Culture and Arts Notebook

NARRATIVE         Have you ever seen an object for the first time and felt so drawn to it that you would never forget how it made you heave and sigh and feel warm inside despite the snow…

FICTION         Nilang squatted beneath the umbrous shade of an ancient baliti tree. It was high noon and she still had a four-kilometer walk ahead of her to Santa Elena and the parish priest’s house. She carried…

VISUAL ARTS: PHOTOGRAPHY         Photographs by Boldy Tapales/Text by Karina Santillan Sometimes, you enter a place, and somehow you are imbued with a feeling, a sensibility, an experience that you have penetrated a space you could call…

POEM       by Rem Tanauan WHEREVER YOU LOOK BACK, there’s haiku. In fact, it’s there in the moss on the wall blessed by rain. In the fallen jasmin, like an upturned umbrella on a grimy road. In the…

BOOK REVIEW            Stolen Lives by Malika Oufkir  Book Review by Mona Gonzalez I read Stolen Lives twice. The first time, I couldn’t put it down because it was just shocking. The second time I read…

VISUAL ARTS         by Saki (Ishak Binudin) As a phenomenon of life, regeneration takes on different forms, captured by the diverse paintings and artworks presented by five artists of different generations, using different aesthetic techniques and approaches.…

SHORT FICTION         By Jhon Sanchez Thanks to Martha Hughes, Sam Ferri, Nan Fryland, and Emma Komlos-Hrobsky for their editorial comments Without paying attention, Gonzalo heard what the woman in the passenger seat said, “At least you…

INDIGENOUS CULTURE/NARRATIVE         Narrative by Claire Madarang I have always associated South Cotabato, a province in the Philippines with the serene Lake Sebu and the dreamweaving T’boli indigenous people and their masterpiece, the t’nalak. South Cotabato is…

VISUAL ARTS           Exile Pattern is a collection of experimental art photos by photo patternist Bereket Alemayehu, a native Ethiopian who came to South Korea in 2014 and now resides in Seoul. The photographs, which were…

POETRY/ARTIFACT          The shape of each life that has passed Through this tunnel of time Must mean something in the scheme of things If human beings leave behind bones, books Vases, paintings, all manner of artifacts Proof…