Meritage Press is delighted to announce the results of the 2007 Meritage Press Holiday Poetry Contest, judged by Eric Gamalinda. The results include this contest’s second time for a tie for “First Place”, and also the first repeater for “First Place”:

First Place, Co-Winner: “First Winter Passing” by Naya S. Valdellon
First Place, Co-Winner: “O.N.S.” by Marcel L. Milliam
Honorable Mention: “AN EXPLANATION” by R. Torres Pandan

Naya S. Valdellon is this contest’s first poet to receive “First Place” twice, the prior time occurring in 2002 when she tied with Michella Rivera-Gravage in the contest judged by Oliver de la Paz. The 2007 results also feature our first non-English language poet winner. Unfortunately, Eric Gamalinda felt he was only able to assess the Tagalog entries, and so entries in other Filipino languages were not included in the judging.

Judge Eric Gamalinda says about the winning entries:

“First Winter Passing” is a lovely poem about how language connects and disconnects, and how it is nearly impossible for many of us to bridge this solitude except perhaps through poetry and its spectral silences. “O.N.S.” is deceptively old-fashioned like a kundiman, but fused with a naughty, graphic eroticism and a verbal precision that no translation can do justice—by lines 7-9, I was captivated by its masterful lyricism. “An Explanation” is a quiet, elegant little poem that feels like an iceberg: beautiful, mysterious, larger than it seems. I apologize to those who sent poems in other Filipino languages that I couldn’t read; I had to exclude them from the competition, and thus only judged the Tagalog-language poems.

Here are some information about the winning poets:

Naya S. Valdellon is currently finishing her M.A. in English major in Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. Her chapbook of poems, The Reluctant Firewalker, was published by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts as part of its UBOD New Authors Series in 2005. Her poetry has received the Hart House Poetry Prize, the Maningning Miclat Award, and the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature.

Marcel L. Milliam is Ilonggo by birth but Capiznon by association. He is the founding Chairman of “Yanggaw”, The Capiz Writer’s Circle, and a member of the “Dagyang Pulong” Iloilo Writers Group. He works for GMA TV6 in Iloilo as a talent under the ETV Department. He writes poetry mainly in Hiligaynon, but produces pieces in English and Filipino as well. After receiving fellowships from the 1st Fray Luis De Leon Creative Writing Desk of the University of San Agustin, Iloilo, “2nd Panagsugat” Writers workshop of UP Vis-Min, 12th Iligan National Writers Workshop of the MSU-IIT, and the 7th Iyas National Writers Workshop for his Hiligaynon poems, he has now “crossed-over” into fiction. He has won twice the NCLA-VI “Paktakontxt” of the NCLA-VI, consecutive wins in the UPV SWF Bigkas Binalaybay sponsored by the NCCA from 2003-2007, both in the Pagbigkas at Pagsulat Categories. His works have been published in four issues of SanAg, the official literary Journal of the Fray Luis De Leon Creative Writing Desk of the USA-Iloilo as well as in the 33rd ANI of the CCP and numerous other local and national publications. At present he is a 3rd Year student in the Bachelor of Laws Program (Llb.) of the University of Iloilo College of Law and is actively involved in the works of the Alternative Law Groups Inc. (ALG) and was a paralegal intern of the Children’s Legal Bureau (CLB), Cebu. When he miraculously has free time, he is also involved with the Iloilo theater scene as a stage actor.

R. Torres Pandan has been a law school dean for ten years and a partner in the biggest law firm in Bacolod City, Philippines for 16 years. He has won the Palanca Awards for poetry and his first book of poetry was short-listed for the 2005 National Book Awards. He is also the Research Director of the Philippine Supreme Court’s JURIS project on mediation.

We are pleased to share the winning poems:

First Place, Co-Winner by Naya S. Valdellon:

First Winter Passing

“the tangled language of those who always stuttered as they spoke, caught as
they were on the narrow ridge between two nearly native tongues”
—Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

1. Daylight Saving Time

Thirteen hours between Toronto and Manila—
soon to be twelve next Sunday, the eleventh of March.

The hands of the clocks in my room ache to be moved—
all three of them, telling time minutes apart.

Dali’s watches wilt in the waning light, in the poster
inches above our heads, hardly original. Tell me,

what’s another hour to lose while we loosen our tongues,
stifle our yawns? A fly grazes the sagging face

above our faces. Ants kiss on top of the stopwatch.
Here and now, the cliffs between us persist.

2.

Tell me about your country.

A constellation of islands
near the world’s waistband.

Tell me what it looks like.

A crouching old woman
with a walking stick
and a hand on her hip.

I don’t mean on a map.

You mean from a plane?
Through window panes? A mirror?
Describing seven thousand selves
in one sentence is impossible.

I’m not asking for it.

No, you’re better at imperatives.

3.

The man I love has faith in words.
They count, he says. He wants to make a name
for a shade of nostalgia
for things that haven’t happened
yet. You’re not original,
I tell him. It’s called longing for a reason.
He plays songs backwards
for fun, leaves too many bookmarks
between too many pages.
He loves me for my mind. One must have
a mind of winter, I say,
not finding refuge in my own words.

