Marjorie M. Evasco
Marjorie M. Evasco traces her literary roots to the island of Bohol where she grew up and completed her undergraduate degree, and to Dumaguete City where she finished her M.A. in Creative Writing at Silliman University in 1982.
A true Bol-anon, she keeps alive the memory and spirit of the revolt first led by Dagohoy's mother, a powerful tambalan (healer), who inspired her son and her people to defy for more than a hundred years the oppressor's rule. As a writer, Marj commits her vision through her poetry, believing that the worthy warrior and healer is necessarily adept at giving voice to the vision so that other may sing it, too.
Marjorie writes in English and Cebuano. Her poetry has appeared in different parts of Asia, Europe and North America. She had been published in various Philippine magazines and journals, and in Tampa Review, New Straits Times, Manoa and The Evening Paper.
She was a local fellow for poetry at the UP Creative Writing Center in 1986. An associate fellow in the Philippine Literary Arts Council, she is also one of the founders of WICCA, a women's organization. She was featured among writers from Asia-Pacific at the 10th Vancouver International Writers (and Readers) Festival in 1997. During that time she also read her poetry at the inaugural Winnipeg Writers Festival of Manitoba. She was awarded her Ph.D. in Literature in 1998 at De La Salle University.
She has received various awards, among them, a writing fellowship at the International Retreat for Writers in in Hawthornden Castle, Midlothian, Scotland in1991; a travel grant and residency in Bellagio, Italy (Rockefeller Foundation) in 1992; the Palanca Award for the Essay Category in 1983 and 1989; the Philippine Free Press Poetry Prize in 1992. The Mariano Manguerra Foundation of Cebu City chose her Outstanding Writer in the Literary Arts in 1993.
Marjorie Evasco lectures at the De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines. She lives with her daughter Mary Ann and son Marc in a house with a bamboo grove and three cats, who sleep outside her bedroom door at night.
“This must be the taste of Language—the tongue mapped by many colors,parsed by the vowels of memory, the roofof the mouth the dome of a worldcircumscribed by consonants, whose edgessuggest the sour-sweetness of oranges,the bittermelon’s green rind, the river-scent of mangoes all the way to the grove.”
“She turns to the man beside her,As if to say she understood how insideAnd outside the rooms of loveThe landscape was not always seamless”
“We have joined the trekof desert women, humped overfrom carrying our own oasesin the claypots of our lives,gathering broken shards we findin memory of those who wentahead of us, alone.”
“She had known ever since she feltthe miracle of his heart quickening in her,it would end the way it began: her armsgathering his hurt body again and againinto her indigo mantle, the shield of her lovebringing the world to complete silence.”
“There is a season to this ripening,the way sap of tree rises to fulfillfruit of the topmost branch,or the motion of jasmineclimbing trellises to show offa single blossom to a new moon tide....Yes, there isreason for this ripening.You are goldened by my tongue.”
“The dancer...knows it takesTen sacred years to learn one gestureOf the wind’s caress on the skin of water.Tonight, in the shadows of our dance,I tell my soul to grow quiet,Become lake, reflect unbroken moon.On the deepest part of the lake,A solitary fisher paddles his oars.At the shore, a woman in red sarongSings: their longing walks on water.”
“This paper is a crane.When its wings unfold,The paper will be pure and empty.”