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Jaime Jesus Borlagdan
(March 6,1979 / Tabaco City, Albay, Philippines)
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Biography of Jaime Jesus Borlagdan
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Jaime Jesus Borlagdan is a Filipino poet, song-writer, graphic artist and musician. He writes in three languages, but presently uses his native tongue Albay-Bikol. He has published a book of Tagalog poems Maynila: Libro ng Pobya (Manila: Book of Fears) in 1999, which is now considered by his young followers as an important and influential collection. His recent works in the Bikol language have not yet appeared collectively in printed form except in his blogsite Suralista (http: //www.jimplejimple.blogspot.com) . He works as a consultant at Tabaco City Hall, in Tabaco City Albay. He lives with his wife Caren and daughter Radha.
Marne Kilates, poet, writes:
Jaime Jesus Borlagdan is, by all indications, one of the main tributaries from the Albay sector feeding into the onrushing river of writing that’s happening in the Bikol language today. One of the most active in literary writing in the Web today, Borlagdan, maintains two sites: a website for his works at www.jimplejimple.blogspot.com/ and Karangahan (Pagranga sa Pagsurat Bikolnon) at http: //karangahan.multiply.com/, a site “honoring Bikol literature that has been written and still being written in contemporary times.” Of his own poetry, Jimple, as he his called by friends, says (in Bikol, which I essay in translation) , “...all this is at the back of what I say, and it cannot be molded by words, it cannot be put within gun sight, but if in reading my work you run into a fugitive emotion that you can’t utter...” the rest is a passionate enumeration of possibilities. Bikol critic Tito Genova Valiente reacts to his poetry by saying that it is “heartbreaking to feel the forms.”
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A Rush of Metaphors, Tremor of Cadences, and Sad Subversions
Notes on the Poetry of Jaime Jesus Borlagdan
By Tito Genova Valiente
titovaliente@yahoo.com
The first time I read the poems of Jesus Jaime Borlagdan, Jimple to those who know him, I felt immediately the seething movement of the words. There was a rush of metaphors in his works. I immediately liked the feeling that the rhythm caused in one’s reading for poetry, in my book, should always be read aloud. I was hearing the voice. It was a voice that happened to sound from afar and it was struggling to link up with a present that would not easily appear.
It was heartbreaking to feel the form. I felt the lines constricting. I saw the phrases dangling to tease, breaking the code of straight talk and inverting them to seduce the mind to think beyond the words. Somewhere, the poems were reverting back to direct sentences, weakening the art of poetry with its universe of ellipses and nuances, but then as suddenly as the words lightened up, the poems then dipped back into a silent retreat, into a cave, to lick its own wounds from the confrontation that it dared to initiate.
For this column, I decide to share parts of the longer paper I am writing about this poet.
In Karangahan, the poet begins with: Bulebard, ikang muymuyon na salog/ki gatas buda patenteng nakahungko, /ako ngonian kahurona. Borlagdan translates this into: Boulevard, you forlorn river/ of milk and downcast lights/ speak to me now. Savor the translation, for in Bikol that which is a dialog has become an entreaty.)
The poet is always talking to someone but in An istorya ninda, an osipon ta, he talks about a the fruits of some narrative: Ta sa dara nindang korona kita an hadi/ sa krus, kita su may nakatadok na espada./Naitaram na ninda an saindang istorya./Punan ta na man su satong osipon./This I translate as: For in the crown they bear we are the King/ on the cross, with the embedded sword./ Marvel at this construction, as the poet cuts at the word “hadi” and begins the next line with “krus” and the “espada.” Marvel, too, at how he looks at conversion and faith, a process that made us special but also wounded us with ourselves stuck with the sword.
Finally, the poet says those lines of the true believer: They have already spoken their story, now let us begin with our tale. The poet does not have a translation but will the istorya in this line be “history” and osipon be “myth.” Shall these last four lines in the first stanza be both a subversion of our faith embedded in a foreign culture or a celebration of what we are not, and what we have not become?
Puni na an paghidaw. Puni na an pagluwas/hali sa kwartong pano ki luha, puni na/an paghiling sa luwas kan bintana./Puni na an paghidaw para sa binayaan./Puni na an pagsulit sa daluging tinimakan./Puni na an paghidaw sa mga sinugbang utoban. Terrifying lines as the poet calls us to begin the remembering and also begin the moving out from the room full of tears. In the poet’s mind, the lacrimarum vale or valley of tears had become an intimate area for instigating his own release.
The rhythm is there as in a prayer. But it is no prayer. There is the repetition but it is not a plea. There is the self but it is one that has turned away from itself into something else. That self is one that shall face the recollection of the faith that has been burned.
And yet the poet, resolute when he wants to, loves to sing and hint of fear and anxiety. Even when he is merely observing children playing in the rains, he summons images of terrible beauty. The skies become diklom na pinandon na “may luho” (with hole) . From this hole, comes the sarong pisi ki sildang/ tisuhon na buminulos. The poet stays with this metaphor with such intensity that the silken thread coming from the hole justifiably becomes luhang garo hipidon na busay/paluwas sa mata/kan dagom. Dark wit and a penchant for the horrifying are tandem graces in these lines.
This is the poet who can, without self-consciousness, tell us of the …haya/kan mga ayam na namimibi/nakakapabuskad ki barahibo/nakakaulakit ki lungsi. He whispers of “halas na rimuranon, malamti/sa hapiyap kan mga bituon.”
This is a startling universe, where dogs pray (and bay) , and where fears bloom and paleness afflicts and infects, and serpents are caressed by the stars.
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