Barbara jane reyes biography of william hill
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POETA EN SAN FRANCISCO is...)
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including 2nd Avenue Poetry, Asian Pacific American Journal, Boxcar Poetry Review, Chain, Crate, Interlope, New American Writing, Nocturnes Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Parthenon West Review, as well as in the anthologies Babaylan (Aunt Lute Books, 2000), Eros Pinoy (Anvil, 2001), InvAsian: Asian Sisters Represent (Study Center Press, 2003), Going Home to a Landscape (Calyx, 2003), Coloring Book (Rattlecat, 2003), Not Home But Here (Anvil, 2003), Pinoy Poetics (Meritage, 2004), Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area (Avalon Publishing, 2004), 100 Love Poems: Philippine Love Poetry Since 1905 (University of the Philippines Press, 2004), Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005), and Graphic Poetry (Victionary, 2005).
She has taught Creative Writing at Mills College, and Philippine Studies at University of San Francisco.
Achievements
She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003), Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005), for which she received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, and Diwata (BOA Editions, Limited, 2010).
Works
book
- Diwata (American Poets Continuum)
( Tagalog is a language spoken by twenty-two million peop...)
- Poeta En San Francisco
(Poetry.
Witness she is, and weaver. From my story, how I have strayed.” She then, on beat, gets back to the task at hand.
Being a person with embarrassingly limited knowledge of Philippine history, be it mythological, oral, or strictly factual, I find it hard to determine the line between history and Reyes’ fictionalizations, an issue about which Reyes herself notes reservations on her blog.
Career
She received her Bachelor of Arts in Ethnic Studies at University of California Berkeley. She lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, where she is co-editor of Doveglion Press.
- Diwata (American Poets Continuum)
Last modified: April 2, 2018
Book Review: Diwata by Barbara Jane Reyes
Diwata
Barbara Jane Reyes
BOA Editions
Paperback, $16.00
ISBN 9781934414378
Published September, 2010
A Diwata, in Philippine culture, is a guardian spirit of nature similar to a nymph or elf who resides in large trees and is capable of delivering both fortune and misfortune.
She was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Gravities of Center(Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco(Tinfish Press, 2005), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets.
Her chapbooks, Easter Sunday (2008), Cherry (2008), andWest Oakland Sutra for the AK-47 Shooter at 3:00 AM and other Oakland poems (2008) are published by Ypolita Press, Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, and Deep Oakland Editions, respectively.
Barbara Jane Reyes, in her new collection, Diwata, adds that Diwata (seemingly a singular spirit in the book, though culturally there are many Diwatas) is the sister of Thunder and Lightning: “And their sister, the strange diwata whose light remains contained. The long humming lines matched with short pulse lines (“Here I shall weave a selvedge of we.”) hypnotize us like a fire on an otherwise black night.
It is easy to get engulfed in these flames and feel wrapped in a timeline that will never reach us, something mythological in itself, a time when the Diwata was a goddess, and with good timing Reyes pulls us in with quick references to Marlboros or a “tattooed daughter.” The poem, “How I no longer believe in Pious Women,” a sort of backwards prayer for “glittery G-stringed putas” and the “craving for stiletto-heeled patent leather, perfume of tiger lilies and tobacco, swigs from the whiskey bottle” comes towards the end of the collection to ground us and remind us that the detriment done to Filipinas is still pungent, but so is the strength they found as they chopped off their hair and went to war for their land and freedom.
Photo credit: Peter Dressel
I am a longtime Bay Area Pinay author and educator.
Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003), Poeta en San Francisco (TinFish Press, 2005), Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010), To Love as Aswang (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2015), Invocation to Daughters (City Lights Publishing, 2017), Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2020), and Wanna Peek Into My Notebook?: Notes on Pinay Liminality (Paloma Press, 2022).
As an undergraduate, "served as editor in chief for maganda magazine, and witnessed the emergence of Filipino American literary figures."
She received her Master of Fine Arts at San Francisco State University. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Filipinas Magazine, Hyphen, Interlope, Kartika Review, Lantern Review, Latino Poetry Review, New American Writing, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, among others.
She received her B.A.
in Ethnic Studies at U.C. Berkeley and her M.F.A. at San Francisco State University. Daughtersong Diaspore is forthcoming in 2027.
She is also the author of three chapbooks, For the City That Nearly Broke Me (Aztlan Libre Press, 2012), Cherry (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2007), and Easter Sunday (Ypolita Press, 2007).
Poems and essays have appeared in Asian American Literary Review, Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Hambone, Huizache, Maganda, Marías at Sampaguitas, Meridians, Ms.
Magazine, New American Writing, New England Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The New York Times, World Literature Today, and elsewhere.
An Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation Fellow, a recipient of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, the Global Filipino Literary Award, and a San Francisco Press Club Journalism Award, she received her BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, her MFA at San Francisco State University, and she teaches in the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program at University of San Francisco.
We leave this book both shellshocked and empowered, reborn and rib-torn.
While these poems are capable of standing alone with their musical incantations (“We bring her tobacco when she calls shrill bird trill carried upon air as though her voice were a body’s warm rib cage we could wrap our arms round tight.”), they work collectively as one long narrative that uses traditional Filipino poetic devices, including call and response, repetition, and songlike refrains.
If she would only speak, then she would tell you – these stories I give you, I swear they are the truth.”
Starting with a monologue of longing from Eve, Reyes weaves seamlessly the creation myths of the Book of Genesis and of the Tagalog people of the Philippines, along with the bloody history of colonization in the Philippines and her grandfather’s role during World War II.
We are offered Reyes’ own version of oral history, the history of her split heritage, the story of survival, and myths of Reyes’ own creation that add an additional emotional truth despite their deliberate inaccuracy. She lives with her husband, poet and educator Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland.
Barbara Jane Reyes
Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Diwata (BOA Editions, 2010).
By the end of the book, however, I still understand more than I did and am eager to learn more. She has taught at Mills College, and at University of San Francisco’s Philippine Studies Program. Asian American Studies. At the end of this poem, though, Reyes catches herself in lament and before getting back to the story of Creation (of humanity, of the modern Filipina, of “Barbara, que barbaridad”), she offers an apology only to herself: “Oh, but how I have strayed.
Background
She was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.