But aside from her considerable production as a poet, dramatist, short story writer and critic, Dimalanta has also mentored a formidable host of Thomasian writers who have been or are currently in the forefront of Philippine literature and culture: National Artists for Literature Bienvenido S. Lumbera and the late Cirilo F. Bautista, UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies (UST CCWLS) Director , Makiling High School for the Arts Director Victor Emmanuel “Vim” Nadera, Jr., UP Press Director J. Neil C. Garcia, and UP System Assistant Vice President for Public Affairs and Director for Alumni Affairs Jose Wendell P. Capili, to name a distinguished few associated with the academe.

Dimalanta’s influence, though, as the literary doyenne from España is perhaps best feltin the genre where she had excelled the most, which is none other than poetry, the vanguard of the literary arts. But nearly a decade after her passing, how does the Thomasian poet figure in the contemporary literary scene?

The Achieve of, the Mastery
A quick survey of the latest installment of Gémino H. Abad’s groundbreaking and definitive anthology of Philippine poetry from English collectively titled Man of Earth contextualizes the position of the Thomasian wordsmith who wrought poetry from English in contemporary times.

Of the 161 poets featured in The Achieve of, the Mastery: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English, mid-’90s to 2016, a substantial number (23) are Thomasians: Gloria A. Garchitorena-Goloy, Doris Trinidad, Ophelia Dimalanta, Cirilo Bautista, Albert B. Casuga, Recah A. Trinidad, Rita B. Gadi, Alice M. Sun-Cua, Eric Gamalinda, Merlinda Bobis, Joel Pablo Salud, Capili, Bino A. Realuyo, Garcia, Alma Anonas-Carpio, Ralph Semino Galán, Nerisa del Carmen Guevara, Ramil Digal Gulle, Lourd Ernest H. de Veyra, Allan Justo Pastrana, Carlomar Arcangel Daoana, , and Brylle B. Tabora.

Incidentally, three of these Thomasian poets are currently part of the UST CCWLS: Galán, Assistant Director, and Guevara and Parfan, Resident Fellows. (During the directorship of Dimalanta, Bautista and his fellow National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose were named as the Center’s Senior Associates, while De Veyra and Gulle, along with Galán and Guevara were named as Junior Associates.)

Furthermore, most of these Thomasian poets have published individual books of poetry, the more prolific ones having published multiple titles, like Bautista (12), Dimalanta (7), Garcia (6), and Daoana (5). And they have won many national and international prizes for their verse-making. In fact, Thomasian poets have won a substantial number of prizes in the Palanca Awards for the Poetry in English category in the last ten years: Daoana for the poetry collections “The Elegant Ghost” (First Prize, 2012) and “Crown for Maria” (Second Prize, 2013); Angelo Suarez for “Exploratoria” (Second Prize, 2003) and “Else It Was Purely Girls” (Third Prize, 2004); Bobis for “Accidents of Composition” (Second Prize, 2016); Ramil Digal Gulle for“Afterhours, Afterlives” (Second Prize, 2000); and Mike Maniquiz for “Tornadoes and Other Poems” (Third Prize, 2003).

Not Only in English
The prominence of the Thomasian wordsmith in poetry is not only limited to English, since there is also an equal number of exemplary Thomasian poets writing in Filipino: Teo T. Antonio, Nadera, Michael M. Coroza, the Añonuevo siblings Roberto and Rebecca, , Louie Jon Sanchez, Joseph Rosmon Tuazon, Joseph de Luna Saguid, and Paul Alcoseba Castillo, to mention the more visible ones. Two of these Thomasian poets, aside from also being part of the UST CCWLS as Resident Fellows, are very active in the contemporary literary scene: Delos Reyes is the current Chair of the UST Department of Literature and a board member of Philippine PEN, while Castillo is the latest First Prize winner of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Poetry in Filipino for his collection “Luna’t Lunas.” But will the Thomasian poet’s winning streak continue into the future?

UST Graduate School
There is no immediate danger that the Thomasian poet will disappear from the literary scene, even as most of the poets personally mentored by Dimalanta have already reached or about to reach middle age, for she had the foresight in the early 2000s to establish a Creative Writing program in the UST . The 32-year old Castillo, who has an, is a certified proof of the effectiveness of the program.

At present, aside from the more senior UST CCWLS Resident Fellows, two major Filipino poets boost the rank of the UST Graduate School Creative Writing faculty: Abad, UP University Professor Emeritus, who teaches a ‘Poetry in English’ workshop class; and Coroza, a Full Professor of the Ateneo de Manila University, who handles a poetry in Filipino workshop class. Abad and Coroza are Senior Visiting Fellow and Associate Fellow of the UST CCWLS, respectively.

Will the winning streak trickle down to the young poets based inside the España campus?

