INCULPATORY EVIDENCE: THE COVID-19 POEMS

I'm pleased to announce a new poetry collection birthed by Covid-19 -- I supposed almost anything can be a Muse. Anyway, this is interesting because it's also a bilingual edition with my English poems translated into Thai. A translation essay is included, too, which hopefully is educational. Here's more information about it:

INCULPATORY EVIDENCE: The Covid-19 Poems

Publishers: Laughing/Ouch/Cube/Productions (California) and i.e. press (New York)
ISBN: 978-1-934299-16-6
Pages: 58
Release Date: Summer 2020
Distributors: Laughing Ouch Cube Productions (johnkathybr at gmail dot com) and its Lulu Account
Price: $15.00

This wouldn't have been my ideal way to be a "Cover Girl." Nonetheless, you are invited to GO HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION.

PAGPAG REACHES CHINA

I’m delighted, of course, to see PAGPAG: The Dictator's Aftermath in the Diaspora start its journey around the world. These photos come from China during the farewell talk of Sze Ping Lo as he stepped down as CEO of WWF China. His lecture included two slides that referred to Red Constantino's remarks during PAGPAG’s book launch. The first image presents an excerpt from my book accompanied by a close up detail of one of the Constantino Murals, which was commissioned in 2007 to commemorate the lives of two ordinary Filipinos who, because they answered their people's call, rose to become giants. One was Macario Sakay, and the other, in the photo with my quote, is Lean Alejandro. From PAGPAG, my quote

“The optimism in my memory is a taste of rust, jarring against what I observed the country had become. The optimism is an ache that will not go away. It is a ghost haunting.”

(That little red book is Araling Panlipunan (used in Philippine civics classes).)

The second image presents my favorite part of Red’s PAGPAG remarks (reprinted in ABS-CBN) which I think is much needed for the times:

"To survive and thrive in the near future, we will need everyone. And we will need to revisit the past constantly, not as a bludgeon to smash our enemies with but as a constant companion in our effort to distill meaning in our fleeting lives. Because everything will count and because the written word will always -- always -- be our strongest and most reliable ally."