Marjorie “Marj” Evasco, Kindred Sister in my Writings

Ulysses B. Aparece

Bol-anons, or Boholanos and Boholanas, the demonym for people born and who grew up in Bohol, Philippines, are known far and wide for many things. Aside from being believed to be hospitable, frugal, and environment-friendly, Bol-anons are also thought of as staunch supporters of people’s hopes and aspirations, more so if these people are from Bohol themselves.

There is no truth, therefore, of the saying that Bol-anons are “ija,” “ija,” “aho,” and “aho” (or selfish: what is for him or her is his or hers alone; what is mine is mine alone). But the Bol-anons themselves would merely shrug it off, rationalizing that what is being meant here is the Bol-anon’s way of pronouncing syllables, which is endemic to them and nothing more: k as h or y as j and should have no other intended meanings.

I can mention one primary example as attestation to the foregoing: the case of Marjorie “Marj” Evasco. She is someone to look up to if one needs help from creative and critical standpoints, especially in writing and teaching. These two areas have been Evasco’s domains, having received recognition and awards in national and international settings. Her seminar workshops and lectures gave her numerous praises and accolades, such as Metrobank Foundation’s Outstanding Teacher in 1999 and Metrobank Foundation Awardee for continuing excellence and service in 2004.The League of Corporate Foundations also mentioned her as someone who has 27 mraised the level of teaching by making learning more engaging and helping develop new artists in the field of literary arts.

Her accomplishments and recognition as a prizewinning teacher and writer have made her a sought-after consultant and adviser to those who would like to follow her steps. She received the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature, the National Book Award, the President Carlos P. Garcia Award for Literature, “Ani ng Dangal,” or “Harvest of Honors.” We, her provincemates, are happy and proud of her as someone from our place who has made it big beyond the shores of Bohol.

Marj, as we fondly call her, has helped Bol-anon writers, researchers, and teachers shape their works’ direction (and consequently their lives) through lectures, workshops, and face-to-face or online consultations and modalities. My writing career took a positive turnaround through her guidance and direction.

I will thus be sharing here Marj Evasco’s huge contribution and influence on my writing engagements:

1. As a resource person in Marjorie Evasco’s “Articulations of the Sacred in Three Boholano Poets,” 2003

Evasco delivered this lecture to the De La Salle University scholars on March 31, 2003. The study featured some of my works, especially on ethnopoetics. She said: “I decided to devote this school year’s research work for this lecture to the tradition of my island-home Bohol.” She continued:

This time around I will be focusing on the work of three contemporary male Boholano poets who write in English and in Boholano variant of the Cebuano-Visayan language. They were chosen because they were born and raised in the localities which could represent the three districts of Bohol: Loboc, with Anthony Incon and the meriko in the first district; Loon, with Clovis Nazareno and the mananambal, in the second district; and Inabanga, with Ulysses Aparece and the sukdan in the third distinct.

Mircea Eliade, in his extensive study of the history of religions, defines the shaman as one who masters the techniques of ecstasy (1964). In the epilogue of his definitive work, Eliade points to the probable connections between shamanism and literature by connecting the cultural creations made possible or stimulated by the experiences of the shamans.

In light of Eliade’s insight, Evasco wanted to discern the techniques of ecstasy at play in their practice of poetry. For these three poets, in particular, I wanted to see if I could draw out the ecstatic in their poetry in three possible areas: 1) as leitmotifs dealing with aspects of the divine or supernatural; 2) as symbolic narratives of the practices of healing, magic, and sorcery; and 3) as the magic of the divine or supernatural beings that inhabit the unseen world.

My poems that were analyzed and discussed were Calling (which signals the beginning of the training as one undergoes shamanic healing); Water Speak (where the poet’s persona on the discourse of the cleansing power of water grows deeper); Sacred Groves (where the persona pays homage to the ancestral spirits in the wilderness); Shaman (which is the meeting of the shaman and the apprentice); and Ritual (which narrates the apprentice’s point of view, the ecstatic technique of the Sukdan shaman).

The poems are published in “Space Speaks,” my first book of poetry. Because of space constraints, I am sharing here two poems only:

1.1 Water Speak
(for Harold Olofson, shaman in the classroom)

At first, they seemed to me a gathering
Of fogs: Kambantog Springs. Matalom Deep.
Hidden Dimension. The Language of Silence.
Your words were cool, flowing, gentle.
Why have they got stuck outside
The parched territories of my mind?

