AN ARTLETS instructor is among the recipients of the lifetime achievement award Gawad Balagtas in the 51st National Writers’ Congress of the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL), the country’s largest organization of Filipino writers.
Creative Writing instructor Joel Toledo, who recently earned the first prize for poetry in the 72nd Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards, is one of the laureates for the 38th Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas for his outstanding contribution to the country’s literary wealth in English poetry.
Toledo said the award is unique from all other distinctions he received such as contest prizes, residencies and publications, as he did not need to apply or submit anything.
“So, ‘yung Gawad Alagad ni Balagtas… kaya nakakataba siya ng puso, bigla na lang gugulatin ka na lang na… apparently, marami na akong naitulong daw sa panitikan and they respected that as a union, ‘yung Unyon ng Manunulat sa Pilipinas, so I’m very very honored and very very grateful,” Toledo told The Flame.
(This Gawad Alagad ni Balagtas warms my heart because it will just surprise you that apparently, I have already contributed much to literature and they respected that as a union, the Unyon ng Manunulat sa Pilipinas, so I’m very very honored and very very grateful.)
Introduced in 1988 by National Artist for Literature and then UMPIL chair Virgilio Almario, the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas is awarded to Filipino writers with significant contributions to poetry, fiction, essay, translation and literary criticism.
The UMPIL congress will take place on April 26 at Gimenez Gallery, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City.
Toledo shared the progression of his works from being an outlet for influences and recollections to becoming a site for advocacies.
“You start to think that poetry belongs to those who need it, instead of those who write it,” Toledo said, quoting Mario Ruoppolo in Il Postino: The Postman, a 1994 movie featuring a postman who falls in love with writing poems as he gets acquainted with famous poet Pablo Neruda.
“As you get older, you now have advocacies you fight for, and hopefully, your crafting is guided by your understanding of what you can say in poetry that doesn’t come across as propagandistic,” he added.
Guiding students toward becoming ‘empowered students of poetry’ by focusing on the craft and teaching them the poetic devices that aid in the appreciation of the works is also important for Toledo.
“You cannot teach the nuances of poetry easily. What you can teach your students is how to approach poetry, and be able to say stuff about poetry without guessing stuff,” he said.
‘Just write’
Toledo said exposure to Western influences should not be a hindrance to patronizing local works.
“For people like you and myself, who [grew] up reading and speaking in English and prefer it over Filipino in our own work, naturally, there is always that clash between what we get from foreign writers and here,” he said.
“The trick there is to scour the library, the internet, and find writers [who] came before us in the Philippine context who write like you…Read our own, that is my answer.”
He reiterated the need to be familiar with the literary tradition and emphasized the need to go beyond the sentimental aspects of poetry, encouraging young people to read a lot and to simply “just write.”
“Maybe, number one, read a lot of poets, and two, write, just keep writing. I don’t believe in writer’s block. You really just have to write, especially in poetry. Usually, the subject matter of poetry is discovered in the process of writing it,” Toledo said.
Toledo is a fellow of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies who has partaken in poetry residencies at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy. His poetry has earned him a Bridport Prize for Poetry, a National Commission for Culture and the Arts,Writers’ Prize and three Palanca awards.
Established in 1974, the union also confers the Gawad Paz Marquez Benitez and Gawad Pedro Bucaneg to educators of Philippine literature and organizations promoting literature and culture, respectively. F – with reports from Franz Zoe Stoelzl Baroña
