Eric T. Gamalinda was born on 14 October 1956 in Quezon City. He is a poet, a fictionist and an essayist. He took undergraduate courses at the UST for three years and the UP for a semester. He was a local fellow for poetry of the UP ICW in 1983. In 1990, he went to Great Britain to represent the Philippines in the Cambridge International Writers’ Conference and to attend the Hawthornden International Writers’ Retreat in Scotland, 1991. he got a Rockefeller Foundation residency in Bellagio, Italy. He participated in the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s Programme for the 21st century. He currently works with the Center for Investigative Journalism.
Gamalinda’s poems are collected in Fire Poem/Rain Poem (1976) and Lyrics From a Dead Language (1991). His stories have been gathered in Peripheral Vision (1992). His first novel, Planet Waves (1989), was set during the turbulent Martial Law era. A second novel, Confessions of a Volcano (1990), was written after a visit to Japan, and explores the differences between Filipino and Japanese consciousness. A third novel, The Empire of Memory (1992), is set against the momentous events before, during, and after the EDSA revolt.
Two of Gamalinda’s poetry collections won prizes in the Palanca. Ara Vos Prec won in 1985, while Patria y Muerte won in 1988. He also won Palanca awards for: Anatomy of a Passionate Derangement, a one-act play in 1980, "Mourning and Weeping in this Valley of Tears," a short story in 1988, and "The Unbearable Lightness of EDSA," an essay in 1990. His novel, Planet Waves received the National Book Award for fiction from the Manila Critics Circle in 1989.
lifted from
PanitikanEric Gamalinda
Poem Not Written in CatalanOut of everything that is not eternal
I deny the patience of water, the divinity of salt, and the persistence of the spider
I would like to write a suicide note in three and a half languages
and travel south on a Thursday towards
some form of life outside of earth
And although people will think I'm no longer there
I will live in geodesic domes
and count only in numbers less than zero
Sometimes when I walk past trees in the city I hear them denying me
Normally this doesn't bother me but today
I'm not going to take any conspiracies
I deny bodies of water smaller than the Great Lakes
I deny any planet larger than America
I deny the fact that when I kill time, time is actually killing me
I am air, light, sound, all of which I deny
I deny the Buddha, I do not deny the Buddha
An exact copy of my life is being lived a million light years away
If there's a way to prove it
If mathematics were the only religion
We are passing an era of turbulence
Make sure your souls are in the upright position
"I am afraid of the profound certitude of things"
Love like an arsonist
steals into my life and burns down all my tenements
(In a court of law, love will deny me
and the burden of proof rests entirely on me)
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Topic: In a court of law, love will deny me (Read 2143 times)