MANILA, Philippines — One can't really blame people from other parts of the country whenthey brand the nation’s capital as “Imperial Manila”.

Manila, after all, is where one heads to find a job and make their fortune. It is in Manila where decisions that affect the whole country are made. And for young Filipinos with aspirations of literary greatness, it is in Manila where they have to make their mark.

But does this always have to be the case?

At a forum entitled “Making Your Center Away From The Center”, Palanca winners Merlie Alunan and Abdon “Jun” Balde, Jr. – writers from the “literary margins” of Leyte and Bicol, respectively – made a case for the growing strength and viability of literature outside of “Imperial Manila”.

De-centering
Merlie Alunan says Visayas and Mindanao's path to literary self-determination began with the legendary literary couple, Edilberto and Edith Tiempo, and their establishment of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop.

Alunan herself was part of the workshop's first edition in 1962, and says that it was from this workshop that almost all of the writers from the South owe their training.

“It might be said that the Silliman Workshop in Dumaguete City had the effect of de-centering the fora where literature was being discussed. In those days, most of those workshops were held only in Manila,” she says. “Some of the well-known writers in the Philippines today trained under Silliman University. Most of these writers did their apprenticeship in English 191, thecourse for creative writing.”

More than just transplanting theliterary discussion from Manila to Dumaguete, the Silliman workshop also planted the seed for other workshops focusing on even more marginalized forms of Philippine literature.

“Alumni of both the graduate program and the workshop left Silliman and found niches in various academic institutions in the Visayas and Mindanao. In due time, they began holding their own workshops, making themselves centers of writing in their various venues,” says Alunan.

Just a few of the workshops that sprung from alumni of the Silliman workshop include writing workshops in Iligan and Tacloban, as well as the Lamirao writing workshop. These focus on works written in the region's mother tongue, and fulfill a crucial role in the flowering of regional literature.

“The young are not interested in writing in their mother language because they see no prospect of seeing their words in print. They try to write in English and it is very bad English. They write in Tagalog, but it is not the language of their soul,” explains Alunan.

“People are not proud of their language and have no sense of its capacity for refinement. These workshops make a point to encourage work in the mother language of the venues.”

Growing the dialects
Advances in technology have also given a boost towards making where the writers are as the centers of literary development.

Abdon “Jun” Balde, Jr., a Bicol native who writes English and Filipino, says that the Internet has been instrumental in helping him discover the literary uses of his own native dialect of Oasnon.

“Six years ago, no one wrote in the Oasnon dialect. Everyone thought that it could not be written because of the many umlaut vowels. But in 2004, I accidentally discovered a website set up by an Oasnon living in America,” he recalls.

“I joined them and started uploading my poems, writing in the dialect and using the German umlaut. From then, many Obasnon form other parts of the world started uploading stories of their experiences, writing the vowels in the same form. Soon they responded with stories about growing up in the barrios.”

Balde says that the website has grown larger since then, slowly but surely building a community that is reviving a language that even its speakers thought could not be literary.

“We now have over 200 storytellers from many parts of the world sending their writings in digital form. They are writing stories, poems, memoirs, history, news, and even songs of the town of Oas. We are slowly developing an Oasnon literature,” he proclaims.

At home
Both Alunan and Balde agree that aspiring writers should look beyond the “geography” of the literary scene and instead focus on the language they can best express themselves in and the place where they feel the most at home in.

“I started from the center, writing and publishing in Manila, borrowing the dominant language and creating my network among writers of national stature. However, during the writing of my third book, I went home and it was as if I discovered my birthplace for the first time. When in Bicol I find that my memories are easy and clearer. From then on I turned southwards, to Bicol and to the margins,” shares Balde.

“Over the years in which I have written in English, I felt more and more the inadequacy of English to deal with the many aspects of Visayan experience. I taught myself to write in Cebuano. I grew in the conviction that the mother language is the most fit language for creative purposes,” adds Alunan.

The two say that young writers and writing communities outside of Manila should stand firm and celebrate their own unique literary forms, language, and expressions, as these are best suited to represent their own experience.

“The countryside where I come from looks to Manila for direction and affirmation, which unfortunately, I feel at times Manila cannot give. Manilenos, no matter how well-meaning or well-informed they are, hardly have any sense of what life is like outside of their concrete jungle,” says Alunan.

“'Centers are not permanent places. I suppose I am just like any writer, who creates his own center, and it doesn't matter whether it is in the center or in the margins. What matters is that I am comfortable in my own center,” ends Balde.