This summer, I will be teaching Filipina/x Poetry and Poetics online – this is a community class, in which we will read and discuss poetic works authored by Filipina/x writers.
What kind of poetry have Filipino women been writing. Specifically, what kind of poetry have Filipino women been writing in English, in the last century. I ask these questions because in our contemporary setting, knowledge of these previous generations of Filipina poets is scarce among us in North America, as if these women, our foremothers, barely existed at all, as if we are the first generations of Filipino women writing and publishing poetry.
In the early 1990s, I took a Comparative Literature course at University of the Philippines at Diliman: Filipino Women Writing in English, in Love, War, and Exile, taught by Professor Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo. Some of the earliest poetic works I read in this class were authored by Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido (1912-1994) and Angela Manalang-Gloria (1907-1995); these were women of letters who wrote in traditional western poetic form, in elevated poetic diction, and I had to grapple with how these works could be meaningful to me as an emerging, diasporic Pinay, feminist writer, raised and educated in America.
Let’s start with these Philippine poets, work our way through the 20th century with Mila D. Aguilar and Marjorie Evasco, with Merlinda Bobis, Fatima Lim-Wilson, Shirley Ancheta, Virginia Cerenio, Catalina Cariaga, and into contemporary times with Noreen Ocampo, Pamela K. Santos, Nathalie de Los Santos, Michelle Peñaloza, Aimee Suzara, and more. Let’s build ourselves a foundation for reading and understanding contemporary Filipina/x Poetry and Poetics.
Ultimately, let’s read poems, written by Filipina/x women in the Philippines and in Diaspora and let’s talk about these poems, their languages, their forms, their social and political issues. Let’s think about power and patriarchy, and subversions of power and patriarchy.
When: Thursdays May 28 and June 4, 2026 @ 3 to 6 pm Pacific Time
Where: On Zoom
How Much: $100
To Register, please email me.