harbor,” was a unanimous choice. My copy of the collection had check marks on eight of the 11 poems — to signify appreciation of certain parts, stanzas or particular lines, and sometimes the entire poem. The poet was particularly strong with ending lines, such as these from the two-page “Seven Kinds of Stories”:

“… Was it Perseus/ who told it first, was it Ishmael,/ the snake-haired woman, the slippery whale// in an unruly sea? And what would you say/ if I asked you tonight, say you found me/ in this room, hunched over a page in dim light.// There’s a boat and a whale and a sea./ Let the narrative tell it, and let us be.”

The language, tone and diction sound tough and precise, while regnant with imagery and allusions, yet also favoring brisk musicality and casual, mock-commanding stances. Here’s the ending set of couplets in the poem “Reportless States”:

“… In city after city,/ we locked arms, downed gin from a shared glass;/ Knew the interior wasn’t a room, it was vast sky,/ the blue rim a moth takes for the moon.// Dear One, once we breached the rigid spaces, bound at the hip, bone for bone.// What’s distance to us but negotiation?/ We hang a sign on paneled glass,/ see how far the odds are with us: Love,/ come in, sit down, I’m open for business.”

I liked best the poem “Cellophane,” and not just because I’m a sucker for “father” poems. It comes in tercets. Here it is in full:

“It wasn’t like this before the fall./ If anyone knew you at all, it wasn’t by/ Aiming right on target. Dead center// Between the eye, or the thin/ White line on your torso, dignified/ By a downy fluff of hair.// If anyone knew you at all, it was by/ Knowing how to miss: aim for the button/ not the heart, aim for the fabric,// Not the skin, the flutter, not the beat./ You teach your husband how to be/ Imprecise, because you rely so much on science —// Tell him how your father flew planes. Made of cellophane and wood,/ How that little propeller whirred// Against hard wind, how he wound lift into it/ With a hook and a rubber band./ And he’ll know that this nostalgia’s// The hurting kind, your father gone/ Six years now, your heart as straight and level/ As only dead weight can make it.//

“He’ll ask how your old man could ease/ The cellophane into each plywood frame/ Without the wood breaking —// And the trick, you say, was how he’d dip/ The thing into liquid film, and wait until/ It leveled so lightly, you’d barely// Think it was there. Daily, he’d approach/ His burden, steadying the hand/ Against its weight. On film so sheer, a breath// Could tear it from its frame./ You speak to keep the pain even,/ It has to stretch across the years,// Length by heft./ You learn to break only as far/ As there’s still breaking in you left.”

When the certificates were eventually brought to us for our signatures, only then did we find out that the winners were Angela Gabrielle Fabunan for “Homecoming Collection” (third), Dr. Merlinda Bobis for “Accidents of Composition” (second), and Anna Maria K. Lacuesta for “Hush Harbor” (first).

We were happy with our selection. Ms. Fabunan is unknown to us. We welcome her to the roster of Palanca prizewinners. She must have been present last Friday evening at the 66th Palanca Awards night at Manila Pen’s Rigodon Ballroom.

Our friend Dr. Merlin Bobis would likely not have been there, as she’s still based in Australia. This is her fourth Palanca prize, having previously won a share of First Prize in 1987 for Poetry in English, a share of Second in 1989 for Poetry in Filipino, and an Honorable Mention in 1995 for One-Act Play.

For Ms. “Mookie” Katigbak, it’s also her fourth time to win a Palanca, all for Poetry in English. She won Third Prize in 2005, Second in 2008, and First Prize in 2014.

Congratulations to the three ladies, and to everyone else who received a Palanca prize last Friday.