IN THE PHILIPPINES: “POETRY ALLERGIC TO THE PURELY VERBAL”

In the three articles presented as immediately following this post, we are pleased to feature Angelo Suarez's reviews of four contemporary Philippines-based poet-artists: Bea Camacho, Costantino Zicarelli, Buen Calubayan and Cesare A.X. Syjuco. Angelo Suarez curated a series of presentations/performances at the Green Papaya Art Projects (Quezon City, Philippines) entitled "Poems are Things." His reviews feature work similar to his curated series of what he calls "language-based assemblages, verbi-voco-visual constructions, text-oriented installations, performance and intermedia poetics, and allergies to the purely verbal."


Angelo Suarez, in turning his back on the mode of textual production he once employed in the books "The Nymph of MTV" (winner of the National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle, and the Struga Bridges Poetry Prize from UNESCO and the Republic of Macedonia) and "else it was purely girls," has become an enthusiast of cross-disciplinary and process-oriented poetics. His third book, "Dissonant Umbrellas: Notes Toward a Gesamtkunstwerk" was completed in collaboration with 9 visual artists and published by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. While working as an advertising copywriter for Saatchi and Saatchi, he is finishing his book of visual poetry, "s&wich."