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Writeshop in the ‘Golden Hub’ |
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 by Alfred A. Yuson
(for Star, Feb. 7, 2005)
What was billed as the First Philippine Creative Non-Fiction Writeshop was
convened from January 27 to 29 by the Cultural Action Program of Promote Cagayan
de Oro Foundation, an initiative of the business council and other entities in
the city that prides itself as the center of the “Golden Hub” in Northern
Mindanao. The writing workshop was organized and hosted by the Liceo de Cagayan
University as a prelude to its 50th anniversary celebration.
Serving as the Writeshop director was Mozart Pastrano, who used to write for
Manila newspapers and magazines, essaying quality reviews on theater, film and
other arts. An International Scholar for Narrative Journalism under the Nieman
Program at Harvard University, he now gives back to his hometown, where he is
often consulted on academic and cultural matters.
“While we have many creative writing workshops in the country,” argued Mozart
for his baby, “all of them tackle the traditional genres of poetry, fiction, and
sometimes drama. We want the Cagayan de Oro Writeshop to focus on creative
non-fiction, a literary genre that has now come into its own. We want to explore
it in its many variations: the essay, biographical and autobiographical writing,
the writing of local history, narrative and literary journalism, and the like.”
Participants from Bukidnon and the far reaches of the Misamis provinces signed
up for the lecture and workshop modules. Given its modest budget, the Writeshop
couldn’t offer fellowships. Everyone had to part with specific fees for levels
of participation.
The wonder of it was that over 60 people showed up each morning for the lectures
featuring the invited panelists: UP Tacloban professor and premier poet Merlie
Wenceslao, UP Press director and distinguished fiction writer and editor
Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, and this columnist. Well, not really formal lectures,
but more of talks on certain topics, such as “Introduction to Creative
Non-fiction,” “Writing the Personal,” and “Cross-Genre Techniques.”
The participants were a healthy mix of English and literature teachers and
students, development specialists, NGO workers and not a few professionals from
various fields. The surprising degree of interest confirmed the growing notion
that creative non-fiction is the flavor of the season as far as literary genres
go. In the Western world, memoirs have risen to the top of book sales charts.
For her Irwin Chair lecture at the Ateneo on February 11, our soul sister if
militant anti-smoker Marra Pl. Lanot will render “Essaying in Creative
Non-Fiction.” But Mozart beat everyone to the punch with his genre-specific
Writeshop. The 44th edition of the National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete this
coming May will feature a parallel workshop on creative non-fiction, with a
dozen students from the University of Iowa forming the bulk of the fellows. But
then that’ll be another story, another little history.
Most everyone wishing to get into writing now seems to want to take a crack
first at the personal essay, before possibly venturing into the traditional
genres. In our country, the engagement of the creative voice with non-fiction
prose, or very simply the essay, whether formal or informal, has seen an upsurge
in actual published output.
Thanks chiefly to Jing Hidalgo’s pioneering efforts in this field, an increasing
number of otherwise peripherally occupied matrons have been taking workshops on
the genre, and/or collecting their (resultant) works and fashioning them into
engrossing thematic anthologies.
Examples: Shaking the Family Tree, co-edited by Hidalgo and Sandra Gonzalez;Why
I Travel and Other Essays by 14 Women, co-edited by Hidalgo and Erlinda
Panlilio;.Women on Fire, Lorna Kalaw-Tirol; Comfort Food and From This Day
Forward: Widows and Widowers Write, Panlilio both; Consuming Passions:
Philippine Collectibles, Jaime Laya; Writers Remember Their Hometowns, Ruel de
Vera; Aparador ni Lola: Past Lives, Precious Objects, Emmie Velarde; Life on the
Cusp, Rita Ledesma and Mert Loinaz; and When We Were Little (Women), Rhona
Macasaet and Tricia de Dios. Among others, numerous others. (Sorry, our limited
space inhibits mention of these titles’ respective publishers.)
The burgeoning list may have inspired Hidalgo to edit, for the UP Press, the
eminently instructive twin set: Creative Non-Fiction: A Manual for Filipino
Writers, and Creative Non-Fiction: A Reader. For both, all the sample pieces are
by Filipino writers.
Indeed, it’s been a sunrise industry for editors and publishers. No wonder then
that prospective pen-pushers/encoders are attracted to the genre. As they heard
at the Liceo auditorium, “creative non-fiction” covers quite a range of literary
sub-genres: diary, journal, biography, autobiography, memoir, travel writing,
food writing, art criticism, book reviews, feature interviews, feature articles,
sports columns, satire, personal commentary, etc. Even the blogging that now
consumes the valuable time of irrepressible Internet sharers is a form of
creative non-fiction.
