Merlie M. Alunan started her literary studies as a scholar of eighteenth-century Romantic Literature under the fabled tutelage of Edilberto and Edith Tiempo at the Silliman University Graduate School of English. She took to heart the dictum of the age, which was that the poet should be seen as an individual distinguished from her peers by the intensity of her perception and the inner workings of her mind. These, plus what William Blake called “Imagination, the Divine Vision,” powered the British romantics. But Alunan merely used this learning as a net to sieve her manifold experiences. She has transformed them into feats of invention both linguistic and lyrical. The persona in “Bienvenida” writes: “New tales now sit in your memory hoard.” And this is what Tigom: Collected Poems has done. The poems have such precise diction and strong narrative lines. Internal rhymes echo down the pages. The political and satirical poems have the sharpness of barbed wires. This is poetry of many layers—landscapes and seascapes, history and memory, filaments of feeling vibrating in the very air. Tigom: Collected Poems cements the reputation of Merlie M. Alunan as one of Asia’s finest poets.

—Danton Remoto, author of Riverrun: A Novel and Winner of the Gawad Pambansang

Alagad ni Balagtas