3 Ps: Poetry, Pinays, Politics

Aloha.

Kumusta.

Howzit.

Hello.

This is florentinapoet@gmail.com coming at you. Leona Florentino, from whom the florentinapoet blogger identity is inspired, was a 19th century Ilokana poet I am reading for an Ilokano Literature in Translation class this semester. She is considered by some scholars as the "Sappho of the Philippines" (Why do we always have to use a Western standard? Don't answer. That was a rhetorical question.) For all intents and purposes, Leona was the first national female poet of the Philippines.  Her poetry was exhibited in Spain and France in the 1880s. She also gave birth to the illustrious Don Isabelo de los Reyes, a scholar, writer, activist and sometime Spanish-ass-kissing author better known as the Father of Organized Labor in the Philippines by some. "Don Belong" established the first regional periodical called El Ilocano that published fiction and poetry. So enough of Poetry, Pinays and Politics--the 3Ps of some of my P passions. This blog will explore those 3 Ps, as well as formulate an evolving poetics that looks at gender, culture and representation.

I'm a publicist by day and student by afternoon and evening.  I returned to higher education in the fifth decade of my life to pursue a graduate degree in English, specifically creative writing, and more specifically, poetry.  I'm in my third semester, which means if I start and finish my thesis next semester, I will graduate in May 2013.  I am producing work now that I plan to shape into some sort of coherent, organized form of a serious kind next year.  I am thinking it will be multi-genre. I am thinking.