Jim Pascual Agustin's Blog, page 21
January 19, 2017
What to do when you get a rejection letter
There have been many articles written about how now-famous authors received not just dozens, but hundreds (or thousands, even!) of rejection letters. I got one yesterday and actually felt good about it. Really. Here it is:
-o-
Thank you for submitting your manuscript, and for your patience during the assessment period. Unfortunately, we cannot offer to publish your manuscript.
There is much to commend in your novel, and your writing is not without merit. However, as a small publishing imprint, we only manage to publish twelve to fifteen titles per year and consequently stay close to our mandate. Regrettably, your manuscript does not meet these criteria and therefore does not suit our publication lists, at present.
Once again, thank you for your submission. We wish you all the best with your writing endeavours.
-o-
It’s truly funny. Because I haven’t written a novel my whole life. I submitted a poetry manuscript. Gatekeepers don’t have to be literate, it seems. I had my laugh, now to send the manuscript off elsewhere. That’s how it spins.
Filed under: Uncategorized
January 14, 2017
A Ramble on the Randomness of Numbers: 13, 2017, 77, 7, 8, 48, 30, 31, 1… and don’t forget the over 6,000 and growing
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Whether we like it or not, numbers seem to take over our lives – or at least they refuse to be ignored even as we desperately try to turn our backs on them. So here are a few that I’ve noticed and taken note of in the past few days.
13 – Today, as I begin to write this, it is midday on the first Friday the 13th of this by-now-not-so-new 2017. Again, another number that, if you really think about it, is really arbitrary. Just as someone said at some point that Friday the 13th was unlucky, someone else said, “Right, from today we start counting the years like so and so.” “Amen,” responded nearly everyone since then, and, through the years as more and more nodded in agreement, we have ended up with 2017.
77 – If there was an agency that certified people with green thumbs, my name would certainly be rejected. Apparently I tend to kill plants that fall under my shadow. But today, with plastic watering cans in either hand, I remembered to check on our remaining almond trees. I can’t recall how many we originally planted, but three we still have. Two of them had almonds ready for picking. Some of the nuts were already on the ground because of the winds we’ve had these days that have driven the various fires in the Cape out of control. I tried to stuff them in my pockets – luckily I had those baggy shorts with multiple expanding pockets! So the unexpected harvest of +/- 77 almond nuts (that still need to be shelled)!
7 – Yesterday, with the slightest touch they fell into my cupped hands, seven cherry tomatoes. Funny that we are getting a nearly daily supply from something I never really planted. About two months ago I just noticed seedlings sprouting about in the garden where I used to pour the water we save from washing vegetables and fruit in the kitchen – I guess sometimes bits of seeds somehow end up in the same bucket. I moved those seedlings into pots, with a vague hope that they at least grow, if not bear some tomatoes one day.
7 is also the number of poetry books under my name. But in a few more weeks another one will join my paper children. Wings of Smoke will be released soon by The Onslaught Press, an independent UK-based publisher. A proper post for that new baby soon, I hope, as it officially becomes poetry book number 8!
48 – I’m not so sure I should be sharing that number. But what the heck. This year I turn that many years on this planet (although I believe in other cultures they start counting your age the day you are conceived instead of when you are born).
30 – I’ve read at Off the Wall in Observatory before, both times after being asked by the organizer. This year I acted like Hermione and raised my hand, so to speak, and said “Pick me! Pick me!” for Thursday the 30th of March. I was thinking I might as well own up to having this new paper child, Wings of Smoke, and go all-out to promote it. It will be my first book that will be made available in South Africa largely through me and one other distributor until some arrangement can be made with interested bookshops. For now people can contact me through this blog or my Facebook page (search for Jim Pascual Agustin, in case you don’t know who you’re reading here right now hahaha). My publisher will put up online orders through Amazon. Signed copies through me. 
December 11, 2016
Sign at a library window. Sometimes you just have to loo...
Sign at a library window. Sometimes you just have to look closer and the outside world becomes clearer. Sometimes literally.
Filed under: Uncategorized
December 9, 2016
Human Rights Day, the Gabo Prize, Danica Mae and the murderers who go unpunished
10 December is International Human Rights Day. In the same week the Philippine Congress has been busy trying to bring back the death penalty. It is not simply a step back for the country of my birth – more like running backwards down a dark alley littered with shattered rocks and corpses, wearing no helmet and blindfolded. Since the current president, Rodrigo Duterte, came to power the country has been gripped with a madness that his most blind supporters continue to embrace.
