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BY SONIA D. DAQUILA
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OCTOBER 21, 2016 is a significant date for Panayanon, Ilonggo and Bacolod writers at the University of San Agustin. This was the day of event called Iloilo Taboan 2016 when noted Visayan writers converged.
The gathering was spearheaded by the College of Liberal Arts, Sciences and Education (CLASE) dean, Dr. Isidoro M. Cruz, Palanca Hall-of-Famer, the festival director, and other Palanca winners Drs. Leoncio Deriada, John Barrios and Jose Iremil Teodoro. Dr. Ma. Cecila Locsin-Nava, former dean of the University of St. La Salle, launched her book Shri-Bishaya, a novel of Ramon Muzones translated into English.
Writers are agents of cultural transmission and during the trying moments of a country, writers become educators, lawmakers and prophets. They, too, are sowers of revolutionary thoughts especially in a repressive society.
Writers see what people ordinarily refuse or fail to see. They express their thoughts in different ways. At times they are beyond the comprehension of many, but they could be musical and magical and they can thrill readers no end.
Somehow, because of their uniqueness, at times they are deemed to be bordering on sanity and insanity. They are rare, much more today when the drive is more of materialism and the practical way of looking at life. They are diminishing in number and their outputs generally do not sell like hot cakes. They help preserve the nuances of the native language of the Visayans.
Ilonggo is a beautiful language that if the Ilonggo writers are not sustained, it will gradually lose its significance. It is a great move on the part of these local writers and the different institutions to lend support to the great writers, upcoming ones, and the young who must be inspired to keep our treasure, the Ilonggo and Panaynon literary heritage.
Congratulations and more power to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, National Committee on Literary Arts, University of San Agustin, Center of Resources for Innovation and Development, and Fray de Leon Creative Writing Institute of San Agustin, and publishers. (delsocorrodaquila@gmail.com/PN)
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