PINoy Reading Poetry At the Vancouver Public Library
tom choy
you are all invited to a poetry reading by a kababayan poet and
scholar, ed farolan, a graduate of the ateneo de manila university and
a resident of north delta, bc at the vancouver library on robson
street.
EDMUNDO FAROLAN will be reading from his four collections of poetry in
English, Spanish, French and Tagalog as well as excerpts from his
biingual play Rizal at the Vancouver Public Library on February 10th
1997 at 7:30 p.m.
Farolan was born in Manila on December 30, 1943. He was educated by
the Jesuits at the Ateneo de Manila where he received his A.B. degree.
He was offered a grant by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
1965 to pursue studies in Spanish Literature in Madrid where he
received a Certificate for Professors of Spanish at the Instituto de
Cultura Hispanica. While in Spain, he had two painting exhibitions at
the Instituto de Cultura Hispanica and one at the Colegio Mayor de
Guadalupe in Madrid in 1966. His paintings were criticized as "ahead of
his time" because he was dabbling in abstract, pop art paintings
similar to those of Pollock which Spanish artists, at that time, were
not accustomed to. Antonio Amado, director of the Colegio Mayor de
Guadalupe, an avant-garde artist and a modernist critic himself, asked
him to do a mural for the Colegio. The abstract mural still stands at
the Colegio's recreation hall.
After his "painting phase", Farolan started writing and won a poetry
award at the Colegio Mayor de Guadalupe in 1967. His first collection
of poems, Lluvias Filipinas, was published in Madrid in 1967.
He was offered a teaching position at the University of Toronto where
he received his Master's Degree in Spanish in 1969. He then proceeded
to the United States where he taught at Bowling Green State University,
the College of Great Falls, and San Francisco State University.
In 1974, he returned to the Philippines where he taught at his alma
mater, Ateneo University, and later on at the University of the
Philippines. He published his second collection of poems, The Rhythm
of Despair, in Manila in 1975. In 1978, he became the Chairman of the
Spanish Department of Pamantasan ng Lunsod ng Maynila. Three of his
books were published between 1978 and 1981: Gramatica y Practica,
Literatura Hispanofilipina and Don Segundo Sombra, a tagalog
translation of the Argentinian classic by Argentinian writer Ricardo
Guiraldes. In 1981, he was given a grant by the Instituto Caro y Cuervo
in Bogota to do research in Spanish Linguistics. The results of his
research were published in textbook form, Espanol Intermedio which was
later used by some Philippine universities. While in Bogota, he
published his third book of poems Tercera Primavera.
He returned to Canada in 1984 and has been living in Vancouver since
then. He has written, in the past 10 years, Palali, an historical
novel, which he has also adapted into a screenplay, two historical
stage plays (Rizal and Aguinaldo), and his fourth book of poems, Oh,
Canada!,a collection of Canadian poems from 1967 to the present,
published in Toronto in 1994. His stage play, Rizal, has recently been
published by the International Readers' Theatre.
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tom choy
"your vancouver connection"
sutton group seafair realty
vancouver,bc, canada
"aspac.com"--your affordable web
presence company
http://www.aspac.com
t...@axionet.com
604-273-3155
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Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing
himself. -Leo Tolstoy