Culture and Arts Notebook

MEDIA     by Perfecto Caparas PHILIPPINE journalists and various media organizations recently signed a pledge “to provide accurate, reliable and essential information that will empower voters and encourage public discussion and debate” in the lead-up to the nation’s May…

BOOK COMMENTARY Guwahati, 21 July 2021: India does not only preach but practices secularism, democracy and pluralism as the great nation follows the concept of vasudhaiva kutumbakam (world is one). Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Dr. Mohan Bhagwat, while inaugurating…

ARTIST’S PROFILE I first met Junyee when I was a student at the University of the Philippines in the early seventies. Together with some artist friends, we would later visit him when he began living in the campus of UP,…

POEM I love your poetry he said and poured his soul into my teacup   I was as usual afire with thirst It was still winter   No end in sight   Being a geisha of words an angel stunned…

INDIGENOUS CULTURE By Fr. Samuel Maximo and Genevieve Balance Kupang Ayuweng emanates from the sacred land, the heartbeats and music of the Cordillera indigenous peoples. The animating sound-beats of the land in harmony with the umili’s (village’s) chants, the sound…

ESSAY by Trudi Lee Richards “If you believe your life will end with death, nothing you think, feel, or do has any meaning. Everything will end with incoherence and disintegration. If you believe your life does not end with death, you…

POEM         If you don’t want to love I’ll take care of it I will love.   If you don’t want to smile I’ll take care of it I will smile.   If you don’t want to…

TALK/PRESENTATION   My talk can be summed up in three things: First, the context and my experience during this pandemic time. Second, the Well of Ginhawa, and its related metaphors. And third, how I started and built this poetry community.…

INTERVIEW         Once I read the short story “Life Sentence” in Lightspeed Magazine, I decided to save it to my collections of short stories I should revisit. It was 2019, and Matthew Baker was on my radar.…

ESSAY We must safeguard the web of life and care about the other living species that we share this planet with. Pygmy tarsiers eat and host bugs that we’ve seen at home — insects, spiders, lizards, bedbugs, lice, fleas, roundworms,…