I labored to collect your every drop of word,
Globules of syllables I dared to include, squeezing
Them into my pried open understanding
Until there sprang a slant of learning…
Punta Engaño… and I am now moving
With little ease toward a certain nearness.

Once in dream-bubbles, here I am now
Measuring the width of this vast liquid.
My tongue may not be that eloquent yet
In guessing when this great crossing ends.
Not the water you have tamed which
With fluency reveals these secrets:

The proper unfolding of the sail,
The exact aiming of the helm.

1.2 Shaman
(for the Sukdan of Inabanga)

We both believe in this: place
As either timed or timeless.
A constant watchman though I am,
I still dare cross the far boundaries
In search of the other side of space.
Gatherer of leavesrootsstones, you are
The keeper of the ancient craft of touch
Extending welcome to a new realm
Where begins the travel of remembering.

So, I gain entrance to this great beyond,
I must admit I carry a baggage for you
To unburden, these fruits of my living.
You thus begin your shaman’s journey
On my body, a vast geography of frightened
Muscles, bones, nerves, joints, veins.
Your hands whisper the secrets of gabun,
Kulavu, tanglad, kugang-kugang…
Green residences of gentle duwendes.

Skill of hands untangles invisible knots
In my stomach, quieting down murmurs
Of the heart; yours is a sweet gurgle
Of rivulets, breath of earth and forest:
Mutya sa Kuampang, mutya sa Panghagban,
Mutya sa Matinlig, mutya sa Puwawan…
Strange prayer that never really matters.
The means is the message, a massage,
Until your crystals proclaim this portent:

The world I left in one certain moment
Has followed me with much vengeance,
Now shakes your space from fossilized sleep.
O great healer of fears -- medicine man,
Tambalan, oracionan, baylan, sukdan- -
What has happened to your knowing hands?
Can’t they resist with open palms these
Beastly creatures, maps of hardest structures?
Where are your spirit familiars?

Your canticles from the sanctuary called heart
Cannot outlast the monsters’ roars lording
Over bleeding shrubberies, drowning
Your place’s whispers, breezes, sighs.
How, in the end, you have become
Your own province of silence: red rivulets,
Purple boundaries, capital wound.
Mine, now, is the knowing touch of duty,
Filling the void, wishing to connect,

Sending you off, never letting go.

After careful preparation according to the steps of the rituals, the trance begins with the chanting of names of sacred places and ancestors. It reaches its dramatic climax when the spirit enters the body of the sukdan and empowers the healing process.

Evasco concludes:

The way of curing of the sukdan (and mananambal and miriko) shows us how contemporary communities can find their way back to a life with integrity and wholesomeness. Even as we are caught in the seemingly irreversible changes of lifeways in the country’s headlong drive to implement 21st-century concepts of national and global development, we must imagine and remember that all creation is sacred.

2. As a keynote speaker on Performance Studies at De La Salle University in 2013

Evasco had convinced me to accept the invitation as a keynote speaker of the University’s first colloquium on performance studies. The content came mainly from my dissertation leading to Ph.D. in Anthropology degree taken at the University of San Carlos, Cebu City:

I grew up in the town of Inabanga, province of Bohol, where stories from the distant past still exist today. Headless Spanish priests walking in empty streets, condenadas dragging metal chains, and spirit warriors in pursuit of Spanish soldiers still roam in the tracks of imagination. Aside from these apparitions, tales about creatures of the dark and men and women of extraordinary character are as immortal as nights. Through the narratives of elderly men collectively called tambalan or folk healers, names of charismatic leaders like Sikatuna, Tamblot, Handog, Guba-Guba, Baylan Karyapa, and Dagohoy are remembered by many Boholanos with pride and reverence. Despite the popularity of their stories, especially those of Dagohoy, only a few gained a wider circulation space. This felt need for additional information on Bohol’s folk heroes encouraged me to study them from an ethno-literary perspective.

In conducting this study, I considered my townsman, Francisco Dagohoy, my easy choice of focus over the other warriors. Retrieving information about him was convenient as I had informants ready to help in doing the fieldwork. They were the sukdan (measuring) shamans, my key respondents in the conduct of my performance-focused dissertation. They seemed to have an affinity with Dagohoy, who was considered a folk hero among more than a million Boholanos.

