There was no better day to open the first-ever Bikol Book Festival than last Easter Sunday, April 17. Like Mary Magdalene who came to visit the tomb of her teacher, the delegates visited the graves of two of our pioneering women writers in the region, Dr. Maria Lilia F. Realubit and Soccoro Federis Tate. 

Realubit was an eminent Bikol Studies scholar whose efforts to collect, compile, and preserve Bikoliana from the late 19 th century to the beginning of the new millennium represent a significant contribution to our nation’s cultural history.

Tate was a notable fictionist in English and a language and literature teacher in the old Ateneo de Naga and the diocesan seminary; her short stories bore witness to the sublime pains and truths of her subjects—the domestic, the feminine, and the indigene.

Family members of the honored writers accompanied us in this visit.

We were composed of Bikolnon writers, artists, and teachers, together with the Czech Ambassador to the Philippines Jana Šedivá (our guest of honor) and the representatives of the National Book Development Board (NBDB) headed by Director Anthony John Balisi.

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‘Pilgrimage of the heart’

The solemn visit to the cemeteries in Naga City set the tone for the weeklong event (April 17-21), which Joel Pablo Salud, one of the festival’s guest writers, described as “a pilgrimage of the heart.” 

We proceeded to six other locations, making the event a book festival on-the-go. We visited significant literary sites, including the oldest operating printing press in the region, Cecilio Press. Established after the war, it continues to publish novenas, prognotiscos (dream guide), and devotional materials in the local language collectively identified as Bikol. 

The intercessory prayers and poetry written by Antonio and Manuel Salazar and printed by Cecilio Press are chanted and dramatized during patronal feasts and special occasions such as the Aurora (dawn/night processions) and Dotoc (the ritualized performance of the search and finding of the Holy Cross). 

We went to the town of Buhi, which has inspired generations of artists and writers dating back from the colonial period. Fray Bernardino Melendreras, a Franciscan friar acknowledged as the author of the Bikol folk epic-fragment,”Ibalon,” wrote a poem about the islet Magindara (the local word for mermaids) found in the lake of Buhi, and the tragic love story of Tacay and Mayon. 

A celebration of presences

Buhi is also known for its language, which is distinct from the commonly recognized standard Bikol. By the picturesque lakeside, the local government unit and the youth advocacy group Project Susog organized a tertulia and mounted an exhibit featuring Buhi’s weaving traditions and the sculptural works of the indigenous community in the town. 

With the theme “Danay Na Yaon” (Always, Our Presences), the first Bikol Book Festival was meant to be a celebration of presences. Aside from Realubit and Tate, we offered prayers, flowers, and memorial speeches to the poets Luis G. Dato of Baao, Camarines Sur and Angela Manalang Gloria of Tabaco City, Albay; and the fictionists Delfin Fresnosa of Gubat, Sorsogon and Bienvenido Santos of Camalig, Albay.

Dato and Manalang Gloria are considered among the country’s earliest poets in English. Dato became a respected editor of Bikol newspapers and was elected mayor of his hometown, while Manalang Gloria took an active role in running the family business. 

Santos and Fresnosa, on the other hand, are best remembered for their short stories that are now part of the national literary canon in English. Santos’ classic story “Scent of Apples” explored the exiled existence of the first Filipinos in the United States, while Fresnosa’s gothic narratives centered on the life stories of those who suffered greatly under the Pacific War. 

In the tombstone of Santos, one reads the title of his poetry collection—“Distances: In Time”; in Fresnosa’s is the phrase “Tandoz Has Been Laid To Rest.” Tandoz was the fictional character he created in what critic Teresita Erestain considers as Fresnosa’s most important short story. 

Mini-book fairs

The weeklong festival also had mini-book fairs, the opening of the Czech Comics and Karel Capek exhibitions, a children storytelling session, a film viewing, a writing and book design workshop, and the public presentation of 15 new titles that received publication and translation grants from the NBDB. 

These new titles include the translation of Bikol literary works to Kapampangan, Kinaray-a, Binisaya, and foreign languages like English, Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. 

This author’s children’s book “Bahay Kubo”, cowritten with Stephen Acabado, is now available in German and Japanese. Selected stories of Tate and Carlos Ojeda Aureus are also available in Spanish. Two contemporary novels by Daryl Delgado and Ramon Guillermo, originally written in English and Filipino, have been translated to Bikol and Waray, respectively. 

‘Duty to the bones’

These cross-regional publications and foreign translations were a highlight of the First Bikol Book Festival. Unlike other cultural festivals that are usually held in populous spaces like malls and parks, we opted to hold this event by doing our “duty to the bones”. We entered cemeteries and returned to the sources of our poetry and fiction, like the old printing press of the Cecilios and the decrepit chapel in Cagbunga, Gainza where the images of three dead Christs remain a potent source of literary insurrection.

By honoring our pioneering writers and celebrating contemporary works, we hope we launched a new way of reading and navigating our literatures—by looking at and reflecting on the afterlives of texts afforded by translation and reevaluation. To quote one of the poets we honored, Luis G. Dato: 

“Books are the dead, I must borrow

My lights from the print with some sorrow,

For I see in a book and old tomb;

The books, the dear books, are Death’s meeting,

Our times are short, the days are fleeting,

And a book is the dust—and a tomb.”

The First Bikol Book Festival was jointly organized by the Ateneo de Naga University Press and Savage Mind Bookshop with the NBDB, in cooperation with the Pili Parochial School, the Saint Raphael Archangel Parish, and the local governments of Naga, Buhi, Camalig, Tabaco, and Gubat, Sorsogon.  

Kristian Sendon Cordero is an award-winning poet, fictionist, filmmaker, and translator based in Bicol. He runs the independent bookshop and art space Savage Mind in Naga City. —ED.