AN AWARD-WINNING Filipino-American poet will conduct a poetry writing workshop for Artlet writers this term as part of his activities as visiting professor in the country.
Eugene Gloria, who is in the country through the Fulbright Program, aims to share the creative writing techniques he learned as a poet and professor at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.
He currently teaches poetry at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Graduate School, and is being hosted by the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies.
Gloria believes that undergraduate students both from the Philippines and the United States are “equally capable on taking the task on writing, as well as equally capable of reading closely the material used.”
The Fil-Am poet told the Flame in an interview that he looks forward to the interaction that he and the workshop participants will have.
“[I] am more interested in a sort of conversation that we will have as a group, so I’ll probably bring samples to discuss, then give writing exercises to the group and we’ll do some informal workshop,” Gloria said.
During his stay in the country, the visiting professor also hopes to learn from Thomasians.
“[I expect to have] an exchange of ideas, conversations, and hopefully learn from each other in how we process similar things like writing and coming up with ideas for our poems, sort of having conversation with our environment, our political environment, as well as our physical environment and even our psychic environment,” Gloria said.
Gloria’s awards include the Asian American Literary Award, Poetry Society of America Award, Pushcart Prize, 2013 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, George Bogin Memorial Award, and National Poetry Series selection for his collection titled Drivers at the Short-Time Motel.
He has also published two other poetry collections namely My Favorite Warlord and Hoodlum Birds.
Details of the workshop have yet to be released as of press time. F KRYSTAL GAYLE R. DIGAY