The fieldwork on Dagohoy from inception, through development, and toward completion has revealed to us these possibilities:1) shamanic narratives, in this case, are composed of arukay (invocation), kasalaysayan (narrative), paarang ug pasalamat (end and thanksgiving) and are still present in the nooks and corners of Philippine communities waiting to be discovered; 2) retrieval of extant oral narratives can still be realized through conventional and modern methods keeping in mind the research ethics throughout the process. Building trust is the most important process that every researcher must observe and hope for during fieldwork. The shaman’s long-kept secrets can only be divulged when we pass their testing criteria, sukod, or measures; 3) missing information about great men and women of history can be recovered through spoken narratives. We wonder why the shamans keep intact the information of their leaders and elders who existed hundreds of years before. The handing down of information from shamans to shaman apprentices is part of the training. Failing to commit it to memory may also render the training ineffective; 4) cultural performances are important methods in preserving indigenous knowledge, in this case, their expressive culture.

As found in the narratives, these are some of the Bol-anon’s ideals:

a. Strong ties with ancestors
b. Love of home
c. Adherence to artistic expressions
d. Love of harmony and unity
e. Respect for nature and the environment
f. Respect and honor native residents
g. Respect for traditions and customs
h. Care and concern for family members
i. Thanksgiving for favors granted
j. Healing as a central obligation
k. Hope in the face of adversities
l. High regard for art like dancing and chanting garay or verses as healing vehicles

3. As a speaker, April 11-12 (2016) Pen Conference, Forum on Writing to Sustain our Home, our Habitat, University of Cebu-Banilad

As part of the University of Cebu System, I was given the privilege by PEN through Marj Evasco as one of the speakers on the forum on writing to sustain our home, our habitat. I titled my short discussion with “Of Geographies and Boundaries.”

Here are the excerpts:

It has been said that place determines the person. While it invites disagreements and arguments, I still insist there is a grain of truth to it. As one who constantly writes about habitat, I should say that the motivation and interest originate from the place where I was born, grew up, and lived.

I was born and raised in a place in Inabanga, Bohol where nature at that time was at its best: verdant rolling hills and mountains that release sounds musical to ear and voices purely their own, unadulterated; primeval forests and their undergrowths that keep alive the sacred; blue-green mountain sanctuaries with their inviting sea scapes; crystal clear streams and rivers where the finest sand and solid gravel rest on their beds and banks.

In my growing years, it was easy for me to worship and dream big things through leaps of imagination. Did my parents have the foreknowledge of what I may become that is why they named me Ulysses which is tantamount to epic journeys? They must be so certain that I follow their own imaginings to travel far and wide through the wings of fancy. I indeed fulfilled their prophecy as I journeyed to distant places and memories and experienced varying realities.

The external environment is readily associated with people’s culture and practices. At the forefront are the native healers who warn of spirits inhabiting various water and landforms. This belief must have helped preserve the habitats as we are careful not to offend the encantos by not trespassing on their sacred boundaries. Their wrath might be translated into illness or even death to the offender.

I worship nature. I feel naked and weak before its powers. I pledge fidelity in my union with it, as proven by my succeeding poem, “Cropland” (excerpts only).

We tread bare, gently
Lest we break loose
The crickets’ embraces
And shake the moisture
Of touch-me-nots’
Wide open leaves.

Holding chest-close the roots,
We stake our claim of earth
As we caress the unspoiled soil.
We unseal our lips and invite
The winds’ crop of love
Calls and dewdrops.

Caressing for great harvest
Our hands loosen
The soil now awaiting kisses
From the roots, some
Sacred flesh and benediction
Of the peeping moon.
…

I feel interconnected with the creation in the universe. The poet Helen Moore says, “May Gaia, our Great Mother, speak through me. May I be a channel, a conduit for nature’s words.”

I want to convey the messages through poetry to feel, experience, and share the rhymes and rhythms of rivers and seas, images of various water and landforms, and the voices of living residents.