I wrote “Danica Mae” in response to the state-sanctioned killings that have summarily ended the lives of nearly 6,000 people as of this writing. I wish it wasn’t necessary to write it. The translation – or re-vision – in English, along with two other poems I originally wrote in Filipino many years ago, got the attention of Mark Statman, the judge for the Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation and Multi-Lingual Texts. He says
“There is something beautifully and sadly dense about these poems, which the poet, Jim Pascual Agustin, himself has translated. I found myself returning to them because I found them at once mysterious and ordinary, describing what I can only think of as tragic events (in “Danica Mae,” the actual death of one child, in “Standing in Tagatay,” the learned careless callousness in the life of another). The final short poem, “The Long and Brief History of the Bald Old Man and the Busted Pot,¨ presents the reader with a different kind of tragedy, a view of a long life at its unhappy end. Not easy to want to read, these poems nonetheless demand it. That demand is what I think I want most from a poem.”
Lunch Ticket has featured the winning work in its latest issue, Winter/Spring 2017, edited by Arielle Silver. Here is a link to the Filipino version that I posted on this blog earlier.
Please read the issue, leave a note to the editor, express your reaction somewhere, anywhere, should you find resonance in what is plaguing my country of birth today.
Some links for those who might wish to know more about what has been happening:
My hope is that you share this post far and wide. Perhaps those in power may read it and respond. Perhaps those who feel they have little power to change this tragic course may find courage and learn that they actually do wield something that no violator of rights can ever take away.
Filed under: Filipino poetry, Filipino-South African, Fragments and Moments, Jim Pascual Agustin, Literary News & Articles, Mga Tula / Poetry, poetry, politics, Uncategorized Tagged: Arielle Silver, Danica Mae Garcia, Duterte, EJK, Gabo Prize in Literature, human rights, Human Rights Day, Jim Pascual Agustin, Lunch Ticket, news
December 6, 2016
TokHang Santa – first draft
TokHang Santa
PNP Chief Dela Rosa plays Santa to kids of those killed, caught in Tokhang
A total of 120 children of drug suspects received gifts from Philippine National Police chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa (Bato), who dressed as Santa Claus at an event on Thursday.
Dela Rosa said giving gifts is the PNP’s way of bringing cheer to the lives of children whose parents have either no income, are in jail, or were killed during anti-illegal drug operations.
-Amita Legaspi, GMA NEWS ONLINE 01 Dec 2016
He believed his intentions were pure
and shiny like his lightbulb head when,
sometime after All Souls’ Day, he wondered
what it must be like to be a child
who had lost a parent. Perhaps once
when he was still small he had pretended
being an orphan, as most children do,
and that helped him arrive at the grand idea
of dressing up as Santa to bring some cheer.
How difficult could it be? Having no hair
meant that white wig would fit nicely,
not at all uncomfortable. The red suit
with fluffy white trimmings must be breathable
cotton, like the elf hat. Not at all like
being wrapped in a garbage bag and tagged.
Since he’s big and solid as a chunk of rock,
a kid on his lap will feel like a stuffed toy,
or an inflatable beach ball. Still, he has to be
gentle. These kids may not remember
that lost parent for a day, or forever
if they’re lucky to be too young to retain
memories. But surely they’ll never forget
the day TokHang Santa came for them, the chosen
120 from the ever-growing thousands.
-o-
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/…
“TokHang” is a contraction of the Visayan words “toktok” (knock) and “hangyo” (request).
Since this is a first draft, I welcome all feedback, critiques, comments – as always. Thank you in advance.
Filed under: Filipino poetry, Jim Pascual Agustin, Mga Tula / Poetry, poetry, politics, Uncategorized Tagged: Bato, dela Rosa, Duterte, EJK, human rights violations, murder, orphans, PNP, Santa, TokHang, war on drugs
November 27, 2016
Carrion Flies and Congressmen – a first draft
Carrion Flies and Congressmen
for De Lima and Dayan
Carrion flies, not Congressmen,
these buzzing before us. Unable
to keep themselves from prying
into flesh, they push their blunt
and moist mouths to break down
each morsel that they may suck
some sick nourishment. Compound
eyes unblinking, they imagine fragments
of wet dreams while questioning
a witness in the cold halls of Congress
that might as well be a makeshift morgue,
an EJK cottage industry offshoot.
Their wings transparent with such dark
veins, quivering with every imagined
movement of limbs behind closed doors.
Their feet have tongues that taste
possible fodder. Lust and love,
these flies could never have.
