updates

Lasallian students, faculty join UNESCO in World Poetry Day celebrations

The Departamento ng Literatura at Wikang Filipino (DLWF) joins the UNESCO and poetic communities all over the world in celebrating World Poetry Day on March 21. Starting today, the department will showcase a poem daily for two weeks via e-mail and the DLSU-Manila web site. The celebration of the World Poetry Day which started only last year aims to promote international intercultural understanding through poetry and to emphasize the call for the recognition of ancestral values.

The department will also sponsor a poetry recital contest called Poetry Jam 2001 on March 23, 12:50-2:20 p.m., at the William Shaw Theatre. The competition is limited to 12 performers, group and solo combined, and to students enrolled in literature classes.

Meanwhile, award-winning poet Dr. Cirilo Bautista, holder of The Angel and Celerina Reyes Distinguished Professorial Chair Lecture in the Humanities, will deliver “The Literary Life: Notes for a Probable Confession” on March 22, 9:40-11 a.m. at the Ariston Estrada Seminar Room.

In another news, the DLWF Bookclub, in cooperation with ABC Galleries, Filipino Bookstore and Bale Datung, held a special literary presentation called Conversation with Writer last March 1 at the Aferwords Café/Filipino bookstore in Remedios.

An intellectual and critical verbal exchange between the critic and the writer, the Conversation showcased in its first session writer Charlson Ong and young critic David Jonathan Bayot. They discussed Ong’s novel, An Embarrassment of Riches, which won the second prize in the English division at the 1998 Centennial Literary Contest.

Charlson Ong has produced three collections of short stories: Men of the East, Woman of Am-Kaw, and Conversion and Other Fictions. He is also a senior lecturer at the University of the Philippines Department of English and Comparative Literature, where he teaches creative writing courses. He has also taught creative writing at DLSU-Manila.

David Jonathan Bayot teaches literature and literary criticism at DLSU-Manila. He has produced the first book on a Filipino kritiko entitled Isagani R. Cruz and the Other Other: Intervention in Philippine Kritika. He also edited The Alfredo E. Litiatco Lectures of Isagani R. Cruz, and co-edited with noted Isagani R. Cruz, Reading Cirilo F. Bautista and Reading Bienvenido N. Santos.

The second session of Conversation will be scheduled in June, featuring critic Bienvenido Lumbera and writer Benilda Santos on the latter’s poetry collection Alipato.