Poetry&Stuffby
MARNE KILATES
MARNE
S
KRIPTS
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
from
Antinostalgia & the Tokhang
Rhapsodies
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
Poems 2022
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
All About Marne
Notes,Stuff & Sundry
Poet, translator, editor, and sometime book designer, Marne Kilates (given name, Mariano) was born on November 5, 1952, in the town of Daraga, Albay province, the Bicol Region in the Philippines. He has lived his youth in the shadow of the mountain, Mayon, the landmark of conical beauty and volcanic unpredictability.
Me, by Gig de Pio
While reading a poem, charcoal on paper
He didn’t warn me, though I had a vague
Idea what he was doing. It was all in fun,
And maybe it helped him that I was
Reading a poem, to produce a sketch
That somehow meant something,
Because it was one of those things
An artist does by pure skill, in the blink
Of an eye, to preserve the heartbeat,
So to speak, of the moment. I don’t remember
What I was reading, but I was glad
To receive it when it was done, like a trophy.
It had the lightest touch, the pencil’s
Lead was on tiptoe: In a few or infinite
Number of strokes, or infinitesimal,
I had been rarefied! Thin as air. There
I was in my newsboy’s cap, a bit meditative,
Vaguely immaterial. Almost transparent.
I was done, in Kundera’s words, in
In the unbearable lightness of Gig’s hand!
Marne Kilates
11 August 2021
SKETCH done during Gus Albor’s birthday party,
28 August 2019
While reading a poem, charcoal on paper
He didn’t warn me, though I had a vague
Idea what he was doing. It was all in fun,
And maybe it helped him that I was
Reading a poem, to produce a sketch
That somehow meant something,
Because it was one of those things
An artist does by pure skill, in the blink
Of an eye, to preserve the heartbeat,
So to speak, of the moment. I don’t remember
What I was reading, but I was glad
To receive it when it was done, like a trophy.
It had the lightest touch, the pencil’s
Lead was on tiptoe: In a few or infinite
Number of strokes, or infinitesimal,
I had been rarefied! Thin as air. There
I was in my newsboy’s cap, a bit meditative,
Vaguely immaterial. Almost transparent.
I was done, in Kundera’s words, in
In the unbearable lightness of Gig’s hand!
Marne Kilates
11 August 2021
SKETCH done during Gus Albor’s birthday party,
28 August 2019
PHOTOS. From top, clockwise: Stonework at the Daraga Church by Jun Sierra. With his books at Savage Mind Bookshop in Naga City. The church on the hill and Mayon Volcano. Reading at UP Writers Night by Virgilio Labial. Signing books at a writers' conference. At the Legazpi Boulevard. Sketch by Cid de Pio. Mayon Volcano and mountain lake.
His early influences include a rather taciturn father, who was a schoolteacher, and who gave him and his sisters colored picture books and science books, and his mother who was an avid reader. His eldest brother, who also read a lot, was a painter from whom he inherited his longtime love for art. (Kilates first thought he would become a painter; music, too, ran in the family, as his second elder brother played many instruments, while their grandfather, who died before Kilates was born, was a church escribiente who transcribed Gregorian masses).
Largely self-taught in his writing, Kilates’ self-education began when he spent much time on his own in the town library, where he devoured the encyclopedias and later encountered the works of local poets and novelists. From Grade Six, he became an altar boy at the town’s centuries-old stone church sitting on a hilltop overlooking the town, where after serving in the late afternoon mass he observed the imposing Mayon Volcano in all its purple splendor vanish into the twilight [picture]. Later he spent one semester in the well-stocked library of the Divine World College (Legazpi City) trying to read everything beyond his college literature course. He succeeded minimally, but had by then convinced himself he wanted to be a poet.
In 1978 he came to work in Manila, joined the literary workshops of the Galian sa Arte at Tula conducted by Rio Alma or Virgilio S. Almario (now national artist for literature), and later the UP National Writers Workshop and the Silliman Writers Workshop. He joined the Writers Union of the Philippines (later the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas or UMPIL) and became an associate fellow of the Philippine Literary Arts Council. From the late 1980s to 2005 he worked in advertising as copywriter and later became executive creative director. He left the industry to work freelance as communications consultant. In the meantime he had won several Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards (for poetry), and the NBDB-Manila Critics Circle National Book Awards for poetry as well as for translation. In 1998 he won the Southeast Asia (SEA Write) Award given by the Thai royalty.
From Grade Six, he became
an altar boy at the town’s centuries-old stone church sitting on a hilltop overlooking the town, where after serving in the late afternoon mass he observed the imposing Mayon Volcano
in all its purple splendor vanish into the twilight.
In 2013, he was named the first Poet of the Year in the Nick Joaquin Literary Awards of Philippines Graphic Magazine, while in 2012 he was the holder of the Henry Lee Irwin Professorial Chair for Creative Writing at the Ateneo de Manila University. His other awards include the Bulawan na Bikolnon Award of Ateneo de Naga University, and the Outstanding Citizen of Albay in the Literary Arts. In 2016 he was given the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas, a liftime achievement award, by the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (Writers Union of the Philippines).
Apart from his six published six books of poetry, Kilates has completed three more collections of poems currently in various stages of production. He is also recognized as one of the country’s leading literary translators and has published numerous books of translation from Filipino into English including works by works by Rio Alma, Bienvenido Lumbera, Rogelio Mangahas, Mike Bigornia, and Jesus Manuel Santiago among others. Professionally, Kilates is a freelance communications consultant who writes and edits coffee table books and communications campaigns. He is also a visiting faculty who teaches literary translation to senior high students at the Philippine High Schools for the Arts in Makiling. He resides in Parañaque City, Metro Manila.
❖
