FILCOLS Members from Naga Launch Two Books of Bikol Translations

Ateneo de Naga opens university press, launches 2 books of Bikol translations

Naga City—The Ateneo de Naga University opens 2012 with the formal
opening of its university press by launching books of translations in
Bikol by two of the region's noted contemporary writers. When it is
launched on Friday, January 20, 2012, the AdNU Press is the newest
addition to the list of academic publishing centers in the country.

Fr. Wilmer Joseph S. Tria, AdNU Press Director, discloses that one of
its goals is to become the premier resource of Bikoliana in the world.
As an academic publishing house, AdNU Press is open to all who are
interested to have a manuscript published. Fr. Tria further adds that
optimum quality of materials to be published is a primary requirement,
and, therefore, as practiced by university presses worldwide, all
submitted manuscripts will be subjected to necessary evaluations.

The opening of the press will feature the launch of two books of
translations in Bikol of the works of John Donne, the renowned 16th
century English metaphysical poet, and the German-Austrian poet Rainer
Maria Rilke.

"Doros asin mga Anghel (Air and Angels)," authored by FILCOLS member Victor Dennis T.
Nierva, is a collection of 53 of Donne's poems from his various
compendiums. The book notably includes Bikol translations of all of
Donne's Holy Sonnets. "Doros" is Nierva's second book after
"Antisipasyon (Anticipation)" which won the National Book Award for
Poetry in 2008.

"Minatubod Ako sa Diklom (I Have Faith in Night)," an anthology
comprised of 49 of Rilke's poems translated in Bikol, is the fourth
book of the award-winning poet and FILCOLS member Kristian Sendon Cordero. "Minatubod" includes selections from Rilke's distinguished works, such as "Das
Buch vom mönchischen Leben (The Book of Monastic Life)" and "Das Buch
von der Pilgerschaft (The Book of Pilgrimage)."

In his introduction to Nierva's "Doros," award-winning Bikolano
fictionist and literary scholar, Dr. Carlos O. Aureus considers the
book as a "tour de force of a translation [with its] fusion of wit and
passion, the abrupt entrances, the dislocations, ironies and
paradoxes, the air-tight syntaxes, the inner disquiets both sacred and
sensual, the metaphysical conceits. [Doros] is not a translation of
Donne; [it] is John Donne writing in Bicol."

Cordero's "Minatubod," is likewise commended in its introduction by
the Nagueño Philosophy professor Rey Francis M. Hernandez: "One can
say that a feat such as this anthology is neither for the faint of
heart nor for the standardly courageous. It seems to be destined only
for those who have the foolhardiness, the reckless boldness, that
is—and for all its irony—proper only to the poet."

Nierva and Cordero are both faculty members of the AdNU College of
Arts and Sciences, under the Departments of Media Studies and Social
Sciences, respectively.

The January 20 occasion will be highlighted by a lecture on
contemporary academic publishing by Maricor E. Baytion, Director of
the Ateneo de Manila University Press, at 3pm. After the lecture, at
4:30pm, book launch ceremonies will follow. The event will be held at
the second floor of AdNU's O'Brien Library. (ADNUP)