ABOUT THE BOOK

The Brute Choir confronts the lingering trauma of the drug war and the culture of violence it left behind. At its core is a haunting central image—a choir that embodies the digital mob, the collective complicity that allowed populist power to flourish and truth to erode. These poems give voice to the “brute choir,” a chorus that turns terror into reason and silence into assent.

But even within this darkness, Michael Balili’s poems search for tenderness. Grief transforms into erotic reclamations: desire and the body become sites of resistance; pleasure becomes survival and intimacy becomes protest. Through dreamberries, drag, slap fests, and small domestic mercies, the collection finds light in defiant laughter and the stubborn persistence of love. Written with both fury and lyric grace, these poems ask: What happens after the chorus of violence fades? Can we still sing of life, of beauty, of becoming whole again?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Balili is the author of Kaiju. He teaches literature & creative writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman.