I KNOW my strengths as a poet.
(I have also been winning awards in poetry, remember!)
But I also know that I am not valued and recognized by the self-appointed popes of Philippine literature.
Well, I’m not in business for them.
So I continue to write my own brand of poetry.
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Rebel-like, I just produce my own poetry.
Wage my own poetic revolution.
I live like a poet.
I am a poet of life!
What can be greater than that?
I go through the poor artist’s drama even if I’m relatively rich.
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I write. I suffer.
I hope that someday, there will really be poetic justice for me.
But for now, I develop my own market, my own readership.
I don’t know if it will work for you.
I don’t know if you need to suffer like I did. Like I do.
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I don’t know if you can do it yourself.
Or, if you have the same audacity, tenacity, and luck that I have.
Because honestly, figuratively, what I have done for my poetry and my art can kill an ordinary mortal.
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I have written some of my poetry with my own blood.
So yeah, that blood, sweat, and excrement thing, been there, done that!
I have written poetry when I was coughing out blood.
I have written poetry when my tears were tinged with blood.
I have written poetry when my sweat were bloody!
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I know some of what academic writers teach when they teach creative writing.
I pretty much read the MFA books they’ve read to teach MFA.
I would even so far as say that maybe I’ve read more than many of them.
But that will only sound like I’m bragging.
So I will not really say it aloud.
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But I can brag.
Because I am effective.
I matter. People listen to me. You listen to me.
Why?
Because you know that I am speaking of the true, the good, and the beautiful.
Because you know that I am true, good, and beautiful.
Admit it!
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I am happy and satisfied with my readership.
I don’t have billions reading me.
I am not Shakespeare. I am not Homer. They are dead!
I don’t even think I have millions of readers.
I am not Stephen King, not JK Rowling.
But you know who I am!
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Okay, okay, I do not even have a million readers. (But ask me again in five years.)
Still, I am happy with what I have.
I am content. And that is what matters.
I do not feel neglected, or totally ignored.
Critics may pan my work, but I know I have my own readers.
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I appeal to the simple human. The ordinary person.
And that is what is most important to me as a writer, as a poet.
Forget the Nobel Prize. Forget the awards.
I am just very happy to be celebrated as the common people’s poet.
Poet of the masses.
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And I don’t care if it’s just the Ilonggo masses.
I don’t mind at all being the big fish in the small pond.
So yeah, I don’t really care much for the attention of the Manila imperialists, and all these so-called national people.
I am happy to be the poet of the Ilonggos.
To be the Champion of Hiligaynon poetry.
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Although, of course, I also diversified to draw attention to my literature in Hiligaynon.
Because I’m not popularly translated yet, I had to write in English and Filipino.
I had to win awards.
So, I also have some experience playing the game of these academic writers (who are mostly Manila-based).
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To be very honest, I have only won the Poetry Written for Children (English) and Tulang Pambata (Filipino) categories of the Palanca Awards.
But on the years I entered these contests and did not win, I kidded myself that it’s because my poetry is probably a little too matured that it should have been entered in the Poetry and Tula categories.
Bwahahah.
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I like epics when they are performed. Chanted. Presented as film.
I may buy the book, just because they are there and I have the money.
But unless under duress, I probably won’t read them.
I just have no patience reading long poetry.
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I may start reading longish poems to get the feel of the author or the work, but I will most likely leave them unfinished.
And that says a lot for a finisher like me.
I usually finish everything I start.
So, if a poem looks long upon scanning, I just stay away from it.
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Here’s a Peter Solis Nery statement of preference:
Except for haiku, which brings with it a whole culture and a way of reading, a poem less than eight lines lacks magnificence.
In general, I think poems that are 12 to 14 lines long are ideal.
And you can quote me on this:
A poem more than 21 lines should be written as a novel! (To be continued) (facebook.com/peter.s.nery)(500tinaga@gmail.com/PN)
