Memoir

David McKirdy

I first encountered Professor Marjorie Evasco in 2004 on an e-mail list of confirmed participants to the Wordfeast Poetry festival in Singapore. I was part of a six-strong Hong Kong contingent and Professor Evasco was there representing the Philippines with five other poets from her homeland. These included Dinah Roma and Krip Yuson. I'm not sure what I was expecting after reading her impressive resume, which included a writing fellowship in my own native Scotland, but I resolved to be particularly circumspect in her company as she sounded like a formidable woman who could probably beat me in a fist-fight!

After registering our arrival with the organisers we were each allocated a room in the Costa Sands, a fairly basic but clean and comfortable resort. My next door neighbour turned out to be “Marj” and her wonderful daughter, Mayann. They introduced themselves and we fell into easy conversation like old friends, finally retiring just before midnight. Throughout our stay in Singapore I got to know and admire Marj through her performances and her company. This was the start, not only of a great friendship, but also the beginning of an Asia-wide literary fraternity that exists till date. 

I myself was for a number of years on the board of The HK International Literary Festival and was able to invite many of the talented poets who had attended Wordfeast to Hong Kong to participate in our own festival. Marj was one of my first choices, although her academic obligations meant that it was only in 2006 that she was able to attend. In typical selfless Marj-style she brought six of her students with her to share the experience and I was able to introduce them to Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney. Marj, as usual, impressed with her performances and shone in the company of internationally recognised poets.

In 2012 Marj very graciously put my name forward to the organisers of The First Asia Pacific Poetry festival in Vietnam and I was invited to attend that event held in Hanoi and Ha Long Bay, we had a great experience and met more poets from the region. During this visit we spoke about the Manila International Literary Festival. I asked if she might wangle an invitation for me to attend and broached the subject of the rather unfortunate acronym: 'M.I.L.F.' She nodded and said "Yes, the ‘Moro Islamic Liberation Front’ is not really the message we want to send". I replied "Dear Marj, if only it was that innocuous!". I was then faced with the task of whispering in her ear what the acronym stood for in the rather low company in which I, as a car-mechanic, often find myself. She caught her breath, visibly reddened and by the time I attended the festival later in the year it had become the P.I.L.F. During my visit to Manila Marj arranged, through Dinah, for me to give a craft lecture at De La Salle University and introduced me to Susan Lara who was to be the director of the Silliman University's National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete the following year. Krip had “bigged me up” and recommended me as a visiting overseas panelist this year. Alas I became seriously ill on a trip to the USA and had to cancel my participation, eventually being medically evacuated back to Hong Kong. I fully expected that, having cancelled my participation at the last minute, I had likely ruined my chances of an invitation to Dumaguete. However, Marj's introduction to Susan had clearly rehabilitated me and in due course I received an invitation addressed to Professor David McKirdy. I already felt like a bit of an imposter but I hung on to the title for a week before correcting the error.

2013 was another year where we were able to meet and spend time together, Marj introduced me to her friends in Dumaguete, twin sisters Myrna and Lorna, who reminded me of my two cousins Helen and Wilma back in Scotland, our time in Dumaguete allowed only a single meeting over her first and my last dinner, but I was able to arrange for her to be a visiting writer for a month at the Baptist University of Hong Kong's International Writer's Workshop. She spent a couple of days with my wife and I at our home and we held her to ransom until her students each wrote a sonnet. The following year a dear friend's daughter was getting married in Carmel in California; they asked me to read a poem during the ceremony so I asked Marj if I could read her poem, 'Origin'. In a strange instance of serendipity, one of Marj's students was among the guests and reported back to Marj what a wonderful surprise it was to hear her work so far from home.

Our lives have been loosely intertwined since that first meeting in Singapore. Marj has been such an inspiration and a positive presence during the ensuing years, I return to her poetry time and again and I always look forward with pleasure to our next meeting. On this, the occasion of her turning seventy years young, I send my love and wish her a long, happy, creative and productive future.