Filipino poet awarded NY book prize for manuscript with martial law pieces

Filipino-South African poet Jim Pascual Agustin was awarded the 2022 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize by New York-based press Singapore Unbound for his work “Waking Up to the pattern Left by a Snail Overnight.”

The manuscript contains 55 poems, 16 of which are about Martial Law.

In a statement, Agustin said they are his response to fight disinformation in Philippine history.

“The lies that continue to be spread by Cambridge Analytica-trained social media handlers of the Marcoses will keep trying to decimate the memory of those who fought the regime,” he said.

“Waking Up to the pattern Left by a Snail Overnight” was chosen by judge and former director of Singapore Writers Festival Yeow Kai Chai, who described the work as “exquisite sensitivity.” He also said it was “masterfully observed.”

“You are enveloped in these entirely believable scenarios filled with people and creatures finding themselves in everyday moments, and extraordinary circumstances,” Chai said in the prize citation.

“With a few deft strokes, many of the poems here range far and delve inwards,” he added. “Politics, nationality, identity, family, laws of nature -—everything, everywhere all at once, yet intimately, pulsatingly at home.”

The Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize is awarded yearly to an “unpublished manuscript of original Anglophone poetry by an author of Asian heritage residing anywhere in the world.”

Agustin is also the author behind “Bloodred Dragonflies,” “How to Make a Salagubang Helicopter & other poems,” and “Crocodiles in Belfast & other poems,” among others. — LA, GMA News