So what isn’t? Well, to our mind, straight news reporting must remain an odd man
out — at least that found on the front page and still utilizing the confining if
utilitarian elements that are the “5 wives and 1 husband” (who what where when
why how). Annual reports, speeches. Anything that does not use devices common to
literary writing, especially the personal voice that invests the prose with the
cast of a personality rife with biases, predilections, quirks, preferences,
distinctive tone and attitude.
Otherwise, we informed the attentive audience, the so-called New Journalism
first attributed to Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote and Norman Mailer — also tagged as
para-journalism, and since brought to rollicking, wicked heights by Hunter S.
Thompson — simply practiced a literary crossover. But then that was what Nick
Joaquin had been doing since the Fifties!
Our mornings were spent on the talks and open forums, fielding questions,
quoting and reading examples. The afternoons were given over to dissection of
pieces handed in barely an hour before the sessions started. Thanks to acetate
photocopying and the use of a projector, we could share the variant prose with
everyone. Only a little over a dozen participated on the first day’s workshop,
but eventually these sessions drew greater involvement, even as writers came out
of the woodwork with feature pieces, informational text, even humorous
lamentation, such as on being annoyed by Kris Aquino’s voice/accent.
Those who had no manuscripts were given an assignment. Together with Jimmy Abad
who had come along for the UP Book Caravan reading, and the Writeshop “angels”
Giselle Tribaco, Sherryll Goodman and Denise Aguilar, we had had our first
sumptuous lunch at Tabing Dagat in nearby Opon town, one of a string of seafood
restos perched on the shoreline. Kinilaw, sinigang na hipon, and grilled kitang
heralded a couple of fine discoveries: adobong bijod or fish roe and sinuglaw —
where grilled pork bits, that is, sinugba, are added to kinilaw na tuna.
Scrumptious.
Okay, we said, write about a resto by the sea. Mostly it was the ladies who took
us up on this. One young girl cleverly wrote of her failure thus far to
experience the treat, segue-ing to parallels between the sea and God, while
another imagined herself disconsolate amid such a romantic ambience for lack of
a significant other to share the seafood with.
That personal voice is all it takes to indulge in creative non-fiction. But then
of course one must learn to wield the entire armory of tropes available: graphic
description, sensory input, structural hopscotch, metaphors, similes, allusions,
the works; why, even purple prose, or the use of that darned objective
correlative.
The Writeshoppers were encouraged to form a network that might someday produce
an anthology, say, Little Histories of Northern Mindanao. After all, their
island remains one vast and hardly tapped mine of invaluable narratives, from
clan nostalgia to etymology of place names, from lyricism of destination to an
aesthetics of food. Yes.
And we the privileged guests could well do our own collective take on that last
subject. C. de Oro has been on such a roll, such an obvious boom cycle, that
shopping, entertainment and food places now provide a gamut of delights.
The food tripping took us to Soledad for an all-beef buffet dinner that rendered
the vegan Merlie disconsolate; Sugba King for lunch of skewered, grilled tuna
basted with rosemary jus; Cafe Vienna for fabulous dessert (except that our
country’s name was misspelled in their neon signage, tempting us to strip away
an ‘n’ from Vienna); Pueblo de Oro Gold & Country Club for correctly spelled and
properly served Filipino breakfast; Gazebo for memorably creamy pasta as well as
turkey and apple sandwich; and Lauremar Beach Hotel for a groaning table that
started with durian and ended with the house specialty, crispy banana with a
superb langka-latik sauce.
What Pueblo de Oro Prez Rudy Meñez declared as the “Golden Hub” sure had treats
that turned our appetites to gold.
We must also thank Country Village for our lodging and the heliophiliac use of
their magnificent pool, Corso Guerlani for the drinks and techno music, Eileen
Escobar-San Juan who chairs the CDO Cultural Action Program, Tony and Joy
Enriquez for guiding us through the Night Café open-air weekend tiangge, and of
course the Liceo de Cagayan University AND High School for the double venues.
Founded in 1955 by the philanthropist couple Rodolfo and Elsa Pelaez, the
university now enjoys enlightened leadership from its president, the founders’
daughter Rafaelita Pelaez-Golez, who turns out to have been an early student of
Merlie’s. By the by, her brother, Rudolf Caesar P. Golez, a Juilliard graduate
and last year's prize-winner in the International Chopin Music Competition in KL,
held a Lizst piano concert last night to inaugurate Rodelsa Hall, Mindanao’s
first state-of-the-art theatre for the performing arts. Yup, to mark a golden
year in the Golden Hub.
* * *
Published in Gutom.org with permission from Alfred Yuson.
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Posted on Saturday, February 19 @ 11:05:48 CST by don |
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