-o-
Filed under: Jim Pascual Agustin, Uncategorized Tagged: Dayan, Duterte, EJK, Leila de Lima, Philippines, Rappler
November 18, 2016
Utot ng Hari – first draft
Utot ng Hari
18 Nobyembre 2016, Araw ng Kandilang Nakahiga
“Huwag ninyong buksan ang kabaong
ng nakaraan,” sabi ng Bagong Hari-
harian sa lupain ng rangya at hikahos.
“Ako lamang ang may karapatang pumili
ng maaaring ungkatin mula sa tagpi-
tagping kasaysayan ng bayan.”
Bago pa siya naupo sa trono
na singkinang ng inidoro,
naamoy na natin ang hangin
mula sa kanyang katimugan.
Bakit pa kaya may nagugulat
kunwa sa sangsang ngayon
ng kanyang pinakawalan,
tila sawang lumilingkis
sa ating gunita at katinuan.
-o-
My apologies to dear friends and readers who cannot read Filipino. This is a first draft of my attempt to respond to the “Thief in the Night” style burial at the Cemetery for Heroes of the wax image/remains of the former dictator, Ferdinand Marcos done at noon, Philippine time by his family.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: 18 November 2016, Jim Pascual Agustin, Marcos burial, Marcos dictatorship, Thief in the night, Utot ng Hari
November 17, 2016
“Danica Mae and other poems” will be featured in Lunch Ticket soon
The English version of my poem, “Danica Mae,” along with two other older poems of mine I translated from the original Filipino, have been chosen by Mark Statman, guest judge for Lunch Ticket’s Gabo Prize in Literature in Translation & Multilingual Texts.
They made the announcement a few days ago (and apologized for the typo on my name, it should have been Agustin – a new corrected poster should be out soon).
While Lunch Ticket prepares for the early December launch of their new issue which will feature my work alongside two other finalists, you can read the original Filipino version of “Danica Mae” HERE.
I wish to thank Alli Marini and Jennifer McCharen, founders of the Gabo Prize, as well as Arielle Silver, Lunch Ticket editor, and Mark Statman for allowing new readers to discover my work.
Filed under: Filipino poetry, Filipino-South African, Fragments and Moments, Jim Pascual Agustin, Literary News & Articles, Mga Tula / Poetry, poetry, politics, Uncategorized Tagged: Alli Marini, Arielle Silver, Gabo Prize, Gabo Prize in Literature in Translation & Multilingual Texts, Jennifer McCharen, Jim Pascual Agustin, Lunch Ticket, Mark Statman
November 9, 2016
SANGA SA BASANG LUPA now out!
It took me this long to share the news of the release of my first (and perhaps last) short story collection in Filipino, SANGA SA BASANG LUPA. My Philippine publisher, UST Publishing House, has made the title available and announced it on 19 October 2016 on their Facebook post. I’m hoping a launch of sorts would follow, but times are difficult at the moment. My previous attempts to do a virtual launch for my recent poetry collection, A THOUSAND EYES, never materialized.
My own sister has warned me not to come home because of what’s been happening. Anyone can be killed and be declared a drug user or drug pusher. Anyone. Nearly 5,000 people have been killed since Duterte took to the presidency. That and the tight budget keep me from booking a flight back home. Home. That’s a tough word to say when you have your heart in too many places and official documents and procedures – aside from economics – bar you from moving freely among your loved ones. I include my paper children among my loved ones.
Sanga sa Basang Lupa took a long time to be born. If you read Filipino fiction, I hope you give this paper child of mine a chance. Apparently not many short story collections in Filipino get put out there these days. Mine took over 20 years to see the light. Please take care of this one, dear reader. Maraming salamat.
Filed under: Sanga sa Basang Lupa, Uncategorized Tagged: Filipino, Filipino short story collection, Jim Pascual Agustin, Sanga sa Basang Lupa, UST Publishing House
November 4, 2016
It was never a landslide: a poem that accompanies an interview
I was interviewed by Bookwatch, the National Book Development Board’s publication. The print issue was meant for release at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The online version may be read HERE. At the end of the interview is a poem with a rather long title. For those who know little about what’s been happening in my country of birth, you could maybe do an online search on the following phrases: EJK, extrajudicial killing, war on drugs, Duterte.
Here’s a screen grab from the issue. Hope you read the whole interview and those of other Filipino writers currently writing and living in other parts of the world. I would love to hear what you think of the poem and the interview. Thank you in advance.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Danica Mae, Duterte, EJK, extrajudicial killings, human rights, Jim Pascual Agustin, Philippines, truth, war on drugs
