About Pinili

About Pinili Early on, Lamiraw Creative Writing Workshop (LCWW) accepted fellows from all over the country into its workshops. Thus there are works in Ilocano, Tagalog/Filipino, Abaknon, Cebuano, English, Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a in this collection. We provided translations only for Abaknon and Ilocano which the writers themselves made along with their entries. We did not attempt to translate all the works since that would mean a huge and more expensive book. The collection is dominantly Bisaya—Waray, Cebuano, Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a. Abaknon is spoken only in Capul Island, an hour’s travel by pumpboat from the mainland in the northwestern coast of Samar. Abaknon or Inabaknon has not quite entered the world of print, and the 12,679 Capuleños are engaged in a huge struggle to keep their language alive in a vastly mediated world. Orthography for the Visayan languages has not quite stabilized. We have adapted the most popular conventions in the dominant languages with modifications that, we believe, contributes to readability. We have en- deavored, as far as we are able, to be consistent in our use of these conventions. The figures after the author’s name in each title refers to the specific workshop attended and the year of the workshop. Thus 5-2008 after Efmer Agustin’s name means he attended the Fifth Lamiraw held in 2008. Pinili is a Visayan term which means “chosen,” root, pili, “to choose.” Pili or Pinili is used across the Visayan family of languages, hence its aptness as the title for this book. The works were chosen by a Committee from submis- sions to the LCWW over the fifteen years of its existence. It is worth noting that LCWW never skipped a single year, not even in its 10th year in 2013, when Super Typhoon Haiyan had already breached the threshold of Eastern Visayas. Nemesio Baldesco Sr.’s essay “Dekada Lamiraw” chronicles that event. Pinili itself chronicles the brave and painful journey back to life of writing in Waray, one of the Philippines’ marginalized languages. Pinili is a brave assertion: we are here and we will go on. – The Editors 15 YEARS OF LAMIRAW 1 The cofounder’s perspective The Lamiraw Creative Writing Workshop got its name from the Waray term lamiraw which means “waking dream.” I proposed the workshop for funding to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) in 2003. It was officially launched in 2004 as a regional workshop at the Tiburcio Tancinco Memorial Institute of Science and Tech- nology (TTMIST), now the Northwest Samar State University (NwSSU). Prof. Merlie M. Alunan of UP Tacloban College was representing Eastern Visayas at that time in the executive council of the National Committee on the Lit- erary Arts (NCLA). She was the brains behind the creation of Lamiraw Cre- ative Writing Workshop. The beginning Lamiraw Creative Writing Workshop was hatched in the summer of 2003 in an intimate conversation between myself and Prof. Merlie M. Alunan. Voltaire Q. Oyzon her volunteer office secretary and writer-apprentice at that time, sat in the background, listening. I chanced to visit Mum Merl that day—as generations of her students are wont to do. Whenever her students were in town, they made it a point to visit her, a kind of a ritual—to pay homage to a person who had touched their lives while they were in UP Tacloban. A fine afternoon it was, I was on my way to the People’s Center to attend the UP Tacloban Commencement Exercises, a must-see occasion for us graduates. I, myself, had finished my AB Communication Arts in the previous year. Our conversation began kind of casual and light, until Mum Merl segued into proposing a creative writing workshop in Samar, specifying Calbayog City as the venue. At that time, I was a part-time literature in- structor in TTMIST. She wanted me to be the workshop director, for practical reasons. Calbayog was strategically located. Moreover, it was also a hub for the arts, culture, politics, trading and economy in the region. I was taken aback when she told me that I was to write the proposal to the NCCA to get the Samar-based workshop started. It was to complement the Leyte-based UP VisWrite which was already in place at UP Tacloban College. Her dream then was to establish three workshops in Eastern Visayas—one in Leyte, one in Samar, and another one in Biliran. The literary workshop was not new to me since I had sat in Mum Merl’s campus-based workshop—the UP Tacloban VisWrite, and in her classroom- based workshops in my undergrad literature classes. Writing a proposal to 2 PINILI convince the NCCA to fund the project and, eventually, running it, were totally foreign to me. But Prof. Alunan’s convincing power was overwhelm- ing. Her words were potent, her vision compelling. That very afternoon set my journey as a cultural worker for the next fifteen years and onwards with her constant