CENTRAL VISAYAS

Simeon Dumdum, Jr. (born March 7, 1948) is a Regional Trial Court Executive Judge in Cebu City, The Philippines, and a published poet. He once studied for the priesthood in Galway, Ireland, but left the seminary to take up law. After years of practicing law, he was appointed Regional Trial Court judge in Cebu. He won prizes for his poetry, which he has published and read abroad.

He has published five books - The Gift of Sleep (poems), Third World Opera (poems), Love in the Time of the Camera (essays), Selected Poems and New (poems), and My Pledge of Love Cannot be BrokenManila Critics Circle's National Book Award three times. In 2005, he received a medallion for writing the best decision in a criminal case, second level courts, in the Judicial Excellence Awards sponsored by the Supreme Court of the Philippines. (essays). 

Camping Out

 (Simeon Dumdum, Jr.)

Night catches me

on a triangle edged with grass.

I need three walls

to protect me:

The first,

to keep out the wild boar

beset by fireflies;

The second,

to ward off the one-eyed insect

that bores into my poems;

The third,

to hold back the wild boar

and the one-eyed insect

in case they move

to the third side.

I will have no roof.

He who has a roof

has a star for an enemy.

Marjorie Evasco is an award- winning Filipino poet, born in Maribojoc, Bohol on September 21, 1953. She writes in two languages: English and Cebuano-Visayan and is a supporter of women's rights, especially of women writers. Marjorie Evasco is one of the earliest Filipina

Dreamweavers
By Marjorie Evasco

 

We are entitled to our own
definition of worlds
we have in common:

earth house (stay)
water well (carry)
fire stove (tend)
air song (sigh)
ether dream (die)

and try out new combinations
with key words
unlocking power

houses on fire sing!
stove under water stay.
earth filled well die.

the spells and spellings
of our vocabularies
are ocular
in translation

one woman in Pagnito-an
another in Solentiname
still another in Harxheim
and many other women
naming
half of the world together

can move their earth
must house their fire
be water to their song
will their dream well