Prizing Our Poems: On Sustaining a Life in Poetry Beyond Recognition

17th November 2025

Dear Tita Marj,

Happy Autumn from my side of the world. It feels right to begin this conversation just as one major poetry book prize ceremony has ended here, and another is already on its way for early next year. When the lists come out, I’m reminded of how prizes can open doors for a book — how visibility, even briefly, can help it find its readers. Yet these cycles also make me reflect on what lasts beyond them.

When my debut poetry book, Antiemetic for Homesickness, came out, followed by my second collection, AGIMAT, I learned how quietly a work can travel, with or without a major prize shortlisting beside it. I often return to something you once told me: If the book is true, it will stand the current taste of people and the test of time.

I’d love to hear how you’ve navigated your own seasons of recognition and silence, and how you stay close to the work.

With warmth,
Roma

20th November 2025

Good afternoon from rainy Manila, dear Roma. 

Yes, the Amihan season is a good time to hold our conversation on writing poetry, joining (or not) poetry competitions, winning (or not) poetry prizes, and enjoying (or not) their aftermath. As you can see from my parenthetical asides, only the writing is essential; the rest are choices each writer makes. I know some poets here who are very good but choose not to join poetry competitions. 

When I was just starting out as a writer, I joined the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in the Essay in English category, and won alongside two canonical male writers. That was a rite of passage for me, from the relative anonymity of writing to a more visible arena where one makes public one’s literary work.     

When my first poetry collection, Dreamweavers, was published in 1987, the only prizes some of the poems got were from the weekly magazine Focus Philippines, edited by the formidable writer Kerima Polotan, and from the Philippine Literary Arts Council which published the poetry journal, Caracoa. But the prestigious Manila Critics’ Circle gave my collection the National Book Award for poetry and the Book Development Association of the Philippines named my publisher the Gintong Aklat (Golden Book) awardee for Best Book of Poetry. 

From then on, I followed the pattern of quietly working on my poems. My turtle’s pace for publishing a poetry book is a decade for each title. Luckily, two more collections, Ochre Tones and It Is Time To Come Home were also given the National Book Award for poetry by the Manila Critics’ Circle, and the latter also gave my publisher the BDAP Gintong Aklat award.  

Sending you the fragrance of plumerias blooming in my little garden,
Tita Marj

11th December 2025

Dear Tita Marj,

Good afternoon from the UK. Your plumerias made me pause — I can almost smell them from here. That fragrance reminded me of how certain things in life can bring us back to ourselves. In the same way, I have just been back home — in Batangas. It was lovely to return to the salt of the sea breeze, the kalachuchi flowers, and the dry earth of noon. My daughter, Selena-Rose, played in the sand, splashing and paddling at the shoreline — she just purely enjoyed her holiday. 

And in thinking of home, I also think of coming back to our poems — after publication, after the noise of recognition and fleeting accolades. What truly sustains me is the quiet act of writing itself: listening to the rhythms of the words, arranging them carefully, and finding in drafting a connection to something larger than myself.

And wow — a decade for each title? I admire your patience and faith. I wonder what happened in that decade, and what did you do in that decade to sustain a creative life? I wonder how you find sustenance in the quiet work that goes beyond recognition.

Always,
Roma

Blessings on the newly-unfolded year, dear Roma. 

I’m back in Manila after the holiday respite in my island-home, Bohol. And yes, the plumerias in my bamboo garden in Manila are still blooming, perhaps enjoying the cooler Amihan weather. 

I am glad that you also had a chance to visit your home in Lipa with your family, particularly to let Selena-Rose experience swimming, wading, and immersing in warm tropical sea water in Batangas. 

You asked about what sustains my writing and it would not be far-fetched to say that the faithful presence of the sea gives me the rhythm to do the work I love. Last December 14, right after I arrived in Bohol to escape the tensions of the big city in the fever of pre-Christmas festivities, I spent many quiet sunset hours by the sea at the boulevard of my home-city. In one golden hour, I was able to watch two seahawks against a Constable sky. My writing is sustained by these moments of connection. 

You wondered what it was like to publish a poetry collection after a decade’s worth of work. The living always exceeds the writing and demands from the conscious writer full attention so that the writing can be an exercise of a different form of paying attention to the why and wherefore of the living. After Dreamweavers in 1987, the poems for Ochre Tones began to accumulate in my notebooks, written in-between everything I was doing in the mid 80s up to 1998. I worked with feminist groups like Kalayaan (Freedom), WICCA (Women Involved in Creative Cultural Alternatives), and the Women’s and Gender Studies Association of the Philippines (WSAP). I also taught Literature at university and served in various capacities as director of the university research center; then the university press; and later the Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center. I raised two teenagers as a single parent and guided them through their growing up crises into young adulthood. I was also travelling to other parts of Asia, the U.K. and Europe for conferences and writing residencies. 

