Poetry

Diwata

Tagalog is a language spoken by about 22 million people in the Philippines. Diwata is a Tagalog term meaning, “muse.” Diwata is also a term for a mythical figure or being who resides in nature, and whom human communities must acknowledge, respect, and appease, in order to live safely, harmoniously, and prosperously in this world.

In her book Diwata, Reyes uses such Filipino oral tradition devices as meter, repetition and refrain, call and response, incantatory verses which verge on song, and the pantoum (which has Southeast Asian origins). She frames her poems between the Book of Genesis creation story, and the Tagalog creation myth, placing her work somewhere culturally in between both traditions. Also setting the tone for her stories is the death and large shadow cast by her grandfather, a World War II veteran and Bataan Death March survivor, who has passed onto her the responsibility of remembering. Reyes’ voice is grounded in her community’s traditions and histories, despite war and geographical dislocation.

FormatPaperback

$16.00

About the Author

Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, and was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003), Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press, 2006), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, Diwata (BOA, 2010), which received the Global Filipino Literary Award for Poetry, To Love as Aswang (PAWA, Inc. Publications, 2015), Invocation to Daughters (City Lights, 2017), Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA, 2020), and Wanna Peek Into My Notebook?: Notes on Pinay Liminality (Paloma Press, 2022). Her newest book Daughtersong Diaspore is forthcoming in 2027. She is an adjunct professor at University of San Francisco’s Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program. She lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, CA. For more information about Barbara Jane Reyes, visit barbarajanereyes.com.