Undergraduate Creative Writing Program
The UST Faculty of Arts and Letters established in 2018 an undergraduate Creative Writing program to align its course offerings with the UST Graduate School, and to help ensure that the Pontifical University’s legacy of excellence in the belle lettres would continue. And gauging by the enthusiastic participation of its first batch of Creative Writing freshman students and some senior Literature majors to a recently held poetry reading organized by Galán and UST CW Undergraduate Program Coordinator at the UST CCWLS Conference Room, to celebrate World Poetry Movement (Movimiento Poético Mundial) initiated by Medellín International Poetry Festival Director Fernando Rendón, poetry indeed, whether in English or Filipino, is very much alive inside the campus of the Pontifical University.

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The contexts that inspire Blanco’s investigation range from the Spanish empire in the Americas and the Philippines, to the spread of Christianity in the modern period, to the philosophy of modernity and Eurocentrism, comparative forms of imperialism and anti-colonial struggles, and the legal, religious, and racial dilemmas and contradictions of post-colonial societies and states in and through the study of Philippine, Latin American, Caribbean, and US minority literatures and cultures (religious, political, and artistic).

Blanco received his B.A. (with honors) from Arts and Ideas in the Residential College at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Department of Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, California. His research interests concern the colonial roots of globalization between the 16th-19th centuries. He is the author of Frontier Constitutions: Christianity and Colonial Empire in the Nineteenth Century Philippines (UC Press 2009; UP Press 2010); and the translator of Julio Ramos’s Divergent Modernities in Latin America: Culture and Politics in the Nineteenth Century.

The UST CCWLS International Writers and Scholars Series consists of formal lectures and informal conversations by international writers as guests of the UST CCWLS. Previous speakers include Peruvian-Spanish Nobel Prize winner for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa, Filipino-Americans Ninotchka Rosca, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Sabina Murray, Gina Apostol, M. Evelina Galang, R. Zamora Linmark, Marivi Soliven, Lara Stapleton, Fidelito Cortes, Nerissa Balce, Amalia Bueno and Wilfredo Pascual, Filipino-Australian Robert Nery, Filipino-Canadian Miguel Syjuco, and foreign nationals, Tim Tomlinson, Dennis Haskell, Qaisra Sharaz, Yukari Yoshihara and Xu Xi.

UST CCWLS Director delivered the opening remarks, while Assistant Director Assoc. Prof. Ralph Semino Galán delivered the closing remarks.

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The UST Journal Affairs Committee is headed by the UST Secretary-General Rev. Fr. Jesús Miranda, Jr., O.P., Ph.D. It is composed of the respective chief editors of the academic journals published by the various units of the University.

Through this committee, UST aims to intensify its support for the maintenance of these journals by bringing them together in a single official online portal, providing editors with technical and financial
assistance, guiding editors in maintaining quality assurance and professionalizing the respective editorial boards, among others. Now that the various UST academic journals are under one common platform, it will be easier for researchers to access content and information about the journals, specifically the respective submission and publication policies of each publication.

Moreover, featuring various academic journals from different disciplines is an indication of the University’s commitment to knowledge production and dissemination, as well as the recognition of the academic efforts of the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and health sciences.

One of the goals of the UJAC is the eventual adoption of a University Open Access (OA) Policy, through which all academic journals identified with UST will be published in Open Access platforms, which means that all published articles will be made freely available to the public The “UST Journals Online Portal” can be accessed through http://journals.ust. edu.ph.

The journals included in the online portal are: Acta Manilana, published by the Research Center for the Natural Sciences and edited by Prof. Emeritus Fortunato Sevilla, Ph.D; Antoninus Journal, published by the UST Graduate School and edited by Prof. Rey Donne Papa, Ph.D.; Asian Journal of English Language Studies published by the Department of English and edited by Asst. Prof. Veronico Tarrayo, Ph.D.; Hasaan published by the Department of Filipino and edited by Prof. Imelda De Castro, Ph.D. and Assoc. Prof. Zendel Rosario Taruc, Ph.D.; Journal of Medicine University of Santo Tomas published by the Faculty of Medicine and edited by Prof. Raymond Rosales, M.D., Ph.D.; Journal of Social Health published by the Research Center for Social Sciences and Education and edited by Asst. Prof. Maria Carinnes Alejandria Gonzalez; Kritike: An Online Journal of Philosophy published by the Department of Philosophy and edited by Prof. Paolo Bolaños, Ph.D.; Philipiniana Sacra published by the Ecclesiastical Faculties and edited by Rev. Fr. Jesús Miranda, Jr., O.P., Ph.D.; Philippine Journal of Allied Health Sciences, published by the College of Rehabilitation Sciences and edited by Mr. Ivan Neil Gomez; Tomás, published by the Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies and edited by Assoc. Prof. Ralph Semino Galán; UNITAS, the 96-year-old international research journal published by the Department of Literature and edited by Prof. Maria Luisa Torres Reyes, Ph.D.

