Autobiography of peter solis nerys

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It’s my way of giving back to the community. In the end, I decided to award honorable mentions to: Michael de la Peña, who was also last year’s second prize winner for The Love Poetry Contest; and Gil Montinola. So, we will have five anthologies that will feature the entries to the Peter’s Prize Very Short Story, Love Poetry, Children’s Literature, Saddest Love Story, and the submissions to the Poem-a-thon.

I just want to celebrate love. So, I withdrew all my savings, borrowed some money from Randy, and put it in the bank for the foundation. By the end of the first week, I realized that some people did not really engage in the discussion so I imagined that some of them could just be very sensitive to criticism especially in public.

Then, I thought, why not also invite other people to join me in the challenge. I just don’t have all the money in the world to bankroll all these expenses. Haha!

excerpt from Brash, Brazen & Brilliant column
© Peter Solis Nery and Iloilo Metropolitan Times: May 23, 2014

WHEN THE WELL RUNS DRY

Did you really announce on Facebook that you are cancelling the Poems about Water contest?

It is sad, but true.

I knew from the get go that I wanted to hear Negrense voices because I am trying to expand the vocabulary database for my Hiligaynon dictionary. I mean, of course, I am not paid for this, but once I give my commitment, I truly deliver. I just don’t want to deteriorate, so I push myself a little doing what makes me even more creative.

Young and old, veterans or novice writers, native speakers or just second language learners from all over the Philippines [in fact, the world!] are all welcome. But I don’t want to be cheap and easy about it [because there is nothing cheap and easy in Peter’s Prize, now poised as a most prestigious Hiligaynon literary contest], so to complicate, I wanted to challenge people to write tragedies.

He also posted two second prizes at the Palanca that year for categories in English: poetry for children and full-length play.

Continuing his winning streak, he won his fifth gold and was elevated to the Palanca Awards Hall of Fame for his Punctuation, a collection of Poetry for Children in English, in 2012. He also received the President’s Award of Merit as Outstanding Student in his graduation year.

While attending public school, Peter honed his talent for writing.

Wasn’t it my money that started the foundation? At UP, Peter was lucky to meet Leoncio Deriada who encouraged him to write in the Hiligaynon.
Peter won his first national award in writing from the CCP for his poetry in Hiligaynon, Mga Ambahanon kag Pangamuyo sang Bata nga Nalimtan sa Wayang [Songs and Prayers of a Child Forgotten in the Fields] in 1992.
For his performance poetry Si Eva, si Delilah, si Ruth, kag ang Alput [Eva, Delilah, Ruth, and the Prostitute] at the Premio Operiano Italia, he was crowned Hari sang Binalaybay [King of Hiligaynon Poetry] in 1993, a title he held until 1998.
Out of his student activism days at the university (He espoused the issues of the US military bases, Iloilo’s street children, and ecological awareness.), he wrote his first book, I Flew a Kite for Pepe.

Based on the collective creative output, and the discovery of new writing talents in the region, I think that my Foundation has very successfully promoted and propagated Hiligaynon by encouraging writers, new and old, to write more in the mother-tongue. Just send your entries with your name, email address, and other contact information as a private message to the Facebook account of Peter Solis Nery [with the pink suit profile photo], or the Facebook account of The Peter Solis Nery Foundation; or email them to [email protected].

It’s my Foundation, it’s my money that I’m spending, it’s my logo! But, I deal. And then, there is the Ten Elegies book project, which I may or I may not release along with the five.