Sadly, though, nature has been experiencing disruptions in its flow and quietude. It has come face to face with its own decimation and ruin. “Isla Magkalingaw” was written to capture its complaint (excerpts only):

…

Child of the sea, I am a witness
To the water’s mothering embrace.
Small wonder why I hear sobs
From waves of darkest blue
When cruel hands dig you

Out of your rest, gradually
Until you disappear completely
…

My poems have learned to confront the crises, disasters, and difficulties that people and their habitats have gone through. Mindful of what poet Juliana Spahr said of a traditional poet showing only “the beautiful bird but not so often the bulldozer to the side that was destroying the bird’s habitat,” I responded with this: I become connected with a tortured animal, cutdown trees, polluted earth, and disarranged and disappearing landscapes. “Riverbank,” another poem from Space Speaks, elucidates it through this part:

…

Variants of leviathans feast on
The river’s flow and deposits.
Lengthy are the tentacles, one end
Can suck farthest tributary springs.
The other drains itself in Poblacion
Thus stops the river’s invented run.
How the jaws devour the finest

Gravel and sand, spit them out as
Components for concrete residences.
These beasts, we are told, are fed
With volatile liquids, nurtured by
Clever hands, most cunning minds:
No gentle winds, only bursts of tumult:
Man-made, in duet with the mechanic.

…

Nature’s abundance has always been a contested domain. But in my opinion, thorough and honest-to-goodness long-range planning and consultations with all sectors and stakeholders, especially the most vulnerable ones who rely on the resources for daily living, must be established first, then religiously monitored from time to time. Failure to observe these may prove disastrous as it will take a painful toll on the immediate residents and their expressive culture. Excerpts of the poem “Forethoughts on Macaban” from the same poetry collection “Space Speaks” may embody this claim:

I see the river stir: on board
The phantom ship of gold are
The dwellers ready to leave home
Perhaps never to return.
This unsettles me: Maria, the Reyna
Encantada, and the encantos soon
To become mere drifting images?
Who will now gather the windsongs?
Will somebody later nurture
The flotsam of lilies till
They flourish again in our thoughts?
Whom must we entrust the task
Of pleading for their return?

…

We share our habitat with various life forms. From them, we learn several clues on how to value home, kill or die if we must preserve home. In the end, however, when confronted with massive destruction of shelter and environment, only us human beings are equipped with the faculties and facilities that can push us beyond ourselves. The poem “Space Speaks” delivers the message:

…

The oceansealakeriver dwellers,
The soilwoodflower creepercrawlers,
And the avian breed and quadruped
Telling us man must never believe
His selfish claim: He alone has
The affinity with spatial boundaries.

…

4. As contributing writer to the book “The Bohol We Love: Anthology of Memoirs,” edited by Marj Evasco and published by Anvil in 2017

Written by more than 20 Boholano/Boholana writers with “Childhood Shaped by Light and Shadows” as my contribution, the book of essays has Marj Evasco’s foreword: “May these stories nourish your minds and hearts. And may you continue your journey of discovering the islands of your affections from within. Inside is where it matters. And as we say to the traveler to wish her well in our beautiful mother tongue, padayun ug pag-amping which means “continue” and “take care.” A five-day seminar-workshop was held at the world-famous “Bee Farm” in Dauis, Bohol with some of the country’s leading teacher-writers in attendance: Susan Lara, Karina Bolasco, Shirley Lua, Jose Victor Peñaranda, and Marj Evasco, the lead panelist. In approximately five days, the panelists took turns giving comments and suggestions for improving our work. In the end, Marj had the overall impressions of our works, including mine, as follows:

…

With these aspirations we go northwest of the island to Inabanga and Talibon. We first enter the chiaroscuro stories of Ulysses Aparece’s childhood beset but also blessed with the presence of being real and marvelous to the imagination. He resolves to become the oralist in his family, preserving the love of wonder and wisdom for the younger members of his community.

…

My essay had its fair share of good reviews. The book itself had relatively good sales in the market. But the most heart-warming result was the book’s being considered a finalist for National Book Award in 2018, Literary Anthology Division.

The memoir carries my pledge:

…

I find it necessary to have an oralist in the family who tells the forebears’ compendium of knowledge, experiences, and information. He may be anyone whose world is in orbit with words. An attentive ear is wished for to assure a stronger tie that keeps together the family’s lines of ascent and descent. If it could be me, then I wish to tell Papa Ursolo and Mama Corazon that the creatures they shared in their stories are still alive. The ungo, in particular, has in fact grown in number and power, some of them our own kin. Their potent ice crystals emit smoke that enables them to fly even in daytime.

As a would-be family oralist, I need to deeply know my own voice, distinctly Bol-anon, unmistakably Inabangon; this voice which in the words of Grace Nono, is never exclusive to one’s own but is equally shared by those who have inspired it. This inspiration must be the voice of ancestors seeking echoes in the journey down the line.

