Reading and feeling poetry: The Himati project
magic to happen.
The responses were terrific. We immediately sent Jimmy our feedback and thanked him for the wonderful reading. He answered back and said it was the poem that made the reading work.
“Magarao” of Luis Cabalquinto was next. The poet reminisces about his hometown. He cannot be there in his home and in his town but his poetry brings him back for eternity in that ordinary/extraordinary night of a time that has ceased to move because only the stars are bright on the face of a water, in that stillness of a return to a land of birth that in remembering a man can wish upon himself. Jimmy’s voice gently nudged the memory of a humble meal as the dark notes from the cello soared with the white and gray clouds bidding both embrace and goodbye.
By the second installment, our viewers had started expressing their enchantment with the Bikol words. Many said the poem made them realize how rich their own language was and how it became even more beautiful when couched in lines and rhythm crafted and nurtured by the poet. I was more candid when I offered to Kristian my theory why the poems came alive in the good reader: Jimmy was reading without reading. He was sensing the poem.
The softest of guitar strains pushed the streaks of the whitest fleeces of clouds on the sky as the verses from what I believe is the saddest Bikol love poem from Marne Kilates came forth. Pampang kan Sakong Pagkamoot is how Marne translated his poem, The Only Shore I Seek. A poem metaphors conjured out of seascape began with May sarong lugar an puso/banwang sadiri kan pagkamoot (The heart has its home/the only country it needs), and ended with maglayag man sa ibang dagat/pampang ka kan sakong pagkamoot (After sailing all oceans/ You are the only shore I seek). Brevity was never the limit of this poem as word after word, line after line, the wisdom of the poet throbbed with love’s meanings—the infinite longing and the lonesome beauty tender and giving in that endlessness. The sighs at the end sent in by readers were expected. One of our significant women-writers, Francia Clavecillas said of the poem: “nagpapakalma nin puso” (literally, it calms the heart).
By the time you read this column, Lui Quiambao-manansala, an actress whose presence in indie films and television cannot be ignored, has already read her first poem, Jun Belgica’s Soneto 2. Intense but not melodramatic, Lui paid tribute to the words selected by Jun in a recitation that measured each word against an unseen source of beat.
By the time also you read this column, more actors have signified their intention to be part of this singular project. Enchong Dee, who hails from Naga, has already recorded his first poem. Waiting on the wings and ready to “experiment” are two of our most exciting actors—christian Bables whose last major film was the award-winning “Signal Rock” and Sandino Martin, who acted and sang in the film and stage version of Nick Joaquin’s “Portrait of the Artist as Filipino/larawan.” Angeli Bayani, another multi-awarded, has also said yes to our request for her to be one of the readers. As if this grand list is not enough, Kristian has just talked with Eddie Ilarde, another Bikolano, who has expressed his interest to read poems in English, Filipino and Bikol!
Himati is a project of the Ateneo de Naga University Press and Savage Mind.
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