I do not and will not write poetry on schedule or on demand from forces outside my life. Writing poetry is my way of puzzling out and working with the rhythms of my life–its famines and bumper harvests, its openings and closures–towards a new understanding of the meaningfulness of a lived chaotic, confusing, or confounding experience.  

Sending you a seahawk’s feather,
Tita Marj

Happy New Year, Tita Marj,

Thank you for honouring the slow unfolding of process, and for the seahawk feather — it felt like a true blessing. Reading about those years of living so fully — teaching, mothering, travelling, organising, paying attention to the rhythms of the world — reminded me how writing is never separate from life, even when we are not physically putting poems on the page.

I kept thinking of Wordsworth: “Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.” And I find myself understanding nature not only as the physical world — the sea, gardens, snow, and sky — but also as the natures of our human existence itself: the living, the loving, and the labouring.

We’ve returned to the UK in the heart of winter. It snowed the other day, and we walked together — my husband, our daughter Selena-Rose, and our dog Jiraiya — through Northycote Farm. The air felt clean, the fields wide and white, like a fresh page. I felt invited to begin again, to keep beginning, and to honour my writing as the seasons change.

Though I must confess that I haven’t written much poetry. Motherhood has been full. Yesterday, though, I watched my husband turn Selena’s old plastic bathtub into a sledge and pull her through the snow — blue tub, pink coat, white light, everything soft and pastel. I found myself reassuring myself that even watching—observing life—is a form of writing. For now, letting attention be enough feels right.

Have you had seasons when you feel like ‘nothing’ comes?

Writing from my desk, under a heating blanket,
Roma

8th January 2026

Good evening from Manila, dear Roma. 

What a happy image you gave me of Suriya pulling Selena-Rose’s bathtub through the snow to let her experience the sensual pleasure of motion, the crunch of snow and the snug feeling of being cocooned in winter gear. It is good that you have wide, open fields to walk through with them and your dog. I’m sure that you’re not only observing them and everything that calls to your consciousness; you know you are deeply entangled with their lives and the many living beings in Northycote Farm. The special dimension of this sense of connectedness is that you have given birth, you are now a mother and witnessing the fascinating changes every moment, every day, as Selena-Rose learns about herself, her loving family and elders, and her natural environment. I wish for you a motherhood that inspires you to write many poems. They are there, even if you haven’t had time to write them down yet. 

As for your final question about what I do during seasons when I “feel like nothing comes”, I must say that I have never felt this kind of stasis; nor do I look at periods where I am not in the physical act of writing a new poem as seasons of “nothing”. There is always some writing to do, other forms of engaging with the power of language, ways of working with words to craft a good line, a fragment of a good sentence into verses. 

At best, fallow periods teach me to wait patiently and discern that moment of full attention, of inspired readiness, when that “critical mass” of energy growing in the heart urges one to bring the humming inner speech out onto the fresh blank page. 

Very early on, I learned the physical and mental discipline of yoga from my teachers. Patience sustains the practice of focusing the mind’s energies. I also feed my creative spirit with music, good conversation or companionable silence with a handful of dear friends who’ve withstood life’s challenges with me over decades of being-with, and of course, delicious food and drink. Travel to a new place and culture is also good for the creative spirit.    

What about you? How have your fallow seasons been in your writing? What did you do, and how did you transcend these?

Sending you a sunbird’s song heard from the Nong Noch vine in the garden,
Tita Marj

10th February 2026

Dear Tita Marj,

Thank you for such a generous and grounding reflection — I was especially moved by how you describe fallow periods not as absence, but as another form of attention, of preparation — a gathering of energy before the poem finds its way back onto the page. Your words reminded me that discipline in art is not only about production, but about presence.

Before motherhood, I practised karate, where we recited House Rules. One of them was: hitotsu, doryoku no seishin wo yashinau koto. In short, endeavour. I often go back to this principle — to continue growing in character and practice, no matter what happens. In karate, I learned how breath is never incidental; it is intentional, shaping every strike, every pause. I think now of how poetry works in much the same way — each line guided by breath, rhythm, and awareness.

These days, my practise has been mostly walking with and running after Selena-Rose! In the mornings, I meditate, and at night I pray the rosary, trying to use these moments to ground myself, especially when unhelpful thoughts creep in: What if I don’t write another book soon? What if I’m forgotten? What if I never publish another poem at all? (The last one must’ve been nearly two years ago now.)

And yet — after this conversation, I’ve realised that the poetry of my life hasn’t disappeared. It simply arrives differently. Yesterday, it came as playful rhymes and improvised stories when Selena hopped onto my lap and said, “Mummy, tell me a story.” She listens with such attention every time. I keep reminding myself that this, too, is a form of writing — a poem living in the moment.

Maybe, this is what it means to truly prize our poems: not only through publication or recognition, but through breath, care, connection, and being first seen by those we love.

With gratitude for this beautiful exchange and all it has opened in me,
Roma