#Mookie Lacuesta

[ilaw-at-panitik]

No one said marriage was Architecture, but I know a door Your anger shut mildly And did not wake a child.

Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta, from "Burning Houses" in Burning Houses and Hush Harbor (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2021)

[maybuds]

Crust of bread, and such Mookie Katigbak Lacuesta

[Text ID in ALT text]

[bookloure]

"To arrive at the pulp means / a willful tear at the rind. / and once there? // perhaps stones, perhaps sugar."

When I saw two of Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta’s poetry collections combined into one book at the Philippine Book Festival, I had to pick it up. Before this, I only saw a poem or two of hers on the Internet: one of which is “A Crust of Bread, and Such—” which I remember liking very much when I read it about two or three years ago.

Needless to say, I was more interested in her collection "Hush Harbor," which revolves around different themes like a lover's longing, desire, and colonization. And while true that it has some stunning lines, overall, I liked it less. I find the voice in this collection distant, making it harder for me to connect. The poems I found were too manicured, the metaphors masking instead of revealing the true emotions behind each piece.

I connected more with Burning Houses, which she called her "weird child" in the signed and dedicated copy I own. BH has a lot of domestic poems in it, which I can sense was deeply personal. I saw glimpses of her childhood, adolescence, and home life in this collection. One can almost see Mookie peeling away layers of memories and revealing to the reader whatever she finds—perhaps stone, perhaps sugar.

In both collections, I loved it best when Mookie was in conversation with different authors and works. Perhaps it's just me and my love of intertextuality. Still, her ideas as she conversed with other voices were interesting, sometimes even visceral.

Looking at Goodreads average rating on the two collections, I am not alone in my partiality towards Burning Houses. I hope she'll embrace this "weirdness" in her next collections. Because it's what makes me connect to her works more. It takes a lot to be vulnerable, but poems should reveal us, not conceal us.

[thebaronmunchausen]

[wendellcapili]

With NBDB Director Anthony John Balisi and Singapore-based writer Migs Bravo Dutt. Migs is in Manila to promote her latest book, Room 216, published by Penguin Random House SEA (PRHSEA). Room 216 is hugely inspired by Migs's experiences as a UP statistics major and Ilang-Ilang Dorm resident. Migs’s published works span many countries, regions, and cultures. Her first novel, The Rosales House, was released by PRHSEA in 2020.

Migs has written non-fiction, including a piece featured in the Washington Post where she reflected on her personal experiences during the pandemic while in the USA. She also crafts poetry and short fiction, some of which have been published in various anthologies and journals, including 22 New Asian Short Stories, Kitaab’s The Best Asian Short Stories, and Growing Up Filipino 3. Migs also co-edited the anthologies Get Lucky: An Anthology of Philippine and Singapore Writings (2015) and its sequel, Get Luckier: An Anthology of Philippine and Singapore Writings II (2022).

Migs will join an all-women panel entitled Empowering Women in Stories to celebrate National Women’s Month, hosted by Fully Booked in partnership with PRHSEA. The event will be held today, 9 March 2024, at 3 PM, at The Studio, Fully Booked Bonifacio High Street. Empowering Women in Stories will also feature Penguin Random House Southeast Asia authors Marga Ortigas, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta, and Mica De Leon.

[steviesunrises]

handwriting ask game: 1, 4, 23 & 38 💞 /t4tstevebucky 🌟

the quote question was a toughie! that entire poem by Ada Limon is worth reading in its entirety.

[tendersteps]

dear celeste, 

i await the day when “here” stops being a declaration of the intangible spaces we inhabit and becomes a place where we could reach out for each other; i long to touch and be touched, to hold and be held.  

picrew / as far as cho-fu-sa (mookie katigbak-lacuesta)

[painsmemory]

You learn to break only as far As there’s still breaking in you left.

Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta, from her poem Cellophane

[singhersweetlullabies]

current bedroom situation ♡ thank you, @goodintentionsbooks

[poeticismism]

The Inevitable Place

         The Japanese knew well to see life from one          remove, to intend spring by writing of snow,          or plums in the orchard after a frost.

         Like so, I’ve learned to tell rain by dragonflies          in the field, to memorize August          by the garden’s wild hibiscus, all suspense          suspended by the bedrock certainty of what’s next.