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The 15 selected fellows were: Paul Cyrian M. Baltazar (katha; DLS-College of St. Benilde), Jose Socrates S. Delos Reyes (tula; AdMU), Kristine Inez Q. Estioko (CNF; AdMU), Bayani M. Gabriel (sanaysay; Tarlac State University), Hans Lawrence V. Malgapu (poetry; UST, UST Social Media Bureau), Angelito G. Nambatac, Jr. (dula; MSU-IIT), Arianne Patricia Onte (fiction; UPLB), Karl Ivan Dan V. Orit (fiction; UST), Riddick Matthew P. Recoter (CNF; DLSU), Keanu Harold G. Reyes (katha; Bulacan State University), Kristinne Nigel C. Santos (screenplay; UST, UP), Manuel Tinio (dula; DLSU), Edmark T. Tan (poetry; UST, DLSU), Maria Gliceria L. Valdez (CNF; UP Mindanao, University of Southeastern Philippines), and Vincen Gregory Yu (poetry; UP Manila).

“[The Center] functions as an academy of letters dedicated to the reaffirmation of the University’s important role in the nation’s literary history, through the creation of a culture of literary excellence within Thomasian community and for the cultivation of an awareness of University’s literary tradition,” UST CCWLS Assistant Director Asst. Prof. Ralph Semino Galan said.

This year’s special guest panelists were: Gemino H. Abad, R. Zamora Linmark, and Jerry B. Gracio. The workshop director was Assoc. Prof. John Jack G. Wigley and the workshop coordinator was Mr. Benedict Parfan.

CCWLS Outreach program
Incon junction with the Center’s role in cultivating awareness in literature, the resident fellows lectured at the Benguet State University. Mr. Chuckbery Pascual, PhD, lectured on the topic of pop culture; Assoc. Prof. Augusto Aguila, PhD, lectured on the history of love teams; Asst. Prof Galan lectured on Latin American Literature; and Joselito Delos Reyes, PhD, lectured on social media.

The panelists from the UST CCWLS awere Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, director, Ralph Semino Galán, deputy director, and resident fellows Augusto Antonio A. Aguila, PhD, Nestor Cuartero, , , , and Joselito B. Zulueta.

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The writing fellows for this year were: Maria Tanya P. Cruz (UST) and Francis Paolo M. Quina (UP Diliman) for fiction in English; Maria Nikka P. Policarpio (UST) and Eric John B. Villena (Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan) for fiction in Filipino; Paul M. Jerusalem (Yale-National University of Singapore) and Timothy F. Ong (Ateneo de Manila/ UP Diliman) for poetry in English; Andrea Alban (UST) and Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas (UST) for poetry in Filipino; John Patrick I. Allanegui (Ateneo de Manila) and Jennie Arado (UP Mindanao) for creative nonfiction in English; and Giselle R. Dela Cruz (UST) and Rhea B. Gulin (Philippine Normal University) for creative nonfiction in Filipino.

The senior guest panelists of this year’s Workshop were Mr. Marne Kilates, one of the most renowned poet-translators of the Philippines, and Philippine High School for the Arts Director V.E. Carmelo Nadera, Jr., who is a former editor-in-chief of the Varsitarian, the founder of its annual Gawad USTetika Literary Awards and a former director of the UP Institute of Creative Writing. The participation of this year’s senior guest panelists was made possible through the sponsorship of the Varsitarian.

Poet-critic and CCWLS Assistant Director Ralph Semino Galán, served as the Workshop Director, while fictionist-playwright and CCWLS Resident Fellow Chuckberry J. Pascual, PhD, served as the Workshop Coordinator.

Aside from Kilates, Nadera, Galán and Pascual, the teaching panel was also composed of UST CCWLS Director Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, PhD, and UST CCWLS Resident Fellows  Chair , PhD, UST  Deputy Director , , , , , , and Joselito B. Zulueta.

UP Diliman’s U Z. Eliserio, fictionist-critic and UST Publishing House author, was also part of the panel.

Some of the UST CCWLS’s Resident Fellows delivered lectures in creative and critical writing at the University of the Cordilleras as part of the UST CCWLS Outreach Lecture Series in Baguio City.

During the Graduation Ceremonies and Fellows’ Night of the Workshop,  Dean Prof. Michael Anthony Vasco, PhD, delivered a very erudite speech on the “literary text” as seen from a philosophical perspective in his opening remarks, while Hidalgo further encouraged the Writing Fellows to pursue the craft of creative writing, as well as thanked the faculty members for having accepted to be part of the distinguished teaching panel.

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