5. As Tabo-an awardee from Pambansang Komisyon para sa Kultura at mga Sining (National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

In the second week of September 2018, I received a letter informing me of an uplifting news. With several unfortunate events that befell me, the information warmed my heart that I gladly took it. Here’s the excerpt:

… As chair of the organizing committee of the 10th Taboan Writers Festival 2018, it is my pleasure to inform you that you are a recipient to this year’s TABOAN Award.

The TABOAN Awards is created to honor outstanding writers in the three regions of the Visayas whose extraordinary contributions and professional achievements exemplify the ideal of literary excellence. The National Committee on Literary Arts has awarded exceptional writers since 2010.

It was signed by Dr. Hope Sabanpan-Yu, Chair of the National Committee on the Literary Arts. So on October 19, 2018 at 6 p.m. at the Bohol Cultural Centre, Tagbilaran City, Bohol, the Awarding Ceremony took place.

When I thanked Dr. Sabanpan-Yu for the recognition, she advised me to thank instead the three regions’ established writers, notably Dr. Evasco, who was at the forefront of the selection committee.

Coined from the Cebuano term for the marketplace, Taboan refers to the annual Philippine Writers Festival. “Over the years, Taboan had been a vibrant venue of exchanging ideas, raising issues, and discussing trends and movements among writers, educators, enthusiasts, and practitioners in the country’s literary scene.” (Virgilio Almario, National Artist of Literature, Taboan 2018 Chaiman)

6. As Panel Member, Heritage Memoir Writing Workshop on place, memory, and food, Bohol Arts and Cultural Heritage Institute (BACHI), Old Holy Spirit School Building, Tagbilaran City, July 8-11, 2019 Procopio “Cooper” Resabal, a local artist and one of the participants, summed up what took place on his Facebook page:

Some 70 teachers of creative writing and literature from all over Bohol and other cultural workers recalled memories of Boholano cuisine ranging from sweet, sour, milky, and bitter to salty and spicy--in a four-day heritage memoir writing workshop on place, memory, and food…

The four-day workshop introduced the participants to the experience of creative writing, particularly the genre of creative non-fiction memoir on their Boholano food heritage. Guided by the writing mentors, they culled from remembered stories of a food item in terms of its particular context in place and time, the characters in these stories, and how the heritage continues to live in the family.

The all-Boholano team of facilitators included Dr. Marjorie Evasco, university fellow and literature Professor Emeritus of De La Salle University; Professor Leo Abaya, full professor of the College of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines in Diliman; Dr. Ulysses B. Aparece, Anthropologist and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Cebu; and Dr. Rose Rara, Holy Name University Graduate School Professor.

Participants were then divided into four groups, each with a facilitator, and held close reading practices of a sample memoir, “Puto Ba-ang: Journey and Memory” by Ulysses B. Aparece.As follows are the essential parts and segments:

“In time passing,” says Palanca Hall of Fame poet-writer Elsa Coscolluela, “there are things you come to learn as well…” Oodles of them, I must agree. In many of these things, I look back with pride and amazement. Pride because they bind the community’s ways of living. Amazement because they continue to survive amid new trends and inclinations in taste or liking. I have been wanting to write about most of these things. For now, I will begin with a narrative on food, particularly the endemic puto ba-ang.

Food preparation--from raw to cooked--is a journey that ends at the dinner table. Its last impression as determined by the buds of taste can bring back this journey’s earliest memory. That of puto ba-ang is not an exception. When staple food gets scarcer, this food from a palm tree is easiest to recall.

When talking about puto, what readily comes into my mind is puto maya or puto balanghoy as they are my all-season food favorites. In the former, there is the mixture of glutinous rice, ginger, white sugar, and coconut milk which is subjected to steaming in an earthen or metal pot. Sweet smell, indeed, has the power to activate taste buds. The gana, or appetite, is heightened with a cup of hot sikwate, or chocolate drink, and juicy chunks of ripe mangoes. Puto balanghoy is another food on top of my list. Grated cassava is freed from undesirable substances by crumpling and washing it with coconut milk. It will then be mixed with grated tender coconut meat, muscovado, brown sugar, and tiktik, or corn starch, and steamed in an earthen or metal pot. The puto suits well with coffee made of mais sinangag or roasted corn grains ground into powdery bits.