         At the end of the season, my heart grinds          the difficult into what can be made plain          —first the mind, then the pain—          I crank up the levers, the pulleys, the weights,

         And then with what speed do I strip away          snow, unlearn seasons, flowers’ names—          the sum of all my losses

         vanishing as I run toward the inevitable place:          body prior to pain and the weight of the mind,

         where I am younger than the world. I become the wild.

[ilaw-at-panitik]

From SEA to Cloud: Listen to authors Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta, Maryanne Moll, and RM Topacio-Aplaon talk about their respective books "Assembling Alice," "The Maps of Camarines," and "At Night We Are Dancers."

[maybuds]

Because there’s nothing I love more than my hunger That I carry with me like a world/ all desire/ Buried in my bones like shrapnel./ When your eyes Marry mine by the light of a jukebox/ like a call Connecting for one glowing moment,/ It has a certain wherewithal./ It leaves an empty streetcar Taking me to the next town/ and the next town/ and the next.

from “Ode to Blanche Dubois,” The Proxy Eros by Mookie Katigbak Lacuesta (Anvil Publishing, 2008)

[jimmydomingo]

For the Episode 5 of European Union #YouTalk, Ambassador Luc Veron had conversations about #art, #poetry and #findingyourownvoice with Filipino writer-poet Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta. #OnAssignment with @ricoibarra and @indienardo with Ms Thelma Gecolea @gecoleathelma of the EU Delegation to the Philippines. Watch out for the full video soon at @euinthephilippines (at RCBC Plaza) https://www.instagram.com/p/CV7EmZMBlMp/?utm_medium=tumblr

[proserpoet]

Entry no. 15 for Buwan ng Panitikan

A bit cheesy. This is the revised version. PSN said he wasn't a fan of this piece. A bit cliche.

I still pitched this piece to him since I was working on 2 other pieces for the workshop. Anyhow, I get to learn the vignettes of life boxed in poetry. Learning from him is different learning experience from sir Jimmy Abad, Ms. Mookie Lacuesta and Rupi Kaur. Yeah, she has her own online writing workshop for people like us, under social distancing and home quarantine.

By the way, the stunning red brick church behind me is St. Michael the archangel church in Caramoan. If not only with the lengthy travel, bet ko bumalik doon. Magpapaka-survivor Philippines castaway ako. -------------------------------------------------------------

Untitled.

Masikip ang simbahan dulot ng nalalapit na kapistahan

Lahat ay pawang nag-uunahan, upang ang batang santo’y mahawakan

Ang iyong mga bisig ang nagsilbing kanlungan

Sa mga nagpipilit sumiksik, ginawang pananggalang

sabay bulong “Mahal, atin ang walang hanggan.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_Acz33lmnhQ8O-SNd6FKD3GWqjqZB9Q-lXeLc0/?igshid=ppwq9fjyz24c

[eunoiareview]

When the Heart Flies from Its Place

When the Heart Flies from Its Place

After Eric Gamalinda & Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

The line of the poem always begins here: its first words its home. But: longing, and still amid age, wandering, finding meaning in the shaping landscape of water where there is no fixed geography. Already, the dying of language, of memory, of love. Here in Bacolod, waiting for the rain is an art of un-telling of missing home. When it finally comes,…

[steviesunrises]

– Lines from Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta's poem, As Far as Cho-Fu-Sa.

For @steverogersweek Day 7: Favorite Quote.

The whole poem can be found under the cut

As Far as Cho-Fu-Sa by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

“If you are coming down the narrows of the river Kiang,

Let me know beforehand and I will come out to meet you

As far as Cho-Fu-Sa.” –Ezra Pound

What I am ever is this: composure of stone.

Spare weather, visiting the garden, small as the hours

I keep watch by. Beyond this wall

must be better weathers. This claw of stars

must constellate somewhere into a bear,

else names would lie.

Since winter’s thaws, no script from you

save this: I travel the river and follow

the white gulls.

Husband. See me walking the dusty pass

where loom our prior lives?

Here the years pass that I enshrine

within these walls, sparing nothing

from the ardors of my stare: blue plums

paired butterflies repeat you

in a walled world. I tell myself

to clear the moss, mend the gate

so long unswayed and caked with dirt

but nothing moves. Somewhere

you are actual. Happen to me there.