Literary landmarks sprout in Manila

Manila is going the way of London, putting up landmarks in

places where great Filipino writers were born or just stayed

SOMETHING quite ''revolutionary'' is

happening in the city of Manila these

days. From the Rizal Park to Baclaran,

you could not have missed the colorful

''Sa Aklat, Sisikat'' streamers on the

center island of Roxas Boulevard on a

long stretch that ends where next-door

neighbors, the Museo Pambata and the

US Embassy, are. The streamers

signaled a reading campaign among

Grade 6 students in 16 public schools in

Manila.

The campaign was the brainchild of

Museo Pambata executive director Nina Lim-Yuson, who drew

the inspiration from a similar campaign in New York. Manila, she

thought, could also be promoted as the city that reads. She

broached the idea to the Museo board made up of strong,

aggressive women and confirmed book lovers like Lizzie Zobel,

Margarita Delgado, Ging Montinola, Emily Abrera and Doris

Ho--and Manila has never been the same since.

In the hands of project chairs Zobel and Delgado, to whom

nothing is impossible, the literacy campaign has grown into the

multifaceted festival that it is today. It kicked off with a ''My

Eyes Can Read'' program for about 7,000 Grade 1 students in

public schools, an eye examination campaign. Eyeglasses were

provided and in the case of a child's strabismus, free surgical

services arranged for.

To promote reading among Grade 6 students, a Read-a-thon and

a Battle of the Books were organized.

Alitaptap, the newly formed association of storytellers headed

by actor and master storyteller Bodjie Pascua, is holding a

Saturday series of day-long storytelling sessions at different

malls in Manila, such as Harrison Plaza and Robinsons Place.

Celebrity storytellers have included China Cojuangco and DECS

Superintendent Paraluman Giron. There's also a book fair of

local and foreign publishers.

Donations of quality children's books have been made to five

public libraries in Manila. While the usual donations are old,

irrelevant, outdated and unwanted discards, the donated books

are brand-new and have been selected by the Philippine Board

on Books for Young People (PBBY). They are thus

recommended reading fare for children.

Landmarks

The PBBY has also been assigned the pleasant task of

establishing "Literary Landmarks" within the city. This is not as

easy as it seems, since the PBBY has to determine where a

literary personality was born and where he walked the streets of

Manila.

Recently, thanks to the historical sleuthing of PBBY board

member and Anvil director Karina Bolasco, the first such

landmark was made. It honored the birthplace of the first Filipino

modern poet in English, National Artist Jose Garcia Villa. The

landmark was unveiled at the Singalong gate of St. Scholastica's

College, happily also Bolasco's (and my) alma mater.

This discovery, made possible through historian and journalist

Chitang Guerrero-Nakpil, was a most surprising one, even to the

Benedictine nuns who have had the property for close to a

hundred years now.

The unveiling was a time of celebration and nostalgia. Mother

Prioress Angelica Leviste, OSB, brought the audience back to

the era when the Villa house, where the poet was born, stood on

Singalong. The property was eventually bought by the

Archdiocese of Manila, from whom the college bought it for two

centavos per square meter. The property became the original

site of St. Cecilia's House. Interestingly enough, St. Cecilia's

Hall, now located at another part of the campus, is under

renovation to state-of-the-art standards to help it reclaim its

former glory. Its role in the cultural life of Manila in the pre-CCP

years recently gained official acknowledgment when it was

honored with a cultural marker.

Anarchy

Manila Mayor Lito Atienza, whose office assisted the ''Sa Aklat,

Sisikat'' campaign, triumphantly announced that no matter what

the neighboring cities claim, it is Manila where most of the

population and old families come from, making it all-deserving to

be the country's capital.

While admitting that today's Manila leaves much to be desired,

the mayor promised the Benedictine community that the

anarchy around them would soon be eased. Yes, the anarchy

that is in complete contrast to the serenity found within the

college walls, Atienza pointed out.

Jesus Villa, son of Jose's brother Oscar and a nephew of the

poet, spoke in behalf of the Villa family. He remembered how his

grandmother often gave warm recollections of the Singalong

home. The poet's own father, Col. Simeon Villa, played a role in

Philippine history as physician of Emilio Aguinaldo.

Jesus Villa recalled his daughter's experience when she went to

Jose Garcia Villa's wake in Manhattan in 1997. She thought she

had ended up in the wrong place, because it was akin to an Irish

wake, full of singing and merrymaking. Then she realized that

this celebration of life was so typically Jose Garcia Villa,

capturing the ebullience of his poetry, ''the magic, the lyricism,

the childlike quality.''

Persuaded to share more memories of his uncle, Villa said that

while he was studying abroad, he had the opportunity to visit

the poet frequently in New York. And when the poet came home

to visit or receive his honorary degrees from FEU and UP, he

stayed at the family home of Jesus Villa.

And what were the special benefits of such affinity and

proximity? Jesus could attend his uncle's poetry workshops and

in his youth, became familiar with his uncle's circle of literary

friends.

In a sense, he confessed, there was the burden of carrying the

Villa name, for he had high standards to live (or write?) by.

While a photo editor of the Ateneo high school paper, for

example, he was asked to write and doing so was made harder

by the fact that he was laboring in the shadow of the great poet.

Jose Garcia Villa was an iconoclast in his time and his literary

radicalism was controversial. How his comma poems startled

and mystified us all then.