Here is what I told Ryan Cezar Alcarde about his first collection:
Ang istilo ng pagsulat mo sa mga tulang ito ang sinusubukan kong gawin sa kakarampot kong mga tula. Pero next level itong mga sayo.
Pastoral. Nature. Parang andun talaga ako. Aktibista pero pwede ring hindi. At maraming pagbanggit sa paglalakad.
I wrote a longer diary entry about this work, which surprisingly moved me.
If I’ll ever write activist poems, which I may never be qualified to write, they’ll be in the shape of Ryan’s poems. One won’t immediately feel they’re activist poems if one doesn’t know Ryan or one hasn’t read activist poems before. For me, the poems transcend their original purpose and brought me back to Santa Maria and the pugaros around it. It felt to me that I could’ve written some of the poems in this collection. They’re pastoral, individual, and yet always about the kapwa whether that kapwa is a farmer or a cow lost in the forest. I also love that Ryan’s language is graspable. The subjects of his poems could read them or listen to them and understand them. These are poems easy to love and difficult to forget.
References
Alcarde, Ryan. Mula sa Gulod. Aklat Ulagad, 2021.