greetings from the diaspora!
hello you lovely lot!! i'm feeling quite a bit better than i was yesterday regarding my workload. not really because i've done a whole lot on it, but because i did a lot of work around it that has fired me up and got me all inspired.
some personal context: outside of blogging, i am also a poet!!! i do some other writing stuff too but poetry is my main writing Thing. i've got a big opportunity coming up later in the year, which is part of why i'm agonising over my workload, and with that has come a lot of research into filipino poetics (i am a second-gen filipino living in a western country, with no real ties to filipino languages or cultures) and what it means to write anti-colonial work.
i think it's easy to assume that no research needs to go into writing poetry. but i wholeheartedly disagree -- i think poetry, really good poetry, is about paying attention to the world and elaborating on the details you notice (whether that be about what you want, what you fear, what you feel, etc.), and i think research is the practical manifestation of that. what is research if not noticing something and wanting to pay more attention to it!! plus it's felt very healing and important to connect back to where i came from, especially through the mediums of poetry and academics my beloveds.
i've got some excellent finds down below that i'm super excited to share with you as part of my process. i've put them in no particular order, but vaguely sequenced to build upon each other. without further ado, i present to you...
some cool poetry stuff aries found recently!!
The Realpolitik Manifesto by Jessica L Wilkinson and Ali Alizadeh (in progress): a manifesto calling for "an end to the mistreatment and marginalisation of poetic language" and presenting "an unavoidable and necessary code for the art of non-fiction poetry". focuses on intensive research; dismantling and disarming colonial, patriarchal and ableist historical hegemonies; and the importance of play and experimentation.
Sketches of an Archipelagic Poetics of Postcolonial Belonging by maryamdeluz, originally published in Gasera Journal: a deconstruction of the imperial concept of the nation-state as islands (uniform, hegemonic). makes a case for the connected multiplicities of the archipelago (united, many singularities), in particular drawing on the philippines as a much-contested site for these archipelagic poetics.
citations for a dream by Lou Garcia-Dolnik: recently published in print in Best of Australian Poems 2023, though i've linked to what i assume is its first publication in un Projects issue 16.2. my favourite poem right now. my current writing pillar is to sing the body referential!
Top 5 Places in Manila to Check Out While the City Swallows Us Whole by Jam Pascual and The Language of Silence by Vincen Gregory Yu: i am never not thinking about cities and the way they create modalities, and both of these poems reached into my heart and wrung it out dry on the pavement.
very exciting things coming for me!!! which i may or may not post here lmfao, i also do quite enjoy writing about silly flash games without any pressure to talk about bigger or deeper stuff if i don't want to. oceanic stuff. but it's important to play in the ocean too, and it's unlikely i'll stop thinking about this stuff for a long long time to come.
hope you're doing well! sending my support wherever you are, especially from this part of the filipino diaspora to all the other diasporas of the world. you got this.
-aries