support and encouragement. I admit I found the chal- lenge too herculean. But she assured me that she would support the proposal once it reached the NCLA. She promised to nurture Lamiraw in the same way she nurtured the UP VisWrite. She presented to me the UP VisWrite proposal as template for the Lamiraw proposal. To cut the story short, I wrote the proposal and the First Lamiraw Workshop was approved by the NCCA. Lamiraw rises On February 25-27, 2004, the First Lamiraw Workshop was launched in Cal- bayog City, Samar at the TTMIST. It was participated in by teachers from different schools in nearby municipalities, namely: SSCAF (Samar State Col- lege of Agriculture and Forestry) in San Jorge, Samar, CKC (Christ the King College) in Calbayog City, the DepEd Calbayog, CCMSF (Clarencio Calagos Memorial School of Fisheries) in Sta. Margarita, Samar, teachers of TTMIST and student members of the Lamiraw Writers Organization (LAWO). This last was under the Arts and Cultural Affairs Office (ACAO) of the TTMIST, headed by its director, the late Dr. Gabriela T. Sabenicio. The first batch of workshop participants were mostly teachers handling English, Filipino, Science, and Development Communication. The lone student fellow, Rolly Q. Abarro, was the founding president of LAWO, an Edu- cation student, major in Physics and Chemistry. Lamiraw was like a “torch pylon” that lit up the literary landscape of Samar. It released the pent-up voices that haunted the silent literary terrain of Samar for many years. In the years that followed, more slots were opened to writers from other prov- inces and regions, namely, Northern Samar towns such as Catarman, Catu- big, Palapag, San Roque, San Antonio, and Capul; Eastern Samar to include Dolores, Borongan City, Maydolong, Quinapondan, and Can-avid; Western Samar to include Sta. Margarita, San Jorge, Catbalogan City, Basey, Talalora, and San Sebastian; Leyte to include Tacloban City, Palo, Carigara, Dulag, Barugo, Abu-yog, Hilongos, Merida, Isabel, Baybay City, and Ormoc City; Southern Leyte to include Maasin City, Hinunangan, and Macrohon; and other regions outside Eastern Visayas, like Central and Western Visayas, even those from Luzon and Mindanao. NCCA officer, Renerio “Rei” Alba, was sent to monitor the project. Aside from Prof. Merlie Alunan, her colleagues, Dr. David Genotiva and Dr. Victor N. Sugbo served as panelists. The workshop ran for three days. The Fellows agreed that “it was kind of bloody”—not surprising since they were all first- 15 YEARS OF LAMIRAW 3 timers new to the critical process. Most of the fellows were shocked to dis- cover the rough edges of their literary outputs. Through Prof. Alunan’s prodding and nurturing attitude, Lamiraw prospered as a workshop. It evolved into an annual meeting place for writers across the Philippines, where they can discuss their poetics, scrutinize each other’s works, and plan how to sustain the literary growth in Region 8, as everywhere else. At the end of every workshop season, Katig Writers would usually visit Prof. Alunan, now an emeritus, to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the workshop implementation, always find- ing ways to improve and expand every year. As Lamiraw’s momentum grew, it became the torch bearer of creative writing in Eastern Visayas. It pursued the vision of good writing initiated by the UP VisWrite. VisWrite itself closed upon the inevitable retirement of Prof. Merlie Alunan. New and younger writers were coming out to contribute to the grow- ing body of works of Waray literature. Lamiraw fellows were trailblazing their way to other prestigious workshops in the country like the Iligan National Writers Workshop, the UP National Writers Workshops, the Silli- man National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete, and the Iyas National Writers Workshop in Bacolod City. More and more writers were coming out with their zines. A number of them were publishing in newspapers, blogs, magazines, and anthologies. Among those who had solo publications were Voltaire Q. Oyzon, Leonilo S. Lopido, Janis Claire Salvacion, Dominador Pag- liawan, Hermie Sanchez, and Nemesio S. Baldesco, Sr. The trend continues: Dr. Jondy Arpilleda’s debut publication is already in the press. Lamiraw alumni were winning the coveted Jimmy Balacuit Memorial Literary Awards for fiction and poetry in the INWW. Prof. Mer- lie Alunan championed the works of Lamiraw writers by including them in her anthologies. LWW matured as a workshop and survived the test of time, including the perennial problem of low funding. Even Super Typhoon Yolanda could not stop it, nor the dengue outbreak in Baybay in its 15th year. Life-changing experience Dedicating fifteen long years (and still counting) to the cause of reviving writing in the local languages has changed my life as a person, and as a writer.

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