4.

Silver white winters that melt into springs—
not my song, not my seasons. In my country,
summer is warming up, doing morning stretches.

Here, his fingers skate on my skin. My blood hisses
as I parse his vocabulary of sighs. He tries hard
to say the word mahal, which means both love

and expensive. His tongue teeters over kita ,
a possessive pronoun roping You to Me, as well
as the interrogative “See?” I want him to stutter

his way into my archipelago. Later, our breaths
interlace in the frosty air. The specters
of our unsaid things look white and willful.

5.

News from Manila           My father had a stroke           Of bad luck
Bad blood           Blood clot causing           Traffic in his brain
I should have called           Long distance           When I dreamt of him
Playing Chopin’s Heroic Polonaise           Last song over Warsaw radio
Before the slaughter           Why do I know this           My father loved
The piano           Loves           My poems           Ways of passing time
My lover brews espresso to keep me going           He had a French girlfriend
Does the taste of her persist           Fall back            I will be patient
Under observation           Hospitals skew hours           My father gets impatient
When his fingers press the wrong keys           Ice plummeting
From the CN Tower           Keeps us indoors           He has no key yet
Miles between us           Arpeggios           Chords like a phone ringing
My mother’s voice           Metallic and rusty           With relief
Wheeled to a private room           Spring forward           This is good
He can’t stand up on his own           Yet           He holds my hand in his sleep

6.

I’m writing him a card, a catalogue
of streets, slushy with the voices
of crazy people. I wonder whose children
they could be, whose lovers.
             Santa squats
along Bloor and Bathurst, unable to return
north to December. Sleigh broke down.
Passersby who throw him coins pay tribute
to their childhoods.
             It’s my birthday,
the man on St. Clair declares, as if it were
a demand, palms turned up like a saint
that’s strolled out of church and misplaced
his halo, lips parted for what could be curses,
what could be kisses.
             A woman outside Future
Bakery screams, The lights don’t change!
The lights— she stops as the green man
glows, the outline of his body telling others
Go.
             A pedestrian pats the back of a man
on a unicycle along Yonge, shoulders dusted
with snow, arms embracing the world,
and pedalling, pedalling by.
             Get well soon.

7.

Write the truest sentence you know.

I have true thoughts every two minutes.
As many as you can in two minutes then.

All languages sound lovely until you hear their words for shit.

Winter makes us all look like impostors.

It’s impossible to get lost in this city of grids and signs.

There are too few original thoughts and too many translations.

Everything I love has an expiration date.

8.

At the bakery, the women behind the counter
converse in Filipino. They are shorter than me,
browner, more at home. When my turn comes,
I smile, Hello. Magkano yung tinapay sa dulo?

One of them looks at me icily, their circle
broken. The other replies in perfect English—
That would be four dollars, plus tax—
A’s overextended, twang taut with defiance.

I hold the bread to my chest, negotiating
the slushy sidewalk. I need an interpreter,
not a translator. When I tell this story
to my lover, he says proudly, Oh, mahal.

*****

FIRST PLACE, CO-WINNER by Marcel L. Milliam:

O.N.S.
(Oras ng Silakbo)

Unan mo’y mga bisig ko
Sa aandap-andap na ilaw
Kinukumutan kita ng yakap
Hingal at kapwa sisinghap-singhap

Salikop ng labi mong bumibigay buhay
Angkin mo’t ayaw mapaghiwalay
Mga anghel kaya’y magalit
Sa mapangahas kong pagpuslit
Sa likurang pintuan ng langit?

Buong lakas kong naisambulat
Sinimot, nilasap mo, ulang kumalat
Pagbuhos ng bugso ng nakaw na saglit
Saan kaya kakanlong, sa bagyong masalimuot

Ngunit haring araw, lulok na sa kanyang trono
Bangon na, bago pa man makahalata ang mundo
Halik ang syang tanging huling gawad
Bago lisanin, unan, kumot, bisig, at nakaw na saglit

*****

HONORABLE MENTION by R. Torres Pandan:

AN EXPLANATION

He counted fifty-nine swans
At Coole Park, and convinced
Himself each was half of a pair.

I don’t believe Yeats erred
When he claimed they flew
Lover by lover. No doubt,

He likewise found the odd male
Skimming the surface of the pond,
Wooing its own mad reflection.

*****
*****

ALL FIRST PLACE WINNERS of the MERITAGE PRESS HOLIDAY POETRY CONTEST:

2007: Naya S. Valdellon & Marcel L. MiIliam (Judge: Eric Gamalinda)
2006: Joel M. Toledo (Judge: Michelle Bautista)
2005: Arkaye Velasquez Kierulf (Judge: Jean Vengua)
2004: Joel H. Vega (Judge: Sarah Gambito)
2003: Luisa A. Igloria (Judge: Patrick Rosal)
2002: Naya S. Valdellon & Michella Rivera-Gravage (Judge: Oliver de la Paz)
2001: Carlomar Arcangel Daoana (Judge: Nick Carbo)