TWO interesting things occurred to the judges of this year’s Gawad Surian sa Tula-Gantimpalang Colantes. In their deliberation to determine which among the fifty-one or so entries would be included in the roster of winners (see Breaking Signs, April 20), Jesus Santiago and Cirilo F. Bautista found, first, a number of authors attempting to infuse new energy into Filipino poetry’s form and substance. This is most desirable, as Filipino poets seem to be frozen in the timeframe of traditional expressionism or discourse. The infusion comes from the influences of urbanism on the development of the Filipino language. Mass media, cultural politics, and population mobility have fueled the spread of Tagalog across regional boundaries, giving it an access into other languages. This results in its filtration into those languages and vice-versa. The new dynamism defines its present contour. The migration history from "Tagalog" to "Pilipino" to "Filipino" can be read, for instance, in vocabulary borrowings or in thematic viewpoints. These three variations of the same language continue to exist, but Filipino, according to the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF), is the language spoken in Metro Manila and other multi-ethnic cities.

Without going into further linguistic distinctions, we can say that because Filipino — which is now called our national language — has a democratic character, it offers contemporary poets new inroads and challenges. Indeed, some of them have shown that words, phraseology, and imagery from one region can be positioned within the structure of Tagalog. John Iremil Teodoro and Genevieve Asenjo of Antique, Jose Jason Chancoco of Bicol, and Santiago Villafania of Pangasinan have done exactly that and, consequently, contribute to the enrichment of the poetic medium. Also, because it accommodates other languages within its semantic system, Filipino appears to be most appropriate for poets to delineate the complex urban world with its ethnical and international character. Eros Atalia’s winning poem, "Remedyo," is a successful capturing of the way common urbanites of the working class speak and think. The repairman in the poem has a native voice, that is, he appears to be a flesh-and-blood embodiment of a character in a critical situation wanting to improve his fractured relationship with his girl, just as he wants to repair the broken appliances his customers leave to his care. Reuel Aguila employs a Japanese form of prose-poem to articulate the thoughts of a man returning to his native soil in "Haibun sa Pagbabalik." If this freshness blowing into the space of Filipino letters will be sustained on a large scale, a really new linguistic dimension will evolve in our poetic heritage.

Second, the contest judges found plagiarism rearing its vexed head among the entries. Plagiarism is defined as "the appropriation or imitation of the language, ideas, and thoughts of another author, and representation of them as one’s original work." Plagiary, a synonym for both plagiarist and plagiarism, has for its rootword the Latin plagiarius, meaning "kidnapper." Plagiarism, thus, indicates an infringement on the intellectual property of the true originator because the plagiarist steals or kidnaps it. As a literary crime, plagiarism will never be eradicated — it can only be minimized — but editors and contest organizers are helpless in this regard. The discovery of plagiarism is burdensome, and frustrating matter. The many poems literary editors receive, for instance, cannot be all investigated to establish their authorial authenticity. Because they just do not have the time and money for that, they take every poem at its face value and rely on the author’s integrity. In the case of this year’s Surian entries, one was an outright copying of the idea and structure of "Ulat Buhat Sa Bulkan," Cirilo F. Bautista’s prizewinning poem in the same contest sometime in the 1990s. The copyist simply reset the theme — the supremacy of art over mundane events — in another location, but the narrative lines of the two poems were similar. When Jesus Santiago was notified of this plagiarism, he smiled and said that his own winning poem in the same contest was also plagiarized some years back. We brought this matter to the attention of Dr. Ricardo D. Nolasco, commissioner of the KWF, with no hope that he would initiate steps to discourage plagiarists from tainting the fine reputation of the Surian contest.

Source: Breaking Signs, Philippine Panorama (May 4, 2008).
Visit Dr. Ciirilo Bautista's website at www.cirilofbautista.tk

Labels: Breaking Signs, Cirilo Bautista

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