At that moment, I became curious about what made puto ba-ang lamian, pleasing to the taste. Where did it come from? Father forewarned, “por dios, por santo, dodong” (for God, for Saint, kid), “the process of bringing this food to the table is long and difficult.” Addressing now my mother, father said, “Ne (Honey), bring this bogoy (brat) to Sitio Quemoy tomorrow. Leoncia, our landed cousin, will have a ba-ang (palm tree) cut down. I have reserved one pati (part of the trunk) already.” That day started my learning and discovery: Puto ba-ang’s journey to the dinner table is also a compelling act back in memory.

The lengthy process reveals the following steps:

1. Cutting down the ba-ang
2. Partitioning the trunk
3. Taking out the thick bark covering
4. Chopping the part into fragments
5. Drying the fragments under the sun
6. Pounding the fragments to yield light-brown flour
7. Tapping the pounded fragments on the canastro, closed basket, passing through thin cloth as a sieve
8. Mixing the light brown flour with water and gently stir the mixture until
sediments settle to the base of the basin
9. Drying up the mixture
10. Cooking these sediments with several cups of corn starch, grated young coconut meat, muscovado sugar, slices or cubes of camote (sweet potato), ripe kardaba or sab-a banana, and yam.

The sweet smell reminds us of fragrant emission from the past that is still accompanying us. Each ha-on or serving is bus-ok, dense, that it can be considered as one regular meal already. But most of all, it is the density of its story that feeds the mind and warms the heart. The family member may have different tasks in the lengthy food preparation. In the end, however, we partake of the same food with its tasty and hearty flavor, which across several lifetimes, we always hope to savor.

“In time passing,” I learn that “there is no sincere love than the love of food” (George Bernard Shaw) because “Food is the ingredient that binds us together.” (pinterest.ph) My ears now hear the familiar rhythmic pounding…moving nearer and steadily drawing closer.

The quality of the outputs from the participants was encouraging a some were already publishable. One of the participants, Procopio “Cooper” Resabal, was able to join a national competition, the Mama Sita Foundations Inc.’s 4th Mga Kwentong Pagkain, and won the Visayas division as announced on October 11, 2020. Another book project about Bohol on its food and food preparation is now in the planning stage.

7. As an author, Space Speaks, a book of poems, 2019

Published by Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (RAFI), Space Speaks was my first book of poetry. In the preparation phase, I invited Dr. Marjorie Evasco as the one who must write the introduction. A fellow Bol-anon, she was the wisest choice in writing the book’s preliminary pages. A portion of her introduction has the following lines:

It has been 17 years since Ulysses Aparece wrote a collection of poems titled “Native Healer,” which gave voice in 2002 to his apprenticeship or pangabaga to Pio Añon, the sukdan or shaman-healer of Anonang, in Aparece’s hometown, Inabanga, Bohol. That he wrote 13 poems for the collection must have meant that the ethnographic language of his anthropology dissertation could not suffice. He felt impelled to give heartspace to the language of poetry to affirm the gift of learning how to measure “earth’s sacred limits” from his teacher, whose curative powers rested primarily on his impeccable ability to chant verses, sing, and dance on bare feet over live coals while striking his stomach with a pinóte or long sharp bolo without wounding himself.

Space Speaks is Ulysses Aparece’s first poetry collection composed of 45 poems written in a quarter of a century’s span, from 1994 to 2016. And yet when one reads the collection’s expanded breadth, sounding new depths in three thematic configurations, the underlying presence of the measures of poetry, song, and dance orchestrate in the space of each poem’s utterance. For it is through poetry that space speaks traversed by the voice and moving body of the poet-shaman. Space is limned by sound as well as by the resonant silence, wrought into view, as it were. And when we hearken to the poem’s breath, we move into that space of enchantment. Be it beauty or terror that meets us, each poem allows us to walk with the persona as our very own guide through fire, water, air, and earth.

If I may repeat what I said about Marjorie “Marj” Evasco in the acknowledgment section of the book, mapasalamaton ko, I am thankful to this “poet laureate and professor emeritus for helping me find my own space in the forest of words…”

I consider Marjorie Evasco a shaman of healing words as contained in her poetic compositions and ritualistic preparations. Everything must be in their exact measures. And I am the apprentice hoping to master her craft and become a mouthpiece towards nurturing the Kulturang Bol-anon, Boholano culture. As the closing lines of the poem “Cropland” say, “… The harvest we keep will stay/ In minds’ alleyways, guide to learn/ About skin, frame, name, esteem.//