Shockbox Ang Butas na Kahon ni Kulas Talon
Isa siyáng natural na rebelde laban sa kahit anung kairalan. – Virgilio S. Almario
His imaginative journey resembles a Universe passing through a Universe. It has been one of the most exciting things in modern poetry, to watch this journey being made. – The Guardian
A fresh and ludic voice in our own “scene so fair.” Readers would surely toast this “achieve of” – Wazak! – Gémino H. Abad
Without Kulas Talon’s eloquence, Filipinos would have forgotten how to name all those things that are there before their eyes. – Poetry Foundation
In this book’s affirmation of the power of poetic collaboration, we hear the poems in Tagalog and English carefully bring together, on the page and in the ear, different ways with language that give breath to what Kulas Talon’s itinerant urban troubadour observes in the box-within-the-box-within-the-possibly bigger-boxes where everybody seems to live. His poems punch holes into these boxes, exposing the oftentimes raw and rendered pointless, and the observing eye leaves the reader with the detritus of the scene for rumination of a deadening world. Let not the Shockbox revelations reiterate in our reading and re-readings the prophetic lament in the opening poem “Kahon”: Sinubukan niyang ipaliwanag ito sa ibang tao ngunit walang makinig. – Marjorie Evasco
Le poète de la révolte, et le plus grand. – Le Monde
Translated from the original Tagalog to English by Mikael de Lara Co, Khavn De La Cruz, Ramil Digal Gulle, Ken T. Ishikawa, Kris Lanot Lacaba, Paolo Manalo, Angelo Suarez, Joel M. Toledo, and Naya S. Valdellon
About the Author
Novelist, playwright, and essayist KULAS TALON (1973-2013) is one of the Philippines’ greatest and most influential poets. His many books include Do Androids Dream Of Electric Rhinoceros, A Natural History Of Cinema Volume 8 1/2, To Kill A Baboy Ramo, So What Is What, Poems For Weddings And Funerals. He was awarded the Prix Formentor in 2007. He taught cinema and music at the University of Sussex. By the time he died in a terrorist attack in London, he had written approximately 3,360 pages of poetry.